Ableton Forum

Hi!

Is it possible to have the "MIDI To" on a spesific midi track to dynamically change to the track that is currently armed? Say if I arm TRACK 2, TRACK 1 MIDI To will change to TRACK 2, and if I arm TRACK 3, TRACK 1 MIDI To will change to TRACK 3 etc etc...

It's possible with M4L.

Changing MIDI TO will cause Live to stall a bit.
Curious to why you are trying to do this, when there are other ways to set up Live with routings and midi channels where there is no need to switch routing menues?

In other words there might be a way without using M4L that you have not considered.

If you have to have it this way there are other options besides changing MIDI TO

You could make some kind of MIDI blocking device, OR even make some kind of MIDI effects rack that did this, and if your using a controller, you could use some creative midi mapping.

Hiya Thanks for the reply guys.

I'll try to explain what I'm trying to do here. The thing is, I'm trying to make chord progressions a bit easier. I'm not so good at actually "playing" chords live on a keyboard, especially when it comes to advanced chords and stuff. So what I've come up with so far is building a Midi Effect Rack, cointaing several instances of the effects Chord and Scale. This way I can build up a chord library where each chain have it's own chord. I've tested it and it works. When I trigger a chain, the chord I've made for that particular chain is played out with the device (synth) I choose in the MIDI To. The thing that bothers me is that I constantly have to change the MIDI To every time I want to play the chords with different instruments in the live set. So that's why I'm trying to find a way that makes it change automatically as I arm the the different tracks with the instruments I want to use. I could of course just copy the rack over to each track and just enable/disable it, but I find this a bit messy.

If I can make this work, I'll probably map up my maschine controller with one cord for each pad for even more easier access to the chords. I'm hoping that this will make it easier for me to build up interesting chord progressions and also make it easier to keep track of the scales I'm using throughout the song I'm making.

Well, thats my train of thoughts on this one. Maybe I'm overcomplicating things. I don't know.... Maybe there is another way to achieve the same thing?

Cool.

SO, I myself only have 1 keyboard to access many synths.
I prefer making a group track of MANY midi Tracks.
Each input on these midi tracks is receiving from my Keyboard on different channels.
Each output is going directly to the specified Track, and the sub menu is set directly to the VST, Rack or External instrument plug rack.
All the midi input tracks monitoring are set to IN
On each track where the synths are they are placed, the inputs are receiving matching midi channels from my keyboard, but monitoring is set to AUTO.

This allows me to play a specific synth by selecting a template from my keyboard. Each template is sending a different midi channel out.
ALSO, I can record arm the synth tracks to record, AND if I dont have rec armed I can still play the synth. I can also play along with clips that are playing the synth on that track. Allowing me to rehearse before hitting arm.

There are a lot of ways to skin a cat in Live, and with M4L even more so.
With M4L you could make one device that has some logic that knows which tracks is armed.
Pending on which track is armed, you could tell the patch to turn off all devices you dont want ON, OR do something similar with chain selection 'not passing' midi.

These are just a couple of ways you could do things.
I recommend taking advantage of the midi channels on your controller, as I partly mentioned above. This method is no hassle on Live, AND you can use the controller to make it more dynamic, less mousy.

make since?

could you not acheive the same effect by setting MIDI From on the tracks with the instruments (to come from the chord track) and setting monitor to auto?

What I ended up doing, was to make a separate midi track for each instrument, set monitoring to in on all of them, and set all of them to recieve from my Chord midi track and then set MIDI to to each instrument. I then map'ed each chord to its own pad on my maschine controller and it works perfectly!

Thanks for all the help guys, it is very much appriciated

take a look at clyphX from nativekontrol. its free, you don`t need m4l and you get loads of other additional functionality too

i do this in a manner similar to the one explained by JuanSolo, although i use just one template of the keyboard-that is midi is sent on one and only one channel.
So i have: a "midiIN" track which receives midi from the keyb on say channel 1, monitor set to IN, and midi out to "no output"; then i have one midi track per instrument, called "midi2inst1","midi2inst" and so on, with midi coming from "midiIN", monitor set to IN, and midi out going to the respective instrument track; then there are the instrument tracks themselves, with midi coming from "no input"; you can decide to set to monitor IN or AUTO (+arm enabled) depending on the need to record clips or not.
This way, i just map the MUTE buttons in the "midi2inst#" tracks to buttons on my keyboard, and select which instrument receives notes. AND this way there are no glitches and pops when selecting-which i always encounter if trying to set just the midi FROM directly within the instrument tracks, and then just turn on and off the ARM buttons.
Only downside is that when you jump from playing a track to another, you have to turn off the first button otherwise midi will be sent to both! would love to be able to map those buttons to a range of notes, so they would be selected exclusively..but hey, this works for me overall.
Sorry for the long reply!
cheers

crumhorn wrote:could you not acheive the same effect by setting MIDI From on the tracks with the instruments (to come from the chord track) and setting monitor to auto?

yes. that was the first thing I thaught, when I read the description by the TO. That´s by far the most simple way to solve that prob.

I myself have a set, where I even route the incoming midi from my keyboard through two midi tracks before my instrument tracks recieve midi from the second.

the only thing I realized, is that it seems like that introduces some latency into the signal flow ( in the two aforementioned tracks I have three huge midi racks - a custom built 16step sequencer, an arpeggiator rack and a rack to transpose midi notes and for creating different scales).

Am I right that this could cause an increment in latency?

grunzlaut wrote:Am I right that this could cause an increment in latency?

as far as i know, midi as never introduced latency ...

grunzlaut wrote:

crumhorn wrote:could you not acheive the same effect by setting MIDI From on the tracks with the instruments (to come from the chord track) and setting monitor to auto?

yes. that was the first thing I thaught, when I read the description by the TO. That´s by far the most simple way to solve that prob.

I myself have a set, where I even route the incoming midi from my keyboard through two midi tracks before my instrument tracks recieve midi from the second.

the only thing I realized, is that it seems like that introduces some latency into the signal flow ( in the two aforementioned tracks I have three huge midi racks - a custom built 16step sequencer, an arpeggiator rack and a rack to transpose midi notes and for creating different scales).

Am I right that this could cause an increment in latency?

might be to do with PDC - try turning it off and see what happens.