Ableton Forum

So far the solution offered to changing presets involves making instrument racks for all of a VST presets. I found this quite annoying, also in order to be more efficient it requires hacking the Folders script so you can have folders for each vst, or you may go through hundreds in the "bass" sections of "Instrument racks". As in this topic viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194622

So I came up with an alternative: Use a MIDI to Keystrokes translator as this one http://www.bome.com/products/miditransl ... ew/classic (sorry, mac version isn't free)

Once you have this program you can tranlate MIDI messages from Push in USER mode to send three very important commands to control a VST:

1.- CONTROL+ALT+P to open and close windows, you could map all three to a single button in Push.
2.- The Arrows (UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT), to 4 buttons in push.

Why mapping arrow keys? Because almost all VSTs allow to navigate presets using the arrows, ar at least some plugins I use a lot: u-he (ACE and DIVA) and Reaktor ensembles.

One problem I found is that all the black buttons send two values (on/off) when pressed, only the grid sends a single value (on), so I had to map to the grid buttons in order to navigate properly.


Set up:
1.- Open BOME midi translator
2.- Open Live
3.- Turn Push to USER mode.
4.- Go to Bome MIDI translator and select MIDIIN2 (Ableton PUSH) in MIDI IN menu. (You can't select Ableton Push which is "exclusive" for Live, so no worries about interfering with it).
5.- Open the preset I made: http://www.mediafire.com/download/ynf3n ... ntrol.bmtp (which uses the six top right grid buttons). Or configure your own:
- Add new translator (the icon with + )
- Edit it:
- IN "Incoming" select "Capture MIDI" play the button in PUsh you want to assign.
- IN "Outgoing", select Key stroke and then press the key you want to translate to (You can press many keys at once).
- Apply and close
- Repeat to map all keystrokes you want.
- Save your preset.

While you are doing this you can try it in Live.

So the resulting workflow is like this:

1.- With Push add a VST you already have in a Rack to your track.
2.- Use the "Open vst window" command: Switch to User mode and press the Top right grid button (in my preset).
3.- Depending on the VST you will need or not to select the Preset browser view with a mouse (some of them allow to do it with the tab key, so you could also map it).
4.- Navigate through presets using the grid buttons assigned as Arrow Keystrokes (in user mode).
5.- Switch to Push normal mode to play.

So as you can see it still has some inconvenience as requiering to swtich constantly between Normal and User mode but I found it's more easy and fast than changing presets by changing racks (which takes a lot more of loading time).

Hope this can help your workflow.

Hi, nice idea !

Bome's product works very nice, unfortunately as you said it's not free on OSX
Therefore I searched and found a free software: Midipipe (http://www.subtlesoft.square7.net)

It's a very powerful tool but not so easy to handle at the beginning.

I mapped the up/down/left/right touches to their keystroke equivalent (plus lower left pad to Return key) in the following Midipipe preset : Push keystrokes preset
So this dos basically the same thing as login's solution but for free on Mac OSX

If anyone needs explanation I'll be happy to explain

If I may, Queglay, this topic is quite different from what your VST Bridge does.

Unless you plan to create racks for all existing VST synths and effects

Currently just Komplete and Soundtoys. In the near future, I'd like to add UAD.
And then Korg, and Arturia.

I'll add any legal plugin I can afford or obtain an NFR with a plugin developer if they would like to take part. Currently the plan is I purchase everything that's popular enough to add in there - which is currently the limiting factor for the VST Bridge preset kit.

But the sky's the limit...

queglay wrote:Currently just Komplete and Soundtoys. In the near future, I'd like to add UAD.
And then Korg, and Arturia.

I'll add any legal plugin I can afford or obtain an NFR with a plugin developer if they would like to take part. Currently the plan is I purchase everything that's popular enough to add in there - which is currently the limiting factor for the VST Bridge preset kit.

But the sky's the limit...

I tried going your way but I found the loading time quite annoying, but you have the advantage to browse from Push.

If your home folder and is are on an ssd it's very fast. If not, most synths like massive, absinthe etc load fast anyway. Reaktor is a little slower on a standard hd because it loads up the .ens files.

This can all be improved though if that index gets properly loaded at startup time which I've suggested to support, perhaps precaching the devices too.

Perhaps we could combine the method. There's a m4l patch that can send the program change message. So I could include that in all the presets if people want to quickly scroll through presets using that method.