Ableton Forum

Hi!
I've searched the manual and this forum, and found no way to "Lock a Midi Keyboard" to a track.

My situation/problem: I have a Push 2, 2 midi keyboard controllers (5 octaves and 2 octaves) which I use in Ableton to control the track I select on Push. Additionally, I have 3 synths, each with its own keyboard, that I connect via Midi to Ableton for recording sequences.
For these 3 synths, I create a midi track for each, select as the track's "Midi In" (Input Type dropdown) the synth's Midi Out Port, as track's "Midi Out" (Output type dropdown) the Synth's midi in port, I disable local control on the synth, and leave the track in "Monitor In". This way, I avoid midi loops, and the synth always sound when I press a key on its own keyboard.
However, I have 2 problems:
1) I can't play the synth with Push or the 2 midi keyboard controllers (instead of the synth's own keyboard).. Sometimes I want to make adjustments or try some notes quickly directly on push...
2) If there is another midi track seleted (say with a Wavetable device) with "All Ins" as the track's Midi In, when I play the synth's keyboard, I also hear the Wavetable device. I could select "Push 2 Input" instead of "All Ins", but in this case I cannot use the Midi Keyboard Controllers to control Wavetable.

In Propellerheads Reason it's super simple to have this kind of control (since version 1), so I'm still surprised I cannot find a way to do this in Ableton. In Reason you select which Midi Keyboards will work with Reason, and when you lock a Midi Keyboard to a track, this Midi Keyboard cannot control other tracks. E.g., when I lock Midi Keyboard A to Track 1, I know Midi Keyboard A will never trigger Track 2, even when Track 2 is selected. But if I want to control Track 1 with Midi Keyboard B, I just select Track 1, and now I can use both Midi Keyboards A or B to control Track 1.

In Ableton I believe any of these changes would achieve this type of control (feature requests):
* Add "Lock Midi In port to track" as an option in the Input Type Dropdown on Midi tracks (I know there is a "Lock to Control Surface" option, but this only works with control surfaces, not keyboards, and with devices, not midi tracks). With same workflow as Reason's
* Alternatively, implement another Midi In option for Midi Tracks: "All Ins except those used in other tracks"
* Alternatively, allow selection of multiple Midi Ins in a track (I believe this one will be harder to implement, at least at the UI level)

Again, maybe I missed something and it's already possible to do this in Ableton.. In this case I would appreciate any suggestions..
Hope I was clear enough (it's was not easy to explain!)
Thanks a lot to all!!

I'm running into the same problem. I have a Roland System-8 assigned as the input for its own MIDI track, with monitor set to "On" so I can always play it no matter which track is record-enabled. As you said, though, this causes it to also play the currently selected track. To avoid that I had to choose my main MIDI controller for every other track. Mostly works okay, but when I want to use the Computer MIDI Keyboard feature (useful when doing sound design in soft synths), it doesn't work.

The ability to assign specific MIDI inputs to specific tracks is one of the main reasons I've been using Ableton Live instead of Logic lately (Logic is designed entirely around treating all your MIDI inputs as the master controller and makes it very difficult to route them to specific tracks). I really need a way to do that for specific MIDI devices without making the whole setup less convenient for everything else.

I'm also running into the same problem!

I can use specific midi channels for specific midi tracks, but then I lose the ability to play that midi track with my push Or is there a workaround for that?

I've had this exact issue for about 9 years. I never bothered to sound off on the forums till now.

Thanks for articulating the issue so clearly retango.

Dear Ableton mods - how would we go about submitting this as a FR?