Ableton Forum

Hello all,

Ive just purchased Ableton 11 Suite because of its inclusion of MPE among other things. It was my understanding that things like cymbal chokes from the Roland TD17 and other ekits relied on MPE as a mechanism for this articulation. Be that as it may even with the inclusion of MPE cymbal chokes still do not work within Ableton. I can make them work by running Superior Drummer 3 (or other drum software) as a standalone and routing midi out to ableton but this is incredibly inconvenient and messes with my flow.

Has anyone devised a method to make cymbal chokes work with a TD17? There is a fellow who got them to work with his own Maxforlive plugin but thats only for the TD25 and above. Please if anyone knows please reply as this would really make Ableton 11 the ultimate version of the product.

Thanks

Any hardware or plugin has to be MPE ready and enabled in their settings otherwise it will not work. Just because Ableton has MPE does not mean it will work with everything.

Yes I realize that. Superior Drummer 3 and the Roland TD-17 are both MPE capable, this is how they achieve cymbal chokes. As I stated, in standalone mode MPE works perfectly well between SD 3 and the TD17. Only when using SD3 through Ableton 11 do the chokes not work. Do you know of any solutions? I've already checked the MPE box in midi settings for the TD-17. Superior Drummer 3 doesn't have an option to turn MPE off, it is always on with a compatible device. Ableton 11 is clearly the issue here since the chokes work perfectly fine without it.

amundss2 wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:34 pm

Yes I realize that. Superior Drummer 3 and the Roland TD-17 are both MPE capable, this is how they achieve cymbal chokes. As I stated, in standalone mode MPE works perfectly well between SD 3 and the TD17. Only when using SD3 through Ableton 11 do the chokes not work. Do you know of any solutions? I've already checked the MPE box in midi settings for the TD-17. Superior Drummer 3 doesn't have an option to turn MPE off, it is always on with a compatible device. Ableton 11 is clearly the issue here since the chokes work perfectly fine without it.

As far as I am aware neither of those comply with MPE, and they do not have MPE listed in specs or midi implementation sheets, and you do not need MPE to cymbal choke, heck my old TD9 kit could do cymbal chokes, just by holding the cymbal pad trigger, all you need to do is find the relevant note/midi CC
that does cymbal chokes.

Hmm I wonder where the disconnect is then. At the very least both devices must use regular aftertouch, which would be strange if Ableton now supports MPE but not regular aftertouch.