Ableton Forum

Hey – I've just set about a basic chain selector to switch between instruments using a Macro knob. I've done this before and it worked – but for some reason its not now.

The Macro knob is moving the Chain Selector, but it is not turning on and off the devices as intended as the chain moves – so apart from the 1st instrument, when I move the Macro all I hear is silence.

The Min/Max values in the Map area are set sequentially for Device On:

https://ibb.co/fXqTzns

https://ibb.co/fXqTzns

Any idea?

The selector doesn't turn devices on or off. You have to enable or disable the devices in each chain yourself. Or another way to put it, you have to add the relevant devices to each chain.

How did you set up each chain? Is Massive present in the second chain for example?

From the image, it looks like you’d either have to limit the Range of your macro so it’s always on an instrument chain,

Or you’d have to just Barely move the macro, because out of 127 knob positions, only the first 3 of them select instruments.

rather than using the chain selector, with Live 11 you could try the new macro variations, triggered by midi-mapped keys/buttons (possible in 11.0.5)

map the 3 synths' ON buttons to their own macros and set those macros variations as below, taking a snapshot of each setting:
first synth macros = [ON/off/off]
second synth = [off/ON/off]
third synth =[off/off/ON]

now you can either map each variation to its own midi note or button (3x keys to choose the synth) or you can map both the 'master' variation trigger and the 'next' variation switch (both made visible in midi map mode) to the same midi key, allowing you to round-robin through the synths with just one key.

Thats a good idea using the Macro Variations – I hadn't thought of that.

But, I'm hoping to have about 20 different instrument patches in this rack, so I think the Variations have a limit of 8?

Rivanni wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 04, 2021 12:05 pm

The selector doesn't turn devices on or off. You have to enable or disable the devices in each chain yourself. Or another way to put it, you have to add the relevant devices to each chain.

How did you set up each chain? Is Massive present in the second chain for example?

Yeah, thats what I've done – I mapped the on/off switch on each device to the Chain Selector. (Yes, Massive is present – each chain is either an instrument or a sampler)

I just realised that I had originally uploaded the same image twice (sorry!), this is what I've done:

https://ibb.co/zXgCY0N

and

https://ibb.co/XYSw3tJ

For some reason the Max value of the Chain Selector itself has to be set to a very high value.
In my own example I have a rack with 5 chains. Chain 5 will only play when the Max is set to 112 or higher.
You can also see that when the Max value is set to a low value, the device in chain 1 is turned off and the device in chain 2 is turned on when you move the macro, but it does so before the macro displays a value of 1. It looks like the scale of the macro button is broken. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the on/off buttons only have a range of 0 to 1 and this somehow messes up the scale.
In fact I can use the arrow key to increase the value of the macro starting from zero. When I hit up 4 times is turns on the device in chain 5, but since the macro value is still 0, the chain itself is not selected.

When I remove all 5 Device on's it works as expected.
(Don't forget to turn on all devices manually after removing the Device On's).

Seems like a bug to me. I've submitted a report.

Citizen wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 05, 2021 12:21 am

Thats a good idea using the Macro Variations – I hadn't thought of that.

But, I'm hoping to have about 20 different instrument patches in this rack, so I think the Variations have a limit of 8?

I stopped counting at around 300 Variations, so no, they're definitely not limited to 8

Well, I finally got it to work!

The trick was in making the ranges larger:



It is still quite fiddly/buggy – depending on the rotation of the Macro, I still get silence at some points, and you just have to nudge the knob one unit to get it to turn on the instrument. (and yes, I've spotted the minor error on the 'Square Bass' setting above)

Any idea on why this is so? This problem seems to occur only when the Macro falls on a value that neighbours the next range. (ie. if it lands on '120' of range '114–120'). If I move the knob back, it activates the instrument, and if I move it forward, it activates the next instrument.

Hello there,
I'm having the same problem Choosing wider ranges as proposed above does not work. It seems super random as to when it works and when not - some clips in the same track might work, others not. So far I wasn't able to identify any reasons. Anyone else has a solution yet? I haven't heard back from the support so far but will update if i do.
All the best

Seems like I found the solution: I noticed that when using "Alt" to draw the Chain Selector Automation in the Clip in order to hit the respective value easier, there seem to be different positions the automation can snap to within the same number. Maybe the automation has a higher resolution than full numbers (e.g. while only "12" is displayed, the chosen value might be > 11.5 and < 12.5?) but anyhting but full numbers cannot be interpreted by the Chain Selector/Macro? This would also explain, why the previous solution of wider ranges works, as it makes using "Alt" obsolete and hence the automation only snaps to full numbers?
So for me, deleting the automation (via right click in the midi clip) and redrawing it without using Alt worked.
Hope that helps.