Control MIDI Start / Stop messages

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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Raphaël D
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:23 pm

Control MIDI Start / Stop messages

Post by Raphaël D » Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:44 pm

Hi,

I've been trying to make my Arturia Microfreak play ball with Live for quite some time.
I'm no MIDI expert but i believe it should be easier than how it's currently working.
Using any arp or seq is unreliable since the MF needs a START message from the midi clock to start the sequence from the beggining.
Of course if you play from 1.1.1 it works just fine but I'm not sampling everything from back there with no musical context.

My MF is connected through USB, audio signal through 3.5.
I use Live's external instrument plugin to send midi and receive signal from the MF

My settings are as followed:

On the MicroFreak
MIDI
Input Chan : 1 / Output Chan : 2 / Output Dest : BOTH / Local : OFF / Arp/Seq midi out : ON / Thru : On / Merge : Both+KBD
SYNC
Source : USB / Clock : 24PPQ / Global Temp : OFF

On Live midi settings : Microfreak Input Track is ON, Ouput Track and Sync are ON

Some dude on a designated microfreak group said I need to understand Midi to use the MF, and didn't gave me any pointers.
Am i doing something inherentely wrong ?

Or is the MicroFreak and Live not natively compatible if you want to use anything midi sync related ?
If so is there a way to force Live to send START midi signal anywhere else than 1.1.1 ?

Maybe I'm just dumb but I'd very much like to have a solution for this issue, it's preventing me from using the Microfreak Sequencer which is kind of a key feature

Cheers,

DunedinDragon
Posts: 106
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2021 5:46 pm

Re: Control MIDI Start / Stop messages

Post by DunedinDragon » Tue Mar 28, 2023 12:20 pm

I may not be completely understanding what you're trying to accomplish and why you're trying to use the MIDI clock to start things, but normally if I'm working with a track in Ableton it's a simple matter to send a MIDI message directly from Ableton at any point in the track by simply having a MIDI out track that sends MIDI messages to an external device such as starting something. That works separate and apart from the MIDI clock and sends it at the appropriate time at the track playback marker regardless of where you start it.

I do this all the time from my tracks to various MIDI devices without even having any MIDI clock in the picture as long as the BPM is aligned between the devices it just works. And if your MIDI sequences are coming from an Ableton track it should just work because they all play at one BPM. For example, I'm not using an external physical synth, but I am using various synth plugins in many of my various projects. All I need to have is the MIDI receive coming in from the track to my plugin and my audio output routed back to the audio output on that track. I would imagine you should be able to do that with an external synth. Your Ableton track is going to send the MIDI note at the right time irrespective of the MIDI clock.

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