Push 3 and turning off multiple MIDI channel outs

[mercury007]

Is there a way to restrict Push to only send MIDI out on a specific channel? It seems like (I'm guessing due to MPE) the way the device is structured, you can't actually pick a track and only send out MIDI from the Push only on 1 channel.

Does anyone have a work-around? I know that you can setup Ableton to simply use Push to control the track in focus but my use case of Ableton Live is different. All of my synths are active at all times and receiving midi messages and I use the channels to route the MIDI to them. This allows me to use my keyboard and sequencers all simultaneously and easily switch between synths. As a result, I'm forced to use Push in a session clip layout mode.

Really it would be nice to just be able to assign that keyboard either to any specific channel so that it can only send out MIDI info on 1 channel.

[[jur]]

When a midi track has no audio device (or instrument) in its chain, you can set the midi destination (it's in the track's mixer section) to any midi output port and channel.
You can also use the External Instrument device which offers the same options.

[mercury007]

Yes that is how I have it setup. I don't have any issue sending MIDI from my Novation SL61mk3 or oxi one sequencer into ableton's channels and then to those synths. I have external instruments setup on each channel that relate to the incoming midi channels for each track. So I'm able to essentially send MIDI to any one of these 16 synths without any issue as long as I use any of my other keyboards or sequencers.

The exception to this is the Push. The reason for this is because Push uses multiple MIDI channels (I think for MPE mode but turning it off doesn't fix that so it may be an actual way to thread multiple midi message channels together to buy larger bandwidth for other communications). In any case, you can put a midi monitor after push and confirm this. It is a known issue but checking to see if anyone has it figured out. It is also seems to be the way Move is setup.

[[jur]]

Ok, just to make sure I understand correctly:
- You have hardware sequencers (let's say A, B and C), and hw synths (let's say S1, S2, S3).

- You're routing A, B and C to Live via their own midi channel, eg A to midi channel 1, B to channel 2, C to channel 3. Each one uses a dedicated midi track, and those tracks have their input port set to:
A > channel 1
B > channel 2
C > channel 3.

- You then want to send those sequencers Live (Push3 actually, right?) midi tracks' midi out to S1, S2 and S3;
S1 receives on eg midi channel 11, S2 on channel 12, and S3 on channel 13.
So you set these midi tracks output port to:
S1 > channel 11
S2 >channel 12
S3 > channel 13

And here you're having an issue. Is that what you're trying to do?
If that's it then I don't know which known Push issue you're talking about. I just checked again and I'm able to send midi out of P3S to multiple hardware devices on different midi channels (each hardware set to a specific channel, like described above), no problem.

[mercury007]

First - thanks for helping.

It's like this:

MIDI From All Ins
Channel 8

Goes to Minimoog

On that track, I have an external instrument set to go to Minimoog on channel 8 as well.

I have 16 of these, 1 for each synth.

My Novation SL61 can send MIDI on 8 different channels that you can customize so I can easily pick any one of my synths and then the keyboard only transmits on that channel. On the oxi one or digitakt ii - also sending midi to ableton live, I can also choose midi tracks, so I can set it up to send channel 8 on track 1 for ex (for minimoog). So for any external sequencer or keyboard I have connected to Live I've created a similar mapping for each synth.

But because of this setup and the fact that all tracks are set to Auto Monitor and record on - if I try to use my Push on any track - it essentially starts spitting out messages across all 16 midi channels. In other words, you cannot confine the actual Push device to specifically send out MIDI only on one channel or one track. If you arm multiple tracks and allow for MIDI in from All Ins, it will pick up these random messages spread across the 16 channels. From a thread a while back, I believe it has something to do with the way push is configured for MPE. That said, I just want to be able to essentially confine the Push keyboard pads to only send out on 1 specific MIDI channel that I choose.

[[jur]]

Ok that's different, I need to take a moment to try, but basically if I (finally!) understand you need Push to not send any midi to all channels, but you need you tracks' input set to All In since you're filtering your sequencers to a specific channel at the source (ie directly in the sequencers' settings).

There's a workaround, but that requires extra midi tracks that would act like some kind of "midi bus".
Set a midi track for each of your external midi input;
set each track's midi input not to All Ins, but "external gear A" and select the desired channel
repeat for each external midi gear, including Push

then, create "midi bus" track(s), to where you'll route your external gear VIA their dedicated midi track you created before.
You can create as many of these "midi bus" and use them as a way to filter what you want and don't want.

Then, you'll use the input from these "midi bus" as the input for the tracks you're actually playing and sending to your Moog.

Does it make sense? Basically you can create an "All Ins" which don't actually contains everything. And you can even create several variations of it.
Since you want your Push to only send to one channel, you need to create 2 "midi bus":
- one containing inputs from all your external seqs BUT your Push
- one actually containing ALL the external gear inputs, but with channels filtered as you need.

[[jur]]

Ok that's different, I need to take a moment to try

Ok, I now know I understood. So yeah, that workaround I explained above is the way to go then.

There's a feature request for being able to remove devices from the "All Ins" option, preferably per track. That's what you'd need here ideally.
Another feature that could help you here is an option for a non-MPE, standard midi output from Push with output channel selection... but you already mentioned this.

[mercury007]

Clever solution, I know what you are saying and that would work. Only issue in my case is my template is already fairly massive so may just hold off here as it will add a lot of complexity to something that is already complex. For ex, I didn't mention that I have a separate bus of audio capturing for all of these midi tracks as well and there are several drum machines.

I'm wondering if I can create a maxforlive patch to just hijack the push midi out for a non-mpe output with channel selection. Interestingly, the move has this same problem.