I'm having trouble selecting the patch I want from my nord rack 3 as part of the clip properties in Live. I'm using Live 5 and I could have sworn that I had this working before.
I've checked that I'm sending on the Slot channeland that program changes are being accepted by the Rack 3. If I set none/none/number I can select a program from whatever the current bank is, but most bank selections either do nothing or return me to the first patch (1:1). I can't think of any other combinations of settings which might work.
Has anyone gotten Live to talk to the Nord Rack 3 for patch selection on clips, and if so, how did you manage it?
Thanks,
B>
Problem selecting patch from Nord Lead 3
more details...
Aha!
I had time today to fire up a MIDI protocol sniffer and see what had been happening, and have discovered a bug in Live. I've emailed details directly to Ableton, and they'll hopefully be able to fix it in a new release.
Basically, if you have patch/bank selection set up at the start of a clip in either view, then Live emits bank and program change messages to suit. This is normally okay, you can select which of the Bank, Sub-Bank (Fine bank), or Program change you want and everything will work.
The problem arises if you have a synth which is very particular about its bank change messages. The Nord Rack/Lead 3 for example, requires the program change message to immediately follow the bank change. Further, it uses the CC that Ableton considers the Sub-Bank. (Or Bank (fine) to most protocol decoders).
The actual bug is that Live always emits Sub-Bank, Bank, and Program change. It also emits in the order Sub-Bank (CC 33), then Bank (CC 1), then program select message. The Nord ignores the Sub-Bank select because it isn't followed by a program. Even if you set Bank to "none", Live still emits a bank change message, with a default value of 1. Effectively, the 'none' selection behaves the same as selecting the '1' value for Bank or sub-Bank.
Hopefully this will be a relatively minor thing to have fixed, otherwise I'm going to have to build a MIDI filter box to drop the bad CC data. I should probably just make one anyway.
B>
I had time today to fire up a MIDI protocol sniffer and see what had been happening, and have discovered a bug in Live. I've emailed details directly to Ableton, and they'll hopefully be able to fix it in a new release.
Basically, if you have patch/bank selection set up at the start of a clip in either view, then Live emits bank and program change messages to suit. This is normally okay, you can select which of the Bank, Sub-Bank (Fine bank), or Program change you want and everything will work.
The problem arises if you have a synth which is very particular about its bank change messages. The Nord Rack/Lead 3 for example, requires the program change message to immediately follow the bank change. Further, it uses the CC that Ableton considers the Sub-Bank. (Or Bank (fine) to most protocol decoders).
The actual bug is that Live always emits Sub-Bank, Bank, and Program change. It also emits in the order Sub-Bank (CC 33), then Bank (CC 1), then program select message. The Nord ignores the Sub-Bank select because it isn't followed by a program. Even if you set Bank to "none", Live still emits a bank change message, with a default value of 1. Effectively, the 'none' selection behaves the same as selecting the '1' value for Bank or sub-Bank.
Hopefully this will be a relatively minor thing to have fixed, otherwise I'm going to have to build a MIDI filter box to drop the bad CC data. I should probably just make one anyway.
B>