How to externally change Racks by MIDI in Live 6.0.1?

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 1:28 am

Hi guys,

I wan't to use Live for my live playing but right now it looks as I have to turn to Bidule. The problem is that I can't find an efficient way to swap between Racks from MIDI pedals.

I need to put those racks on the input track so I can swap patch before record audio with those effects. It works with two racks if I assign the same MIDI note to activate them and start with one active and the other muted. When I send the MIDI note again they simply change mute/active. But how can I do that with more than two?

In Bidule you can use an Audio Switcher object to distribute the input to loads of effect chains. Each Audi Switcher ouput is given a MIDI Program Change and when this MIDI PC is sent from the pedal it activated the acurate patch and mutes all others (with minimal CPU drain). So - how can we achieve this in Live?

wollej · Post by **wollej** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 12:57 pm

Hi,

if it's possible to assign the two switches to the same controller but with different values then you can assign one switch to value 1 and the second to 127.

Create a rack with your effects and map "Chain select" to a rack macro control. Now map this macro control with midi-map to the above controller.

After selecting mode to "relative (signed binary)" you can use the switches to select the different rack-chains.

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 2:17 pm

Thank you! That's a neat solution, but unfortunately not CPU friendly enough. I would really need to mute all racks/plug-ins except the one in use. Muting takes away almost all the ÇPU load while selecting active rack chain still use up a little too much computing power for the plug-ins not in use.

This is a bummer, because for some of my favorit patches Live 6 is more CPU friendly than Bidule. However, Bidule bings down CPU power to zero when a patch (chain) is muted while another is activaded.

In Live I also miss the option to set up feedback loop with delays inside the racks. A lot of nice effect patches I like include a delay line feeding back into itself through a harmonizer (pitch shifter) to create cascading pitch with each repeat. Too bad... on option I have thought of is to buy Max/MSP and create effect plugins, but with Live 6 I have found that some Pluggo plug-ins (Cycling 74 plug-ins created in Max/MSP) loose track of which preset you selected. I don't know if Ableton or Cycling 74 is to blame here, but it kinds of rules out the Max/MSP alternative for me.

...seems as Bidule is the only alternative left?

pbajzek · Post by **pbajzek** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 6:41 pm

Per, I am working on a similar setup, with an "input" rack for my guitar FX, then feeding into a complex delay/looping rack. I agree that racks are still a bit too CPU intensive- the plan I'm about to outline works fine for me right now, but I would prefer a sort of "exclusive" behavior, where inactive chains are turned off.

Anyway, I've found a way to take the rack selection process even further than mentioned here (I'm sure others have already figured this out before me): I have a rack with several chains, each of which is a different "FX patch" for my guitar. Rather than assing the Chain Selector to a knob or toggle, I've mapped it to a range of MIDI notes (let's say 10 consecutive notes). By having buttons on my foot controller mapped to these notes- instant Program Change! Instead of stepping through the chains in order I can instantly jump to the one I want by hitting its dedicated note/switch.

I also like to put effects in delay paths, and this is hard to do. Two excellent delay plugins that provide this function (internally) are Ronin and Discord, both by Audiodamage. Discord is a great pitch shifter that will do the cascade effect you've mentioned, and Ronin is like a TCE G-Force clone in plug-in form, with a fantastic effects-routing matrix.

medeski · Post by **medeski** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:16 pm

thx for the MIDI note/chain selector trick, pbajzek. I've been looking for something like that for some time now!

Per Boysen · Post by **Per Boysen** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:20 pm

pbajzek wrote:I would prefer a sort of "exclusive" behavior, where inactive chains are turned off.

Yes, me too. Or even better: the option to load rack presets by external MIDI commands (also supporting Program Change events). The "chain selection" technique is nice, but unfortunately it doesn't unload the CPU very much.

Anyway, thanks for the plug-in tip. I bought both of them. Usually I never buy software that doesn't come with a license for both XP and OS X but this time I made exception. In Live you could build a similar sounding thing but not in a rack - you would have to put plug-ins on return tracks sending into themselves throuh plug-ins etc.. BTW the Live's PingPong delay is one of the most CPU efficient delays available. To bad you can't just wire things up with feedback lines inside a rack.

For now I'm finished with Live, eventually until next upgrade comes around with hopefully better features

) Meanwhile I'll be having fun with Bidule and hardware effect processors.