Ableton Forum

Hi everybody!

I'm working in a theatre and for our newest production I would need some kind of stepsequencer plugin for Live, where you can assign a different output to every step.

i'd like to use it for micing a plucked piano and send it to different speakers around our audience. Live plugin would be great, but if it's some standalone software that works well next to Live, it would be ok too.

also if there is no such piece of software and anybody would know some workaround it would be great!

Thanks for listening!

Alex

what do you want to acieve exactly? I have a vague idea how to achieve a step-sequencer with the new round-robin-mode of the random-plugin...

What I want to do is mic a piano and send the signal in a moving pattern around our speakers in the audience, to get the impression that the sound is moving around the room.

I thought the easiest way to achieve this would be with a stepequencer where you can assign a different output to every step (8steps would be more than enough). So when you sent the signal through this sequencer, with each step, the signal comes from another speaker (as I write this it seems that a trance gate would be more appropriate, though I wouldn't know one where you can assign multiple outputs).

Yesterday I tried to prepare something with midi dummy clips and controlling different cahnnels with different outputs and it might just work but it is quite an effort to reprogram the controllerdata and this will need to be done quite alot I'm afraid.

Thanks for your quick answer

greetings from vienna

alex

btw we're still using Live 5.2, but I hope we can upgrade to live 7 during the rehearsals for this show.

maybe the easiest way would be to have one master MIDI track using the round-robin Random plug-in (set to ALT) to cycle through the notes, and have it sent to all the notes but set each track to only respond to one note, possibly with the scale plug-in

in fact you wouldnt even need the Random plug-in you could use Arpeggiator and set it to 1/8 and set the steps to 7 (it includes the first note so 7 + 1 =8) and set the distance to +1st - then just press a note to trigger it and enable "hold" to keep it cycling

Hi!
Thanks for the tipp with the arpeggiator.
just tried it out and it makes my on/off buttons go all wiggly. some do nothing, some blink randomly even if I cut the arpeggiator.

guess I will try the long hard way by automating the faders with midi controllers. that seems to work quite well although until now I had not the chance to try it out with sounds.

what exactly is the round robin mode in random? I didn't notice it while trying out llive 7, but then I almost never use random.

Thanks alot for your help

bye
alex

on the random plug in if you press the button to the right of the choices knob so that it says "ALT" then each time it receives a note it out puts the next note up - so you can have the same note playing to it and it will keep stepping up

so you can also use it with the arpeggiator but set the arp's 'steps' and 'distance' both to zero so it keeps sending the note, and the random plug-in changes the note

I'm not sure what was happening with the Arp and the blinking you mentioned
but if I understand you correctly it doesnt need to be complicated at all

If you are on PC you should try MIDI Yoke or Loop Be or on Mac use the IAC driver and you havethe master track that outpurs the 8 notes you want to use, set the master MIDI track's output to the loopback driver, then in the prefs set the 'remote' to the IN of that driver then map those 8 notes to the track on buttons of your 8 audio tracks
then on the master midi track you create 1 clip with the first note you have mapped in it and make the clip for as long as you want the intervals between each change, then put the random plug-in on with chance at 100% and set it to ALT mode and it will cycle through the notes each time the note triggers

actually thinking about it, you said you're on Live 5 - you will need Live 7 for the random plug-in

and also I just thought you will then want to turn off the other speakers.....hmmm...well maybe what you could do there is duplicate the first MIDI track and make the note in the clip 1 ST lower than the first clip so that the random plug-in cycles through and presses the buttons again in a kind of canon movement

you could do this with follow actions actually so it doesnt matter about needing Live 7, just make 8 clips on both tracks

let me know if you have any questions, but what you want to do can be done in Live 5.2

The blinking looked a bit like a midiloop to me, because it even blinked when I killed the arp and stopped the sequencer.

midi yoke is what I'm experimenting with at the moment.
I use a midi clip where I've drawn 6 curves for 6 controllers which I assigned to the faders of my outputtracks.
looks good so far but as I said I didn't have the chance to try it out yet (with all the rehearsing going on right now ). the only thing I don't like with this option is that it's a pita to change the pattern, because you have to edit 6 different curves that need to somehow build a coherent pattern.

thanks for the help!

alex

seltsam wrote:The blinking looked a bit like a midiloop to me, because it even blinked when I killed the arp and stopped the sequencer.

was the HOLD button still pressed?

yes at first the hold button was pressed, but it didn't stop blinking even after I deleted the arp.
I hope today we're able to try the setup I programmed yesterday...

Thanks for all the advice, if you're interested I'll post how we get along.

have a nice day

alex

make sure that you have the midi ins and outs set fine (in preferences). enable midi yoke only to output TRACK and input REMOTE. If you just enable everything you might get a nasty midi loop.

thanks, I noticed yesterday and changed it... haven't tried the arpeggiator again due to lack of time. but the version with the controllerautomated faders worked quite well at a first field test, though I have to adjust the controller curves so that it will be a smooth movement around the room...

thanks for all your help, I'm always surprised how it pushes your own creativity when you get advice from others.

greetings and have a nice weekend

alex