#648

Cubase and Pro Tools have midi volume fader, and this solution is needful any time you have to manage multitimbral instruments with only one stereo or mono audio out, in this case you have to mix the sounds in the box, Monomachine is just an example, I have the Modular G2 too, and on monday I will receive a Polyend Tracker.
The “External Instrument” device is useful only for instrumentes with 1 one sound and 1 audio out, for any multitimbral instruments is useless.
As I wrote, I have to mix the six tracks of the Elektron monomachine, each track has two “volume” parameters: “LEV”, that controls the overall audio level, and it’s applied at the end of the audio signal path, and “VOL” that can be controlled by the internal LFO and seq. The first one is assigned to the standard midi CC7, in fact it is the “fader” of the virtual six fader mixer of the monomachine.
I would like to mix any sound via the pots on Push, and I can’t.
Honestly, I really don’t understand why Ableton don’t add a simple slider to the midi track, it seems that Ableton considers MIDI tracks “secondary” tracks. Overall the MIDI management is really poor in Ableton

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#649

sorry but that’s not true:
i used the external instrument with both hardware multitimbrals and multitimbral plugins.
you just add as many instances you need and set midi channels and audio returns as needed.

also you can build stacks of different instances of external instrument layering them inside instrument racks.

but i get what you mean about the midi volume fader.

2 Likes
#650

The General MIDI standard define the CC7 to control the connected instrument’s volume, and Live meets this requirement, in fact I can modify it via the Envelope editor, but for an obscure reason Ableton decided to no able me to control this CC7 via the slider…
Screenshot 2020-11-21 at 20.26.08

Screenshot 2020-11-21 at 20.30.22
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#651

Many sounds from an hw instrument (multitimbral plug-ins have as many virtual outputs as you want) -> one stereo hw output -> External Instrument device.
There is no way to control via Push the volume level of each sound.
This is the problem.
The Ableton Live forum users asked for this feature for ages .
: |

#652

There are MIDI effects in Ableton Live that can adjust volume for you. You can MIDI map those to your controller.

More importantly, the External Instrument device’s purpose is to compensate latency automatically. The instrument allows for stereo output just like any other track in Ableton. Nothing stops you from creating adjacent tracks to record the other audio inputs, or even the same pair, if you want an audio recording you can edit. You do the same for, say, Reaktor instances that have more than two outs.

I’m using Ableton this way for years now with my modular and it’s never been much of a problem.

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#653

It wouldn’t make any sense to have it be on the slider since the sliders are by nature “post signal” which is why it’s good to use the external instrument rack, and at that point you’ll need the slider so that you can control your volume both BEFORE it goes to your gear (through CC7) and after in your mix balance (through slider) and what you’re asking is for the slider to SEND a midi signal which goes against the very design of the software. Also CC7 mapped to volume is a standard not an absolute, and many midi instruments don’t use the parameter that way, which means mapping it by default to the slider would be an awful design choice. If it’s just a matter of having a slider view for CC7, I hardly would consider that “incredible that Ableton still doesn’t have that”.

Same.

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#654

If you see my previous screenshots you’ll see that Ableton Live already map CC7 as Volume level, as well as all other standard General MIDI CCs, so, at Ableton, they don’t consider so awful to use CC7 to control the volume, but, correctly, they meet the standard.
The only thing that they don’t do is to substitute the useless dots with the only thing that could have a sense in that position: midi volume level slider.

Is so crazy that to write the Volume (CC7) in the Envelope editor I have to map it on another surface control (not Push) or I have to act directly to the pot of the instrument…

First of all: thanks, I will search for this workaround.
The Monomachine has six individual mono outputs and the stereo master output, unfortunately my audio interface hasn’t so many audio line inputs, I own an Elvolver, the monomachine, the G2, a Nord Electro and other stuff such OP1, norns, Aleph… so I have to use the master output that sum the six individual tracks.
Create more External Instrument devices means use more audio line inputs that I haven’t.

I record and use the audio clip only for small loops, generally I render track’s takes playing the instruments via midi clip.

Maybe, Ableton Live is designed to work well with audio clips and using midi with softsynths, its key points are stimulate the creativity and the velocity to achieve a result in term of structure of the track, but for the rest, IMHO, Pro Tools and Cubase are many steps ahead.

#656

Doesn’t that basically mean multitimbral? sorry, can’t say anything about multi channel midi. I only use my external instrument mono timbral. But as Live in the past had a strange “send everything to channel 1” thing, it’s no wonder that the vermona doesn’t really fit into this. Also they haven’t changed their approach with regards to this in 11.
w re to videos: https://youtu.be/JEIOUrofyko this one’s not bad, but doesn’t talk about channel assignments.
I am a member of the Live crashologists group, let me try to find out if anything is planned.
Also: have you seen the mpe control device? It even might fix your vermona problem (come to think of it) because it allow mapping mpe expressions to other things for non mpe devices.

2 Likes
#657

Thanks again for sharing your rack! I finally got the time to open it up and investigate it. It seems like a lot of fun. I dropped in a pianoloop, played around and of course had happy accidents happening. I will have to explore it with more and different samples. Probably have to write some midi while twisting the knobs. I’ll be interesting to see what comes out. Thanks!

#658

Yeah, I suppose it is multitimbral MIDI, though it shares a lot of similarities with the MPE spec.

Nice thanks!

#659

but the big question is: have they fixed the pitch bend bug which has been complained about ever since midi was first added to live?

#660

I wouldn’t call it a bug, it’s more of a design issue. And it’s not specific to pitch bend, all MIDI modulation is affected. I think anybody using Ableton Live with MIDI got hit by this at least once. But it’s not an easy problem to solve as also quite often you do want modulation to stick to the last recorded value.

#661

For live use though I feel it should be able to have two different modes that toggle this behavior on or off, I’ve had many problems with this behavior where creating a dummy automation lane wasn’t a possibility. The most “elegant” way I found around it is (as often) to use Clyphx, but it’s still cumbersome to have to even think about it so much.

#662

I’m trying to get Live 9 and Max for Live working on OS 10.15. It asks me to install Java 6 but won’t let me. Is this a problem with Live 10 also ? Anyone know a way around this without reinstalling an older OS ?

Thanks.

#663

just stumbled into suzuki kentaro’s max for live work

looks really cool ! might pick up a few of the modulators whenever I get back into Live-ing

20 Likes
#664

Which bug is that? Could you elaborate?

#665

it’s been a long time frustration for live users that pitch bend and other midi messages don’t reset when pressing stop and start. even if the automation looks like it is at center/zero, one needs to add an automation point for it to update. with pitch bend, it creates situations where individual instruments get stuck pitched up or down, sounding out of key. perhaps not a bug, but definitely a design flaw. manually adding pitch bend automation points at zero at the beginning of every clip is time consuming.

5 Likes
#666

This is a good example of how people’s work flows can differ a lot. I’ve been an active Live user since v4 and I’ve never noticed this in my use. To be honest, I don’t use pitch bend at all except in automation.

#667

interesting. also been a user since v4 and it’s been bugging me ever since :smile:
it also applies to other midi messages such as sustain for instance, so if you’re recording midi with a keyboard and a pedal, you’re going to run into problems/odd behaviour eventually…
there is a m4l device to fix it though: https://www.change.org/p/ableton-fix-ableton-live-s-midi-pitch-bend-automation-bug

2 Likes
#668

Thanks, just like @Noisetrees I didn’t even know about this because I rarely use pitch bend at all. However I have noticed this while using other clip based cc automation and found it logical despite the fact that it sometimes is cumbersome to draw extra automation at the beginning of a clip