I have been watching videos and reading documentation on Ableton Live for the past several weeks and this is the best I've seen in terms of being able to configure it any way you want. The "simple things are complex" bit you mentioned is fine so long as there is a pattern for doing it. Separation of MIDI and audio was clutch. Thanks!
I'm so glad I found this video. What a wonderful and inspiring explanation. As a Live noobie I'm somewhat humbled but there were only a couple of spots where I felt lost. I'm bookmarking this one.
As of tonight at a rehearsal, I've been let down by MainStage 3 for the last time and I'm so glad I found you and this video. I'll be switching my whole rig over ASAP. Thank you!
Nice job, Aaron. I'm using AL9 in concert with a Fishman Triple Play MIDI guitar, Kontakt, and a Roland FC-200. I mostly focus on traditional Hammond simulation using Kontakt (from guitar). Your chain/map method is working great and I absolutely love the smooth transitions. I map my tones as both as full instrument selections, but especially as drawbar changes and fire them all from the FC-200. (I do use Bome to manage my FC-200 stuff) It is absolutely wonderful to finally be able to do "real" Hammond drawbar tone shifts this way. No jumps - no jerks - no light-switch "what happened there?" weirdness. Very important at the most sensitive moments of the service. Truly appreciate your clear simple explanation. You've saved me many hours and this approach improves our live sound in a very practical and tangible fashion. Thx!
Very interesting. I come from Mainstage and maybe I will use Live on stage. Excellent explanations. Your way of using Midi + Audio is similar as the Mainstage "thinking" but you found a very good solution to be more versatile with controls. (I will begin using Live next week) Thank you Aaron
Man I saw this vid years ago and never thanked you for your hard work. Been using your template and killing it with ableton playing live. Thank you! Great stuff
Wow sir, this is amazing. The video is well done and well explained. I did not even know you could accomplish that with Ableton. Thank you so much for the info.
I noticed you have the 3rd and 4th tracks as MIDI tracks addressing two different instruments. The pianos, and then Omnisphere. Since you're using a chain selector and external midi rack, why not just have all of the sounds set up in one track? Is it because there are times when you need BOTH Kontakt AND Omnisphere to play simultaneously or is there another reason? It seems that you could simply overlap one of the chains between the two instruments yes?
Hey! Thanks for such an awesome tutorial. I'm getting started with Ableton live after using MainStage for many years. I have used this video to learn how to use the same dynamic as in MainStage, and it works really well, but I'm having issues with my sustain pedal MIDI signal basically going through all of my Omnisphere, keyscape and Kontakt instruments simultaneously causing my cpu to overload quickly. It's there any way to filter out the sustain pedal midi signal to only work with selected "clip" for the specific sound being triggered? Thank you.
Hi Aaron, this is a great video, pretty helpful. One question ... how do you go around stoping the click after a song while maintaining your sounds/patches (pads in my case) for a transition or worshipful moment between songs? I run all clicks in ableton, some songs have loops and also run omnisphere on live mode but pads stopping abruptly after killing the click has been very frustrating. Would you be able to recommend something around that problem? Also, not sure if I understand what you mean by separating midi from audio ... I know the difference between the 2 but what do you mean exactly by that in Ableton? Thanks again.
For stopping click, I wouldn't use the stop button but rather assign a midi note to click on/off. Or you could not use the inbuilt click but use an audio or midi click looped and just stop the clip. For separating midi from audio, I believe what you're talking about is the way he uses a single channel for midi in and then sends that midi signal to a different channel on which the actual VST or instrument lives. Your sound generating element is not on the same channel where you are routing your midi. This enables you to use the sustain pedal while switching patches or have realistic decay of a sound rather than a hard off.
Sorry...I'm just now seeing this comment! I have a key on my keyboard mapped to the metronome on/off so I can stop the audible metronome playback without stopping the audio playback engine and killing any live sounds. I also have a key mapped to stop all clips if I need to stop any clips and keep my live instruments going. Then it's easy to turn the metronome back on with the same key and trigger any other scenes. By the way, if you have a scene with tempo/bpm changes and set all the clips in that scene to no quantization, Ableton will reset the beat count to 1 when you fire that scene. So once I have the metronome turned off, I usually have two rapid keystrokes (keys next to each other like NM) to turn the metronome on and launch the selected scene and start playing from the 1 count. It may be easier to demonstrate sometime than to describe in words.
So my goal is to use two buttons to switch instruments. An up button and down button, but I don't see this possible with the chain selector. Any ideas?
+Alex V You could assign a rotary encoder or knob to the chain selector, and then set each instrument to maybe 10 slot widths instead of one so it's easier to land on a certain sound. If your knob has 270* of spin and there are 1-127 chain selector values, giving each instrument 10 slots could let you have about 12 instruments in the rotation of a knob. Does that make sense?
Ya I was hoping there was a way to avoid the knob. The goal is to have a list of instruments I can constantly change and cycle through without making changes. A simple button for up and down would be awesome. I do that with Propellerhead's Reason
Can't thank you enough for this video. I have a question related to your live setup though. Omnisphere is hella heavy on disk space and use. Do you keep your samples library on your internal HDD (or SSD) or do you use an external HDD (or SSD) for that?
Hi Sebastian, I have my Omnisphere library (the entire STEAM folder) on my internal SSD because it's my "desert island" setup...meaning, if everything else disconnected suddenly, I'd still want Omnisphere and Keyscape. All my other libraries or tracks are on an external Thunderbolt SSD.
Aaron, I am really liking this setup. One more question. I have 2 MIDI controllers (Keystation 61 and Keystation 49es). For some reason, my 61 sustain pedal will affect the patches I assigned to 49es. However, the 49es sustain pedal will not affect the patches assigned to 61. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance.
I don't have two controllers to test, but the first thing I'd check would be to make sure that both Track and Remote are enabled for both your controllers in the MIDI section of Ableton's preferences. Then make sure that each track's MIDI From has the correct controller selected.
Is there a way to do this with Audio instead of MIDI? So a chain that sends AUDIO to a specific AUDIO track and then brings it back in? Seems impossible with Audio Effect Rack and External Audio Effect unlike with Instrument Rack and External Instrument.
Hey, great video! How do you go about recording your keyboard parts? Do you have a similar approach for capturing the MIDI data? I've not had any luck getting it to capture MIDI channel change. Cheers,
I record and produce everything in Arrangement View, not Session View, usually one part/instrument at a time. I don't capture what I play live because I don't want to stress my computer recording all incoming data and outputting several types of audio. However, it could be done by setting up a new midi track just for recording and capturing midi directly from your controller, not after passing through all the other midi routing between other channels.
Hey Aaron! sorry, last time I wrote you I called you Alan... haha! I'm using some VSTs like Minimoog and Minimonsta, and I can't do the same thing you do with Kontakt (route them as external instrument devices from a control MIDI track, you know) What do you recommend me to do with this?
Joaquin Baranzano With VSTs that don't show up as a destination in the external instrument, you can just put those VSTs right in the rack and cut out the layer of using the external instrument. I have to do that with Sylenth1 and VB3.
Really excellent video Aaron. I have been using Ableton Live in a live environment for years and have my system set up completely different. Your setup however looks far more flexible so will be giving it a bash. Great work thanks.
+Barry Stevens Give it a shot and see what works best for you. There are many ways to do things in Ableton, so it's just a matter of finding the one that's best for how you want to use it. :)
This is awesome. Got a question. How do you handle effects with this method? Do you use chain selectors to switch between effects or some other method?
You could use an effects chain if you need to switch between different sets of effects. However, I usually keep most of my effects on my main outputs or return tracks for each physical output.
Hey man.. I have a question if you don't mind ... How can i do this and not start a scene from launching ? Whenever i select a patch, i also start the last scene i launch ! LOL
+Garth Taylor Garth, since you didn't describe how you're launching scenes or patches, I can only assume. One thing that could be happening is that you're not stopping previous clips from playing and thus the clips in a previous scene retrigger when a new one is launched. To combat that, I make sure that any midi control clips are about 1 measure long and do not loop...this way, they play and then stop as soon as they're done. The other thing you could do is make sure you haven't removed the stop buttons from the clip slots in new scenes. That way, a scene launch will play any new clips and stop any clips in other channels. Hope that helps!
Hi, I tried to do the keys-rack thing you have here but when I add external instruments to the rack, not all of my VSTi's are there to choose for the midi destination. Kontakt is there but things like Massive and FM8 are not available even though they are loaded into channels in my set. any idea what I'm doing wrong or is it a bug? thanks for any responses.
Jason, only multi-timbral plugins will show up as a destination in the External Instrument device. If massive or FM8 aren't multi-timbral, they won't be available. You can place those plugins directly inside a rack of their own and skip the external instrument step.
Aaron, I started using Ableton Live about a month ago. I find it very powerful but I am struggling with savings a song and retrieving it for future use. Every time I bring a song to a new set it seems to be broken (sometimes my clips channel selector change for some reason). What is your workflow to reuse a song setting?
Haresh, I usually keep my instrument racks fairly generic, more of a framework for controlling everything. If I have song-specific sounds, I'll save a custom Kontakt instrument or an Omnisphere multi and load it up in a second instance and then use the chain selector to switch between Omnisphere instances. I just make sure I name/tag any custom sounds really well so I can find them.
Hello, Aaron. I assume this only works live and cannot record performances into the arrangement? I've tried with no such luck. Whenever recording starts, I can't hear what I'm playing.
Jamie, I'm not sure. I do not record in Session View so I have not tested how this approach handles recording. Maybe you could create new audio tracks, grab the audio from the live channels you're playing, and record-arm the second set of channels so that you're still hearing what you're playing from the original instrument channels. Does that make sense?
Cheers, Aaron. I understand you. For now, I've found another solution. I've split the master output from my audio interface into both my monitors as normal, but also into a portable audio recorder. Seems to get the job done
+Hi Aaron: In this video you are routing midi. Can I do this with audio signal. For example, I play guitar and want to change my guitar patches and still the trails of the reverb and delays. Thankyou
Great work! I tried for months to get this to fit the way I use Live. I like to mix more than one voice at a time, and switch out individual voices for variety, which isn't easy using Chain Selectors. I could have racked multiple racks, but I found a simpler method. I use the clip envelopes to control Device On instead of the Chain Select. (Make sure all your Chain Selects are set back to zero, or you won't hear more than one at a time). Now I can select whichever voices I want to mix. I have one Instrument Rack for Pads, another for Keys, and another for Fills - this separates them enough that one Track doesn't max out its processor, and also makes it easier to keep track of which ones I'm using at any one time.
Yes, that works too. I do use multiple instrument racks to do the same thing. The benefit for me over Device On is that the default chain function that allows other midi CCs through (like sustain cc64) is that it lets other sounds release when I release the pedal, not when I switch the device off. As the only keyboardist in my group, I can't have any sound cut out, but other situations where you can have clean breaks for switching sounds would work well with controlling the Device On.
Hi there. I have a question. How do you make these tracks making midi control send chain selector values to the tracks containing the instruments? I am a little new to ableton and i can't find it. Do you have duplicate instruments racks? Please explain.
The chain selector is simply switching with External Instrument device is active. The External Instrument is what sends MIDI to the other channel containing the instrument plugin. You could skip the External Instrument devices and just put your instrument plugins in the chain selector, but since each MIDI channel only uses one processor core, I don't want more than one plugin on each channel strip.
Hey Aaron, I was wondering how you control the volume of your patches. Do you have a slider for each sound/channel or do you program the volume for each patch?
Nicholas Jackson Nicholas, I work hard in my studio at home to make sure all my patches meter at roughly close to unity without peaking. (using my ears to approximate consistent volume and making sure it doesn't peak in yellow or red.) Then I send them to one of my "output" channels. I say "output" because Ableton just has Audio and MIDI channels. I've created an audio channel for each of my physical outputs, and then I assign my instruments to one of those four "output" channels instead of to the Master or Ext. Out channels. Then I can use a fader to control each output channel. For instance, I have a KEYS, PADS, AUX, and TRX outputs each with a fader assigned to it. I have 16 faders total to work with, so I have plenty to use for other unique situations where I may need a fader for something specific. It's much easier to work in a sub-group type of setup and try to volume match in the studio. My job is to play, not mix, but I make sure I'm providing enough to mix and the appropriate channel separation so the FOH engineer can do the final mix.
Hey Aaron, sorry to bombard you with questions, but I really like your setup. I was wondering what (if any) iPad app you are using? I am trying to get TouchOSC to launch clips to change keyboard sounds but it isn't really working. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Nicholas Jackson Hey, the only iPad app I use at the moment is OmniTR for controlling Live Mode on my primary instance of Omnisphere. I do have TouchOSC and Lemur but I don't currently use them live. I have a Novation ZeRO SL MkII and a Korg NanoKontrol that I use for most of my control along with a bluetooth QWERTY keyboard. I actually use a lot of keys mapped to different scenes, but you could do the same with TouchOSC and a clip layout.
Excellent! I am now using TouchOSC with your method. It works like a charm, I highly recommend it! Also, sometimes when I switch from a channel (turn off), the midi doesn't stop if the sustained pedal was down. Thus the sound keeps going. Any ideas?
Hello! I have a question! As far as I know, I set up the chain selector for my piano sound (kontact's giant and alicia keys) with the instrument rack, external instruments, dividing the chains, etc...but I don't get any sound unless I arm the track. Even when I launch the scene, nothing plays unless a track is armed. Am I missing something? Fairly new to ableton... Thank you so much!
+Bryan Yi It sounds like the MIDI IN is set to Auto, not In. Change the MIDI In to In on the track with your External Instrument chain and then it should always receive midi and send it to the appropriate device depending on what chain slot it's on.
Hi I am very new to this Ableton and Omnisphere. I am now getting the hang of the chain selector. However, do you have any advice on how to change (add or remove) patches in Omnisphere during live mode efficiently? I saw that you have 7 patches in your Omnisphere 1. Do you only use 1 patch at a time or do you sometimes use more? In my setup, I have 3 patches (all activated) in my Omnisphere which is all set to 0 level. When I need them I turn the level up, but when I use them all at the same time, sometimes they work, sometimes my CPU meter goes over 100 and starts clipping.
+Vernon Joshua Pansacala (vernzki13) Unfortunately, it's probably not a good idea to change patches or multis in a live situation. I would set up several instances of Omnisphere and load all the patches you need and then use the Omnisphere Live Mode to switch patches on or off. Of course, it requires a lot of RAM to have lots of patches loaded, and your processor speed will determine how many patches you can play concurrently. I regularly have 2-3 Omnisphere patches and 2-3 other VST plugins all playing at the same time, but I have a fairly hefty computer for live use. You definitely don't want all patches active at the same time (with volume down). Omnisphere's Live Mode is great for enabling or disabling active patches. Or you could set each patch to a different MIDI channel and then use the chain selector and External Instrument plugin to send midi data to one or more midi channels, thus 'activating' one or more Omni patches. Hope that helps!
This is gold! I'm new to Ableton... also a MainStage user. Can you please elaborate on how you're using your tracks in session mode with scenes? Do you have the track triggering only from the first scene, or does each scene (ie. chorus, bridge) also trigger that section of the track? Do you automate with 'follow action' triggering or Max4Live Follow? Thanks again!
Hey Ryan, I also have a video about how I run tracks in Ableton Session View along with instrument plugins. See if this answers your questions, otherwise feel free to ask anything else! It basically involves slicing the tracks up into individual clips so you can remain in control of the structure. th-cam.com/video/6JJCqbklsFk/w-d-xo.html
Hi +Alex V, I may be able to do a tutorial from scratch in the future, but in the meantime, you could download the Live Set template (link in the description) and see it for yourself. That might help! Aaron
+Aaron Ott I am also confused. I tried downloading the template but Ableton said it was corrupt (perhaps we have different versions, also I'm on PC). I have no idea how you set up your "chain selector" track that chooses which plugin/channel to send the midi to. A video or even description of that would be so helpful. Thanks!
+bigbadbobbyb I'm sorry I'm just now seeing this...to set up a chain selector, create an instrument rack on a midi channel and drop your instruments or the External Instrument plugin into different rack slots. Then assign each instrument a unique slot in the chain. Then your clips can control the placement of the chain selector. It might be helpful to review this: www.ableton.com/en/manual/instrument-drum-and-effect-racks/
I know I'm like two years late to the party but the 'corrupt file' thing happened to me too. The file is a .alp so you have to go to File > Install Pack and then select the file and it should work
Nicholas, I'm not sure I understand your question fully...you can group different instruments together in an Instrument Rack, yes, and if the plugin supports multiple outputs (like Kontakt), then you could assign individual parts to other audio outputs and then create extra audio tracks that pull audio from the secondary audio outputs. Otherwise all instruments in an instrument rack will play audio through the track the rack is on.
Hey Aaron, thanks so much for this video! I'm hoping you can help me out with a problem I'm having !im using instrument racks and the chain selector in a sort of inception style manner! I have four banks of instrument racks and within each rack is another rack for each song within that category. I have also assigned the device on/off button to be controlled by the chain selector via macro control so that only one instrument rack per song is active! However, it means that as I change from song to song, I can't hold on the previous patch, so it's not very graceful! ;) is there a way to do this do you think? Also, because I have four banks of instrument racks, when I select a song in one rack, it automatically selects the song attached to chain 32 in the other banks...I don't know why this is happening! If you can help at all, that would be amazing!
Chris, I have not tested nested instrument racks. Let me see if I'm able to duplicate things and I'll report back in a few days. Do you have a Live Set where you could strip out your plugins but send me your racks/macros/clips?
I tried to load the Ableton LiveSet. Ableton tells me that it could not load neither Omnisphere nor Sylenth1 nor Kontakt5 Audio Units, but I have them all installed. How can I manage to get it run, so that I can use your settings from Omnisphere? Any Ideas on that?
Great video Aaron! I know Ableton applies latency compensation with the instrument track. Since you're getting your Omnisphere audio down an audio track, not directly through the external instrument device, I'm assuming there's no latency compensation on those channels?
+Jamin Cousins If you have Latency Compensation enabled in the preferences, Ableton will adjust all tracks for latency depending on each track's sample offset. (see: www.ableton.com/en/help/article/latency-faqs/) I have my sample rate at 48k and buffer at 64 or 128 (can't remember off the top of my head) and the latency is negligible...I don't notice any latency at all and I'm very sensitive to latency and timing.
Amazing tutorial... Just in case this causes any confusion to others - it appears that you can't treat Abletons own instruments as external instruments (or at least I couldn't when setting this up). You have to have those placed directly within a chain selector channel. The symptom is that the ableton instruments don't show up as a destination for midi routing. No matter - this is brilliant.
Correct. If you're using any Ableton devices, just put them directly in the chain selector...you can skip the whole External Instrument device > instrument channel strip. The only downside is that to get to the plugin window, it's harder to find in the chain selector. From what I've discovered, apparently not all 3rd party instruments show up as MIDI destinations for the External Instrument device. For instance, Addictive Keys does not show up but all my other 3rd party instrument plugins do. Might have something to do with how the plugin was developed, but I'm not a developer so I can't confirm that. :)
Aaron not sure if you are still active on here but thanks for the tutorial. This is great. Am I to assume this does not work with native Ableton plug ins and we just have to use the traditional chain selector or is there some workaround with external instrument?
Thanks for the video, very helpful. But what do you suggest when I need to send only one or two channel within an instrument rack to effect return? Let's say I use an instrument rack to get my omnisphere multi playing, but I want to send two of the pads to reverb effect return and the omnis lead sound to delay effect return...
Henrik, I would send those other pads out another Omnisphere output, like B or C or so on. Then you can set up another audio channel in Ableton, grab the audio from Omnisphere B, and then have separate Send controls from the main Omnisphere A output that is the main output.
Thanks. I have a totally new approach now..it takes time to move away from Mainstage :) As you are mentioning I now use audio channels from all my instruments and sends them to main buses like PIANO, PAD, ARP etc. I group the instruments channels and save them with songname for the ease of reuse. On the main buses I put my effects needed. Brilliant, thanks :)
+Leobert Jarina As the External Instrument plugin suggests, it only works with 3rd party plugins, not Ableton's built-in instruments. However, I know of a few like Addictive Keys and Sylenth that don't show up even though they are classified as 3rd party plugins. So whatever plugin you are using must either be an Ableton instrument or doesn't allow external support. Just add those directly to an instrument rack and skip the layer of abstraction that adding the External Instrument plugin created. :)
hi !GREAT TUTORIAL! i need some troubleshooting help : i copyed your manual, in the instrument rack ableton shows ONLY my Kontakt Sampler, all other Instruments dont show up ? so i ONLY can set this up for the Kontakt Sampler, over here,..would be great to be able to treat other Synths ( like your Omnisphere ) just the way you show it,... what am i missing ?
Icke Er I'm not sure exactly what may be happening. Have you tried adding a new MIDI channel with Omnisphere? You can also download my live set at the link provided in the description. That may help.
Aaron....thanks for much for your offerings of your talents and the time you've put into figuring this all out, making a video and helping us all along on the sonic journey! My question is "why to do need a separate midi channel, with no inputs for a particular instrument and/or software (i.e. Omni or Reason)...when the instrument rack essentially creates that same midi channel under the umbrella of the instrument rack itself. I've created a few racks (keys, synths, pads), added the plug in and/or external instruments etc, deleted the original midi track (that had an external instrument in it too...)and seems to work just fine. I'm sure they are in there for a reason...just can't figure out why and how you need/use them.
Todd, you're right in that the instruments can be placed directly into a rack and you could apply any midi effects before the instrument plugin or any other audio effects after the plugin or after the rack. I guess basically, I wanted to be able to see the audio meter on my pianos track or my main Omni track at the top, visible level without having to go diving into a rack. If there's ever a time during a service where something unexpected happens like an audio dropout, I want to be able to look over and see if I have any audio being indicated on that track....if yes, I know that midi is working. If not, I know I most likely have a midi problem. Also, if I'm using multiple outputs (like Omni A, B, C, D, etc.) I'll have to create an audio track anyway and grab audio from the primary channel anyway. Keeping the instrument plugin "always on" in its own channel keeps me from having to control the plugin; I only control the midi getting sent to the plugin via the midi-only racks. The cool thing is that there's no right or wrong way to do it. This way made sense for me visually and with how I use Ableton in a live situation, but you can do whatever works for you. There's no problem simplifying down until your basic needs are met and then growing from there again.
Aaron Ott Hey man....makes good sense, and yeah I can see the value of getting that real time visual feedback. I can do just what you are saying with my Kontakt plug ins, but when i do the same exact thing with Reason (except, instead of dragging the plug in into the "Reason 1" channel, I'm dragging the EXT INST into that channel, routing the MIDI TO to Reason, selecting my instrument/combi in Reason and routing the audio back into via the "AUDIO FROM". When I then put a EXT INST in the KEYS instrument rack channel and try to select "MIDI TO" and choose that REASON 1 channel....it doesn't show up as an option. I see that you have Reason in your set....can you let me know how you are using it with the chain selector/instrument rack? I was able to select the setting of the EXT INST in the INST RACK, but like I did in the REASON 1 EXT INST, except I left the audio on NO INPUT. Is that how you are doing it? Seems like I'm sending the same MIDI signal to Reason 2 Xs...but I guess that doesn't matter. Thanks Todd
Hi Aaron, this is super useful! I do my patches in a slightly different way but I'm glad I bumped into this tutorial that showed again another amazing option! I was wondering if there's any pedal foot switched you would recommend to use for switching up and down the scenes in order to not use your hands to fire stuff from a midi controller. Do you know anything that could suit the job? Many thanks! (:
Hey Aaron, Great video! I have a few questions. When I launch a dummy clip to turn on a piano it launches a scene which starts a song! How do turn on a piano when my timeline isn't running? On the song, One Thing Remains, you add a piano. Now does this happen automatically or do you launch the scene? How does it not stop the scene about which would have loops? Do you break down each scene with the loops? Thanks for your help.
Pardon me, but it's hard to tell exactly what may be happening on your side without seeing it. Are you launching an individual clip or are you launching a scene? I have the individual MIDI control clips mapped to keyboard shortcuts so I can individually turn instruments on or off just by pressing a key. If I have multiple clips that need adjusted at the same time, I arrange those into scenes and launch them as a scene. If I'm using loops or tracks of any sort, I will start them and all my MIDI clips with a scene. If I don't have loops or tracks, I will probably just use the individual clips mapped to keys unless there are several changes throughout the song that I need to change quickly. If you need to stop other clips from playing, just map a button or key to the "Stop All Clips" command.
Aaron Ott Hey Aaron. Thank you for your reply. Yes, I am using loops so I needed to trigger entire scenes to change things. However, if stop the tracks and hit an individual clip to start and instrument it fires the tracks again. Very silly. However, I just have to use scenes for everything. Thanks sir!
Nicholas Jackson You might want to use the "Stop All Clips" button rather than the global transport Stop. That way it won't resume playing all the clips that were playing when the transport was stopped. I've had the same thing happen...start a dummy clip to turn on a pad at altar and have my previous track start playing. Talk about a heart-attack moment! The solution is to keep the global transport playing continuously and use the Stop All Clips to stop the clip playback.
Sorry, I'm just now seeing this comment! I don't have Massive, but I would load several instances in a chain selector and test the heck out of it to see how many Massive instances I can safely run. Probably depends on your processor speed.
Thank you for the great ableton tutorials.I am also phasing out mainstage myself because of the same stability issues.I have a newbie question.is there a midi filter section for each patch.for example if I am only using one controller and I want to create a bass/piano split,how do I get the bass to ignore sustain pedal message while the piano still receive those messages?thanks
Nick, there are a couple things you could do for splitting. 1) You could use the Pitch MIDI effect to set a lowest note and a range of notes that a channel receives. This would filter the notes that fall outside that range. 2) You could use an instrument rack and set the key zone to whatever range you want for that rack. That would take care of having different key zones for each instrument or channel. As far as filtering other MIDI data, you can right-click the chain selector of an instrument rack and choose "Chain Selector Filters MIDI Ctrl." This will block midi when the chain is not active. This doesn't block it while the chain is active, but it would keep other midi CCs from passing through to an instrument while it's inactive. (Think pedal noises that are triggered by cc64, not notes.) I'm not sure of a good way to filter specific CCs on a channel unless the plugin you're using has that ability, or you can find a Max4Live device that does something similar and place it before the plugin.
Aaron, this is awesome, exciting, and a bit scary. I use MainStage exclusively both for leading worship and also for playing in a pop duo. I am considering moving from MainStage to ableton and trying to understand all the effort to port stuff over and create new setups. The complexity of your setup seems manageable (assuming I can climb the learning curve) for a worship set - as you say towards the end, perhaps an hour. For my band, I trigger tracks and have background tracks for each of about 200 songs currently. In MainStage currently, for my band each gig is separated into 3 sets - 1 'Concert' for each set, and each new song is its own patch. If I were to approach Ableton the same way, I feel like each gig or each 10 to 12-song set within a gig will require a massive Ableton setup. Could you comment? Thanks in advance.
Hi Aaron! This video was awesome! I am moving to Live.... long story short, I think I will get a better performance than what I have on Mainstage 2(which is 32bit)... The problem is that I have Ableton Live Intro... which does not have the External Instrument option... is there a workaround to make something similar without using External Instrument in the Intrument Rack?? If there's a way it will be fantastic!!! thanks!!
+Markus Paulo Rabello Unfortunately, I don't think Intro allows you to create or edit instrument racks. This whole method is based on using the chain selector which is part of an Instrument Rack. You will probably need at least Standard for that. Also, the External Instrument is only available in Standard and up too.
:( Live is new to me... I starting learning... and this would be very nice to have... but it will cost me $349 to upgrade from Intro to Std... so far that is the only feature I would need... does not worth... maybe when I find more Std features to use, I will then upgrade... tks for the reply!! God Bless You!!
Wow! Nice! I am definitely switching from MS to Ableton. One question, how can you transpose a keyboard controller using a MIDI clip? MS has an option to transpose a layer
Yes, it's the Pitch MIDI effect. Drop that on any channel before the instrument plugin and set the desired number of semitones you'd like to transpose.
The parameters of the Pitch effect can be controlled with clip envelopes. And you could route your incoming MIDI to one MIDI channel (e.g. named MIDI IN) and then set all your other instrument channels to receive midi from the MIDI IN channel instead of directly from your controller. This way, you can put the Pitch device on the MIDI IN channel and have a global transpose in your live set.
Again, thanks for the prompt reply. I don't want global transpose. I do a lot of splits in MS and I transpose (up or down octave) depending on the position of the keys. Now that you mention clip envelopes can control the the Pitch Effect parameters, I will investigate more when I get home. Thanks again. This is really amazing.
Hey Aaron Awesome video. Thx a bunch. What I don't get is how you where able to tell ableton send the "sustain off" command after switching Instance. Since you no longer send MIDI to the previously selected instance how come they get the sustain off message?
+René J Simonpietri By default, the chain selector is only a gate for midi notes data. That's why other midi controls like CC64 for sustain still pass through. However, you can set the chain selector to filter all midi messages if that is a problem for you. Right-click on the chain selector and choose the top option for "Chain Selector Filters Midi Ctrl". But I like allowing other midi CCs through for how I'm using it.
hello, does this mean that after switching from let say a verse patch to a chorus patch the notes I hold from verse patch will still sound off after switching to chorus patch? for me this is very important becuase I don't want my notes dying, very helpful video btw! thanks!
Can someone help me? I totaly missed. I tried to rebuilt the two strips that Aroon explained. But i dont see see the instrument in the External Instrument plugins MIDI To section. There are only a No output and Configure option.
I'm having this same issue. I think that the external instrument routing only works with multi out plugins... i'm still struggling with this for weeks.
I have found a workaround. Make a dummy MIDItrack with e.g. NI Kontakt (or another muliti-out plugin) and select this an external instrument from the rack. NOW make a new track with your plugin of choice and set this to receive MIDI from the "dummy". Works for me.
Johannes' workaround is a good idea. Or you can put certain plugins directly in an instrument rack without using the External Instrument plugin. Either way, test it and make sure it works for you.
Hi, Aaron. I wanted to see if I could get your advice. I've created a setup in Ableton as close as I could get to yours for worship on Sundays. I've had fair success with it - I've continued to introduce and stack sound patches over the past year. But now a real issue has shown up. Whenever I press the sustain pedal, the CPU shoots up 40-50%!!! It causes the audio to crackle and fizzle periodically, and it drives me nuts. I'm having to create new sessions now after a recent episode. The sustain pedal caused a huge delay issue during a live performance. At this point, I've sunk many hours into troubleshooting and searching for answers online, and nobody seems to have found a solution. Do you have any idea how I could fix this problem? I'd really appreciate it! Thanks. :)
Jared, I would venture to guess you have too many plugins with sustain samples loaded up! The chain selector turns off midi NOTES, but not CCs. So even though you may have all your chains turned off and not responding to midi notes, they will still respond to midi CCs. So Sustain, midi CC 64, is still being sent to all your plugins. If there's any sort of sustain sample, they will all play every time the sustain pedal is depressed. The fact that MIDI CCs are passed through even when the chain selector is blocking notes is why you can turn instruments on and off gracefully. Because it continues to receive the sustain on/off after turning off notes. This is precisely what allows you to sustain a sound, turn off the chain, and then release the pedal. But you can right-click the chain selector and have it filter all midi CCs. This means that if you turn off the chain selector while depressing the pedal, the instrument will never receive the Pedal OFF command after the chain is turned off. So, that's one thing you could do. The other is that you could go into all your instrument plugins and disable all sustain pedal samples. The fact the CPU is spiking really high every time you depress the pedal is probably because it has to go out and load up all the sustain samples from all your plugins.
Aaron Ott Many thanks for the quick response! I definitely understand what you are saying; however, I can't seem to find where I can right-click in the chain selector to filter all midi CC's. Could you explain a little more where I can edit the filter?
Jared, the chain selector is the bar with slots at the top of the instrument rack. You might need to click on the Chain button to the top-left of the instrument rack to make sure the chain is turned on. Then you can right-click the row at the top and choose that option. See screenshot: www.dropbox.com/s/8dqiehpe4akoo7k/Ableton%20Chain%20Selector.png?dl=0
I've setup ableton in the same manner as you did... but I have sylenth1 and it will not appear on the chain selector how come??? thank you!!! great work btw
only the external hardware and 2 tracks that dont have a vst synth loaded appear in the external Instrument? what criteria allows tracks to show up in External Instrument? Sylenth, u-he, massive, abl2 ... don't show up this free sampler (TX16Wx) does show up and this is adding them one by one to the same blank midi track on it's own. so what gives???
+Rick Dawson Rick, I wish I knew exactly what caused a 3rd-party plugin to be available as an "external instrument." I'm guessing it has to do with how the plugin developers opened up access to the plugin from the host.
I struggled with this for weeks. I believe that using the external instrument only works for multiple output plugins like omni, kontact.. i have not been able to use it for anything like synth1 etc...
Hey Aaron! Thanks for the awesome video. Please, how can I get or create a synth sounds Like that of Hillsong wake, as well as your own Omnisphere Warm and Blue patch.
Endy Ekpo Those are all stock Omnisphere sounds...you'll find Warm and Blue for sure. I think for the lead in Wake I used the Gaga Fizz patch and removed a layer so it's not so harsh, but any other supersaw or trance type lead would work.
H I would like to use a lot of sounds from omnisphere. Cant u do that with albeton live 10 connected to omnisphere. Even though theres only 8 channels from omnisphere. Can you just repeat them steps over and over. To get more sounds from omnisphere instead of just eight. Once u use the 8 channels for omnisphere, u cant use omnisphere for any more sounds?
You can load multiple instances of Omnisphere, with each instance having 8 parts. As long as you have enough CPU power, you can keep duplicating the setup to expand how you need.
Hay Alan! You're a genious. This is what i've been looking for. Awesome live rig! Just one question: I don't understand how do you navigate between scenes. I mean, how do you move from one to another? Do you click with your mouse, or you have it assigned to some midi control or key? Maybe you always play with click, What if not? How do you do? Thanks, man! This is solving all my problems.
Joaquin Baranzano I have my < and > keys mapped to Scene Up and Scene Down, respectively. You could also map a rotary encoder to scroll through scenes. Then I have my / key mapped to Launch Selected Scene. If I'm playing live, I can have complete control of selecting any previous or next scene and then launching it. You can also map a key or button directly to a scene (for instance, the start of the next song.) If you'd rather automate your way through scenes, you can use the Follow device from Isotonik Studios to follow a clip and launch the next scene at the end. This is how I navigate automatically through a fixed song structure. Oh, and we do always play with a click but not necessarily to a fixed structure from Ableton.
Aaron Ott Thanks a lot, man! I've been using Ableton and playing live with it since 2009 in another way, but this has just changed the way I'll set my projects in the future. THANKS AGAIN
+Aaron Ott Thx a lot for your video it's really really helpfull!! Just a question, does that mean that you need to use 2 buttons for changing sound when it's not sync to a sequence? First one to go to the next scene and second one to launch it? Thanks again
You are correct...I have one button to scroll Previous/Next and one to launch the selected scene. You could midi map any button (or button or pad on an iPad/Lemur/TouchOSC) to directly launch a scene if you need direct one-button launching.
Hi and thanks for an awesome video. I am unable to see from inside of ext instrument the actual sylenth synth on my track 3.? i I dont have anything in my external instrument except no input and configure. Can you tell me how to fix?
There are certain plugins that the External Instrument cannot see as a MIDI destination. So those plugins - like Sylenth1 - will ahve to be added directly to the instrument rack without using an external instrument. :)
+Aaron Ott this is really great. managed to set it up just like you did and it works great. cpu usage is minimal! one question though....when i use the volume slider on my keyboard, every instrument in the rack receives the cc data and changes volume, even when only one instrument is selected. i'd like to be able to adjust instrument levels independently, of course. any tips on how to solve this?
i have an omnisphere multi set up in the layout as well and that suffers from the same problem - every patch in the multi changes volume when i move the fader on the keyboard...if i send midi directly to omnisphere (bypassing the instrument rack) it works as expected with only the fader on the same channel as the keyboard moving
+Simeon Harris Are you sending CC7 to the rack? I probably wouldn't do that because each instrument will respond to that CC. Instead, I would send each instrument's output to a different bus and then use MIDI-mapped faders to control your output busses, not the instrument channels. That way you don't have CC7 going to the instrument rack.
+Aaron Ott yes, it's cc7. i don't understand why the instrument rack is sending it to every instrument. i'll have to find another way round it, because having multiple instruments loaded into one instance of kontakt means that sending audio to a bus still won't give me independent control
+Simeon Harris There another option to filter the CC data so that only instruments in an active chain selector slot receive MIDI CCs, but if you switch chain positions, any previously-held CC values will remain. For instance, the sustain pedal (if depressed) will not release if you move the chain position while sustaining. However, it might work for you and the volume so that only the active instrument receives CC7. Right-click on the chain selector above the rack and choose "Chain Selector Filters MIDI Ctrl" to turn on MIDI CC filtering. I don't know if that would work with your workflow, but maybe give it a shot.
+Aaron Ott ahh mate, i think you nailed it. i knew there must be an option somewhere. i know it might cause problems with sustained notes/pedals held over during transitions from one patch to the next, but i don't think it's going to be a problem. thank you so much for the help and taking the time to demonstrate your incredibly clever method!
Hi Aaron... Thank you for the nice advice... I'd like to try it on my church too.. could you give me the computer or laptop specification you are using for playing it live.. God Bless..
Smart Halayla The global quantize setting affects whether or not the scene will change immediately or wait until the next bar (or whatever is set at the global quantize setting on the toolbar.) You can change the global quantization to 'None' to have scenes change right away, but you can still set individual clips' quantization setting to a bar if you still want certain clips to sync to the Ableton global transport position. Global tempo is just the master tempo.
Aaron Ott Thanks for this info. Here is an example which might help to make it more clear. Its probably much less complex then what presented here. For example, 4 channels. Drums, Bass, Keys, Guitar. Everything comes in to Ableton as a pre-mixed audio file. Something as this- Channel 1- Drums, 7 different audio files. Channel 2- Bass, 4 different audio files. Channel 3- Keys, 8 different audio files. Channel 4- Guitar, 5 different audio files. All audio files in different lengths. I want all 4 of them play as they are originally, Without Ableton effecting them in any way exept for being a "Sample Holder" which I can tell it what to play and when to play it, and that everything will move up or down in scenes when I press a key. Each scene will have its own setup and tracks will play according to the scene setup. I understand its possible in Ableton, and a video of that will cool. Is there any video on that subject?
Smart Halayla That is easy in Session View and it sounds like you're already in Session View. Just create 4 audio tracks (they will show up vertically in Session View) and you can drag and drop your audio files into the session view grid and place them into scenes as you like. To help facilitate the smooth transitioning between scenes, it's good to set your global tempo to match your tracks and set your global quantize setting to 1 bar so that the scene change or clip changes will happen at the beginning of a bar. I'm sure there are many videos on clip playback in session view...just search TH-cam for that.
Aaron Ott Thanks for the fast replay. The thing is, I don't want any tempo dealing through Ableton. Ableton's part is just as a "Sample holder" and that's it without effecting on the wave tempo and pitch of the audio files information. The coming audio files are pre-mixed, and I understand that Ableton can make a mess to the file sound. Abelton is functioning purely a a "Sample Holder" which moves through scenes, regardless what the audio files contain. Do you know any video of that? By the way, I saw your "Playing with Tracks in Ableton Live". Very cool.
Smart Halayla If you don't want to use any of Ableton's tempo/pitch features, disable warping on the clips. Select a clip and then in the clip properties, disable the Warp button and it will play the audio clips as-is. Check out Ableton's TH-cam channel for videos that might be helpful in understanding clips. th-cam.com/play/PLnaUMW2QSIinbOcbfc_kJvKQ-MSmIG1WL.html or here's one specifically th-cam.com/video/04W5LkjC4lY/w-d-xo.html.
I don't have Massive to confirm, but I do know the External Instrument will only see multi-timbral plugins. If Massive is showing up correctly, make sure the chain slot it's assigned to is active.
this video just changed my life
Great video. This is probably the best keyboard player orientated live performance video tutorial I have ever seen. Well done, sir.
I have been watching videos and reading documentation on Ableton Live for the past several weeks and this is the best I've seen in terms of being able to configure it any way you want. The "simple things are complex" bit you mentioned is fine so long as there is a pattern for doing it. Separation of MIDI and audio was clutch. Thanks!
Yep. Once you find "that" way of configuring it to work for you, it's unbeatable! Good luck!
Dude, I just have to say again how great this video is. It's probably the best/most useful Ableton tut I've seen for using ableton as a vst host.
This is beautiful…so happy I found this, even four years later. Thank you!
I'm so glad I found this video. What a wonderful and inspiring explanation. As a Live noobie I'm somewhat humbled but there were only a couple of spots where I felt lost. I'm bookmarking this one.
You are a Genius!! You have made such a big contribution to the keyboardist community with this tutorial!
As of tonight at a rehearsal, I've been let down by MainStage 3 for the last time and I'm so glad I found you and this video. I'll be switching my whole rig over ASAP. Thank you!
Where has this video been all my life??? Haha this just opened up so many more possibilities! Thanks for sharing!
Wow, this is a great tip for controlling patches for live sets (seamlessly, as you said). :) Thanks!
Nice job, Aaron. I'm using AL9 in concert with a Fishman Triple Play MIDI guitar, Kontakt, and a Roland FC-200. I mostly focus on traditional Hammond simulation using Kontakt (from guitar). Your chain/map method is working great and I absolutely love the smooth transitions. I map my tones as both as full instrument selections, but especially as drawbar changes and fire them all from the FC-200. (I do use Bome to manage my FC-200 stuff) It is absolutely wonderful to finally be able to do "real" Hammond drawbar tone shifts this way. No jumps - no jerks - no light-switch "what happened there?" weirdness. Very important at the most sensitive moments of the service.
Truly appreciate your clear simple explanation. You've saved me many hours and this approach improves our live sound in a very practical and tangible fashion. Thx!
Glad to hear! I'd love to see some videos of how you're performing with a midi guitar. Sounds interesting.
Fantastic Video! I've been looking at some janky ways of switching between my patches but this really uses the power of ableton. I love it!
Having just purchased a computer powerful enough to be stable live, your setup plus a launchpad for the clip firing will be perfect!
Omaha Keyboardist Yep, I use a variation of this now with the APC 40 MkII for launching clips and it’s amazing.
Sir, YOU. ARE. A. GENIUS! Hands down, this is the best Ableton tutorial I have ever seen! I think I might cry lol #1000xThankYou
Hey Aaron, just wanted to say that this is ingenious! Excellent video, method and explanations throughout :)
Just what I needed. Brilliant work, man.
Very interesting. I come from Mainstage and maybe I will use Live on stage. Excellent explanations. Your way of using Midi + Audio is similar as the Mainstage "thinking" but you found a very good solution to be more versatile with controls. (I will begin using Live next week) Thank you Aaron
Man I saw this vid years ago and never thanked you for your hard work. Been using your template and killing it with ableton playing live. Thank you! Great stuff
Wow sir, this is amazing. The video is well done and well explained. I did not even know you could accomplish that with Ableton. Thank you so much for the info.
I noticed you have the 3rd and 4th tracks as MIDI tracks addressing two different instruments. The pianos, and then Omnisphere. Since you're using a chain selector and external midi rack, why not just have all of the sounds set up in one track? Is it because there are times when you need BOTH Kontakt AND Omnisphere to play simultaneously or is there another reason? It seems that you could simply overlap one of the chains between the two instruments yes?
Really excellent tutorial; I've been trying to figure out a workflow like this for ages. Thank you!!
For this setup were you running 64bit Ableton?...and how much ram did you have? If you dont mind sharing the computer specs. Cheers.
Thank you! My best tutorial for now!
A super helpful tutorial. Thanks for sharing!
Hey! Thanks for such an awesome tutorial. I'm getting started with Ableton live after using MainStage for many years. I have used this video to learn how to use the same dynamic as in MainStage, and it works really well, but I'm having issues with my sustain pedal MIDI signal basically going through all of my Omnisphere, keyscape and Kontakt instruments simultaneously causing my cpu to overload quickly. It's there any way to filter out the sustain pedal midi signal to only work with selected "clip" for the specific sound being triggered? Thank you.
Hi Aaron, this is a great video, pretty helpful. One question ... how do you go around stoping the click after a song while maintaining your sounds/patches (pads in my case) for a transition or worshipful moment between songs? I run all clicks in ableton, some songs have loops and also run omnisphere on live mode but pads stopping abruptly after killing the click has been very frustrating. Would you be able to recommend something around that problem?
Also, not sure if I understand what you mean by separating midi from audio ... I know the difference between the 2 but what do you mean exactly by that in Ableton? Thanks again.
For stopping click, I wouldn't use the stop button but rather assign a midi note to click on/off. Or you could not use the inbuilt click but use an audio or midi click looped and just stop the clip.
For separating midi from audio, I believe what you're talking about is the way he uses a single channel for midi in and then sends that midi signal to a different channel on which the actual VST or instrument lives. Your sound generating element is not on the same channel where you are routing your midi. This enables you to use the sustain pedal while switching patches or have realistic decay of a sound rather than a hard off.
Sorry...I'm just now seeing this comment! I have a key on my keyboard mapped to the metronome on/off so I can stop the audible metronome playback without stopping the audio playback engine and killing any live sounds. I also have a key mapped to stop all clips if I need to stop any clips and keep my live instruments going. Then it's easy to turn the metronome back on with the same key and trigger any other scenes.
By the way, if you have a scene with tempo/bpm changes and set all the clips in that scene to no quantization, Ableton will reset the beat count to 1 when you fire that scene. So once I have the metronome turned off, I usually have two rapid keystrokes (keys next to each other like NM) to turn the metronome on and launch the selected scene and start playing from the 1 count. It may be easier to demonstrate sometime than to describe in words.
So my goal is to use two buttons to switch instruments. An up button and down button, but I don't see this possible with the chain selector.
Any ideas?
+Alex V You could assign a rotary encoder or knob to the chain selector, and then set each instrument to maybe 10 slot widths instead of one so it's easier to land on a certain sound. If your knob has 270* of spin and there are 1-127 chain selector values, giving each instrument 10 slots could let you have about 12 instruments in the rotation of a knob. Does that make sense?
Ya I was hoping there was a way to avoid the knob. The goal is to have a list of instruments I can constantly change and cycle through without making changes.
A simple button for up and down would be awesome. I do that with Propellerhead's Reason
Can't thank you enough for this video. I have a question related to your live setup though. Omnisphere is hella heavy on disk space and use. Do you keep your samples library on your internal HDD (or SSD) or do you use an external HDD (or SSD) for that?
Hi Sebastian, I have my Omnisphere library (the entire STEAM folder) on my internal SSD because it's my "desert island" setup...meaning, if everything else disconnected suddenly, I'd still want Omnisphere and Keyscape. All my other libraries or tracks are on an external Thunderbolt SSD.
Aaron, I am really liking this setup. One more question. I have 2 MIDI controllers (Keystation 61 and Keystation 49es). For some reason, my 61 sustain pedal will affect the patches I assigned to 49es. However, the 49es sustain pedal will not affect the patches assigned to 61. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance.
I don't have two controllers to test, but the first thing I'd check would be to make sure that both Track and Remote are enabled for both your controllers in the MIDI section of Ableton's preferences. Then make sure that each track's MIDI From has the correct controller selected.
Hats off to you. You're a genius
Amazing. I searched many times in internet but I didn't fund any things. Many thanks Aaron for your help.
Is there a way to do this with Audio instead of MIDI?
So a chain that sends AUDIO to a specific AUDIO track and then brings it back in? Seems impossible with Audio Effect Rack and External Audio Effect unlike with Instrument Rack and External Instrument.
Thanks. I am in the process of upgrading my unit so when that's done I will follow up with testing.
Hey, great video! How do you go about recording your keyboard parts? Do you have a similar approach for capturing the MIDI data? I've not had any luck getting it to capture MIDI channel change. Cheers,
I record and produce everything in Arrangement View, not Session View, usually one part/instrument at a time. I don't capture what I play live because I don't want to stress my computer recording all incoming data and outputting several types of audio. However, it could be done by setting up a new midi track just for recording and capturing midi directly from your controller, not after passing through all the other midi routing between other channels.
Hey Aaron! sorry, last time I wrote you I called you Alan... haha!
I'm using some VSTs like Minimoog and Minimonsta, and I can't do the same thing you do with Kontakt (route them as external instrument devices from a control MIDI track, you know)
What do you recommend me to do with this?
Joaquin Baranzano With VSTs that don't show up as a destination in the external instrument, you can just put those VSTs right in the rack and cut out the layer of using the external instrument. I have to do that with Sylenth1 and VB3.
Really excellent video Aaron. I have been using Ableton Live in a live environment for years and have my system set up completely different. Your setup however looks far more flexible so will be giving it a bash. Great work thanks.
+Barry Stevens Give it a shot and see what works best for you. There are many ways to do things in Ableton, so it's just a matter of finding the one that's best for how you want to use it. :)
This is awesome. Got a question. How do you handle effects with this method? Do you use chain selectors to switch between effects or some other method?
You could use an effects chain if you need to switch between different sets of effects. However, I usually keep most of my effects on my main outputs or return tracks for each physical output.
Hey man.. I have a question if you don't mind ...
How can i do this and not start a scene from launching ?
Whenever i select a patch, i also start the last scene i launch ! LOL
+Garth Taylor Garth, since you didn't describe how you're launching scenes or patches, I can only assume. One thing that could be happening is that you're not stopping previous clips from playing and thus the clips in a previous scene retrigger when a new one is launched. To combat that, I make sure that any midi control clips are about 1 measure long and do not loop...this way, they play and then stop as soon as they're done.
The other thing you could do is make sure you haven't removed the stop buttons from the clip slots in new scenes. That way, a scene launch will play any new clips and stop any clips in other channels.
Hope that helps!
Hi, I tried to do the keys-rack thing you have here but when I add external instruments to the rack, not all of my VSTi's are there to choose for the midi destination. Kontakt is there but things like Massive and FM8 are not available even though they are loaded into channels in my set. any idea what I'm doing wrong or is it a bug?
thanks for any responses.
Jason, only multi-timbral plugins will show up as a destination in the External Instrument device. If massive or FM8 aren't multi-timbral, they won't be available. You can place those plugins directly inside a rack of their own and skip the external instrument step.
Aaron, I started using Ableton Live about a month ago. I find it very powerful but I am struggling with savings a song and retrieving it for future use. Every time I bring a song to a new set it seems to be broken (sometimes my clips channel selector change for some reason). What is your workflow to reuse a song setting?
Haresh, I usually keep my instrument racks fairly generic, more of a framework for controlling everything. If I have song-specific sounds, I'll save a custom Kontakt instrument or an Omnisphere multi and load it up in a second instance and then use the chain selector to switch between Omnisphere instances. I just make sure I name/tag any custom sounds really well so I can find them.
Fantastic set-up. Very helpful video too.
Hello, Aaron. I assume this only works live and cannot record performances into the arrangement? I've tried with no such luck. Whenever recording starts, I can't hear what I'm playing.
Jamie, I'm not sure. I do not record in Session View so I have not tested how this approach handles recording. Maybe you could create new audio tracks, grab the audio from the live channels you're playing, and record-arm the second set of channels so that you're still hearing what you're playing from the original instrument channels. Does that make sense?
Cheers, Aaron. I understand you. For now, I've found another solution. I've split the master output from my audio interface into both my monitors as normal, but also into a portable audio recorder. Seems to get the job done
+Hi Aaron: In this video you are routing midi. Can I do this with audio signal. For example, I play guitar and want to change my guitar patches and still the trails of the reverb and delays. Thankyou
Great work! I tried for months to get this to fit the way I use Live. I like to mix more than one voice at a time, and switch out individual voices for variety, which isn't easy using Chain Selectors. I could have racked multiple racks, but I found a simpler method.
I use the clip envelopes to control Device On instead of the Chain Select. (Make sure all your Chain Selects are set back to zero, or you won't hear more than one at a time). Now I can select whichever voices I want to mix. I have one Instrument Rack for Pads, another for Keys, and another for Fills - this separates them enough that one Track doesn't max out its processor, and also makes it easier to keep track of which ones I'm using at any one time.
Yes, that works too. I do use multiple instrument racks to do the same thing. The benefit for me over Device On is that the default chain function that allows other midi CCs through (like sustain cc64) is that it lets other sounds release when I release the pedal, not when I switch the device off. As the only keyboardist in my group, I can't have any sound cut out, but other situations where you can have clean breaks for switching sounds would work well with controlling the Device On.
Hi there. I have a question.
How do you make these tracks making midi control send chain selector values to the tracks containing the instruments? I am a little new to ableton and i can't find it. Do you have duplicate instruments racks? Please explain.
The chain selector is simply switching with External Instrument device is active. The External Instrument is what sends MIDI to the other channel containing the instrument plugin. You could skip the External Instrument devices and just put your instrument plugins in the chain selector, but since each MIDI channel only uses one processor core, I don't want more than one plugin on each channel strip.
Aaron Ott I understand what the chain selector does.I just can't figure out how i can send chain selector values to another channel.
amazing!!! bdw, is it possible to use this technique as well as regular audio or midi clips? thanks:))
Yes, you can add as many other audio or midi clips in separate channels.
lol this setup is nuts! looks like it works awesome.
Hey Aaron, I was wondering how you control the volume of your patches. Do you have a slider for each sound/channel or do you program the volume for each patch?
Nicholas Jackson Nicholas, I work hard in my studio at home to make sure all my patches meter at roughly close to unity without peaking. (using my ears to approximate consistent volume and making sure it doesn't peak in yellow or red.) Then I send them to one of my "output" channels. I say "output" because Ableton just has Audio and MIDI channels. I've created an audio channel for each of my physical outputs, and then I assign my instruments to one of those four "output" channels instead of to the Master or Ext. Out channels. Then I can use a fader to control each output channel. For instance, I have a KEYS, PADS, AUX, and TRX outputs each with a fader assigned to it. I have 16 faders total to work with, so I have plenty to use for other unique situations where I may need a fader for something specific. It's much easier to work in a sub-group type of setup and try to volume match in the studio. My job is to play, not mix, but I make sure I'm providing enough to mix and the appropriate channel separation so the FOH engineer can do the final mix.
Aaron Ott Fantastic. Thanks Aaron, I shall give that a try.
Perfect just amazing .
thats what i needed.
Brilliant Brilliant !!!
Hey Aaron, sorry to bombard you with questions, but I really like your setup.
I was wondering what (if any) iPad app you are using? I am trying to get TouchOSC to launch clips to change keyboard sounds but it isn't really working. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Nicholas Jackson Hey, the only iPad app I use at the moment is OmniTR for controlling Live Mode on my primary instance of Omnisphere. I do have TouchOSC and Lemur but I don't currently use them live. I have a Novation ZeRO SL MkII and a Korg NanoKontrol that I use for most of my control along with a bluetooth QWERTY keyboard. I actually use a lot of keys mapped to different scenes, but you could do the same with TouchOSC and a clip layout.
Excellent! I am now using TouchOSC with your method. It works like a charm, I highly recommend it! Also, sometimes when I switch from a channel (turn off), the midi doesn't stop if the sustained pedal was down. Thus the sound keeps going. Any ideas?
Hello! I have a question!
As far as I know, I set up the chain selector for my piano sound (kontact's giant and alicia keys) with the instrument rack, external instruments, dividing the chains, etc...but I don't get any sound unless I arm the track. Even when I launch the scene, nothing plays unless a track is armed.
Am I missing something? Fairly new to ableton...
Thank you so much!
+Bryan Yi It sounds like the MIDI IN is set to Auto, not In. Change the MIDI In to In on the track with your External Instrument chain and then it should always receive midi and send it to the appropriate device depending on what chain slot it's on.
Thank you so much!!!
This is by far is the best Ableton tutorial I've ever seen!
#thanksAMillion
Hi I am very new to this Ableton and Omnisphere. I am now getting the hang of the chain selector. However, do you have any advice on how to change (add or remove) patches in Omnisphere during live mode efficiently? I saw that you have 7 patches in your Omnisphere 1. Do you only use 1 patch at a time or do you sometimes use more?
In my setup, I have 3 patches (all activated) in my Omnisphere which is all set to 0 level. When I need them I turn the level up, but when I use them all at the same time, sometimes they work, sometimes my CPU meter goes over 100 and starts clipping.
+Vernon Joshua Pansacala (vernzki13) Unfortunately, it's probably not a good idea to change patches or multis in a live situation. I would set up several instances of Omnisphere and load all the patches you need and then use the Omnisphere Live Mode to switch patches on or off. Of course, it requires a lot of RAM to have lots of patches loaded, and your processor speed will determine how many patches you can play concurrently. I regularly have 2-3 Omnisphere patches and 2-3 other VST plugins all playing at the same time, but I have a fairly hefty computer for live use. You definitely don't want all patches active at the same time (with volume down). Omnisphere's Live Mode is great for enabling or disabling active patches. Or you could set each patch to a different MIDI channel and then use the chain selector and External Instrument plugin to send midi data to one or more midi channels, thus 'activating' one or more Omni patches. Hope that helps!
Wow...I might just head back to using Ableton as my main performance rig and slave mainstage to it now! LOL!
This is gold! I'm new to Ableton... also a MainStage user. Can you please elaborate on how you're using your tracks in session mode with scenes? Do you have the track triggering only from the first scene, or does each scene (ie. chorus, bridge) also trigger that section of the track? Do you automate with 'follow action' triggering or Max4Live Follow?
Thanks again!
Hey Ryan, I also have a video about how I run tracks in Ableton Session View along with instrument plugins. See if this answers your questions, otherwise feel free to ask anything else! It basically involves slicing the tracks up into individual clips so you can remain in control of the structure. th-cam.com/video/6JJCqbklsFk/w-d-xo.html
Hi there, just one Question:
I can't find the Octave Doubler Effect in Ableton! Did you Download it somewhere?
It's just the built-in Chord midi effect, with one note +12 added to the original.
Can you do a tutorial starting from scratch. This is very confusing.
Hi +Alex V, I may be able to do a tutorial from scratch in the future, but in the meantime, you could download the Live Set template (link in the description) and see it for yourself. That might help! Aaron
+Aaron Ott I am also confused. I tried downloading the template but Ableton said it was corrupt (perhaps we have different versions, also I'm on PC). I have no idea how you set up your "chain selector" track that chooses which plugin/channel to send the midi to. A video or even description of that would be so helpful. Thanks!
+bigbadbobbyb I'm sorry I'm just now seeing this...to set up a chain selector, create an instrument rack on a midi channel and drop your instruments or the External Instrument plugin into different rack slots. Then assign each instrument a unique slot in the chain. Then your clips can control the placement of the chain selector. It might be helpful to review this: www.ableton.com/en/manual/instrument-drum-and-effect-racks/
I know I'm like two years late to the party but the 'corrupt file' thing happened to me too. The file is a .alp so you have to go to File > Install Pack and then select the file and it should work
Hey Aaron, Do you have a way of combining the sounds into a single patch within instrument rack so you can do splits and multiple outputs?
Nicholas, I'm not sure I understand your question fully...you can group different instruments together in an Instrument Rack, yes, and if the plugin supports multiple outputs (like Kontakt), then you could assign individual parts to other audio outputs and then create extra audio tracks that pull audio from the secondary audio outputs. Otherwise all instruments in an instrument rack will play audio through the track the rack is on.
Aaron Ott Thanks! I was just hoping to put everything in one rack but I do need multiple outputs. Thanks for your thoughts!
Hey Aaron, thanks so much for this video! I'm hoping you can help me out with a problem I'm having !im using instrument racks and the chain selector in a sort of inception style manner!
I have four banks of instrument racks and within each rack is another rack for each song within that category.
I have also assigned the device on/off button to be controlled by the chain selector via macro control so that only one instrument rack per song is active! However, it means that as I change from song to song, I can't hold on the previous patch, so it's not very graceful! ;) is there a way to do this do you think?
Also, because I have four banks of instrument racks, when I select a song in one rack, it automatically selects the song attached to chain 32 in the other banks...I don't know why this is happening!
If you can help at all, that would be amazing!
Chris, I have not tested nested instrument racks. Let me see if I'm able to duplicate things and I'll report back in a few days. Do you have a Live Set where you could strip out your plugins but send me your racks/macros/clips?
Aaron Ott yeah I do, where should I send it to?
aaron@4himproductions.com :)
I tried to load the Ableton LiveSet. Ableton tells me that it could not load neither Omnisphere nor Sylenth1 nor Kontakt5 Audio Units, but I have them all installed. How can I manage to get it run, so that I can use your settings from Omnisphere? Any Ideas on that?
I'm using Windows and not Mac.. that might be the problem, because it tells me "in my operating system"
Great video Aaron! I know Ableton applies latency compensation with the instrument track. Since you're getting your Omnisphere audio down an audio track, not directly through the external instrument device, I'm assuming there's no latency compensation on those channels?
+Jamin Cousins If you have Latency Compensation enabled in the preferences, Ableton will adjust all tracks for latency depending on each track's sample offset. (see: www.ableton.com/en/help/article/latency-faqs/) I have my sample rate at 48k and buffer at 64 or 128 (can't remember off the top of my head) and the latency is negligible...I don't notice any latency at all and I'm very sensitive to latency and timing.
Amazing tutorial... Just in case this causes any confusion to others - it appears that you can't treat Abletons own instruments as external instruments (or at least I couldn't when setting this up). You have to have those placed directly within a chain selector channel. The symptom is that the ableton instruments don't show up as a destination for midi routing. No matter - this is brilliant.
Correct. If you're using any Ableton devices, just put them directly in the chain selector...you can skip the whole External Instrument device > instrument channel strip. The only downside is that to get to the plugin window, it's harder to find in the chain selector. From what I've discovered, apparently not all 3rd party instruments show up as MIDI destinations for the External Instrument device. For instance, Addictive Keys does not show up but all my other 3rd party instrument plugins do. Might have something to do with how the plugin was developed, but I'm not a developer so I can't confirm that. :)
Aaron not sure if you are still active on here but thanks for the tutorial. This is great. Am I to assume this does not work with native Ableton plug ins and we just have to use the traditional chain selector or is there some workaround with external instrument?
Thanks for the video, very helpful. But what do you suggest when I need to send only one or two channel within an instrument rack to effect return?
Let's say I use an instrument rack to get my omnisphere multi playing, but I want to send two of the pads to reverb effect return and the omnis lead sound to delay effect return...
Henrik, I would send those other pads out another Omnisphere output, like B or C or so on. Then you can set up another audio channel in Ableton, grab the audio from Omnisphere B, and then have separate Send controls from the main Omnisphere A output that is the main output.
Thanks. I have a totally new approach now..it takes time to move away from Mainstage :)
As you are mentioning I now use audio channels from all my instruments and sends them to main buses like PIANO, PAD, ARP etc.
I group the instruments channels and save them with songname for the ease of reuse. On the main buses I put my effects needed. Brilliant, thanks :)
+Aaron Ott I can't find anything under my External Instrument plugin. Any advise?
+Leobert Jarina As the External Instrument plugin suggests, it only works with 3rd party plugins, not Ableton's built-in instruments. However, I know of a few like Addictive Keys and Sylenth that don't show up even though they are classified as 3rd party plugins. So whatever plugin you are using must either be an Ableton instrument or doesn't allow external support. Just add those directly to an instrument rack and skip the layer of abstraction that adding the External Instrument plugin created. :)
Ah, this is about to change my life!! Thanks so much!
hi !GREAT TUTORIAL!
i need some troubleshooting help :
i copyed your manual, in the instrument rack ableton shows ONLY my Kontakt Sampler, all other Instruments dont show up ?
so i ONLY can set this up for the Kontakt Sampler, over here,..would be great to be able to treat other Synths ( like your Omnisphere ) just the way you show it,...
what am i missing ?
Icke Er I'm not sure exactly what may be happening. Have you tried adding a new MIDI channel with Omnisphere? You can also download my live set at the link provided in the description. That may help.
How do you get External Intrument to show your Tracks as a target?
Aaron....thanks for much for your offerings of your talents and the time you've put into figuring this all out, making a video and helping us all along on the sonic journey! My question is "why to do need a separate midi channel, with no inputs for a particular instrument and/or software (i.e. Omni or Reason)...when the instrument rack essentially creates that same midi channel under the umbrella of the instrument rack itself. I've created a few racks (keys, synths, pads), added the plug in and/or external instruments etc, deleted the original midi track (that had an external instrument in it too...)and seems to work just fine. I'm sure they are in there for a reason...just can't figure out why and how you need/use them.
Todd, you're right in that the instruments can be placed directly into a rack and you could apply any midi effects before the instrument plugin or any other audio effects after the plugin or after the rack. I guess basically, I wanted to be able to see the audio meter on my pianos track or my main Omni track at the top, visible level without having to go diving into a rack. If there's ever a time during a service where something unexpected happens like an audio dropout, I want to be able to look over and see if I have any audio being indicated on that track....if yes, I know that midi is working. If not, I know I most likely have a midi problem.
Also, if I'm using multiple outputs (like Omni A, B, C, D, etc.) I'll have to create an audio track anyway and grab audio from the primary channel anyway.
Keeping the instrument plugin "always on" in its own channel keeps me from having to control the plugin; I only control the midi getting sent to the plugin via the midi-only racks. The cool thing is that there's no right or wrong way to do it. This way made sense for me visually and with how I use Ableton in a live situation, but you can do whatever works for you. There's no problem simplifying down until your basic needs are met and then growing from there again.
Aaron Ott Hey man....makes good sense, and yeah I can see the value of getting that real time visual feedback. I can do just what you are saying with my Kontakt plug ins, but when i do the same exact thing with Reason (except, instead of dragging the plug in into the "Reason 1" channel, I'm dragging the EXT INST into that channel, routing the MIDI TO to Reason, selecting my instrument/combi in Reason and routing the audio back into via the "AUDIO FROM". When I then put a EXT INST in the KEYS instrument rack channel and try to select "MIDI TO" and choose that REASON 1 channel....it doesn't show up as an option. I see that you have Reason in your set....can you let me know how you are using it with the chain selector/instrument rack? I was able to select the setting of the EXT INST in the INST RACK, but like I did in the REASON 1 EXT INST, except I left the audio on NO INPUT. Is that how you are doing it? Seems like I'm sending the same MIDI signal to Reason 2 Xs...but I guess that doesn't matter.
Thanks Todd
Hi Aaron, this is super useful! I do my patches in a slightly different way but I'm glad I bumped into this tutorial that showed again another amazing option! I was wondering if there's any pedal foot switched you would recommend to use for switching up and down the scenes in order to not use your hands to fire stuff from a midi controller. Do you know anything that could suit the job? Many thanks! (:
Hi there! I have a Keith McMillen Softstep that I use occasionally as a foot controller. A Keith McMillen Softstep or 12 Step could work for you.
@@AaronOtt thanks Aaron, the foot controller looks cool, but looking for a smaller solution. Thanks though I'll look into something like that!
Hey Aaron, Great video! I have a few questions. When I launch a dummy clip to turn on a piano it launches a scene which starts a song! How do turn on a piano when my timeline isn't running? On the song, One Thing Remains, you add a piano. Now does this happen automatically or do you launch the scene? How does it not stop the scene about which would have loops? Do you break down each scene with the loops? Thanks for your help.
Pardon me, but it's hard to tell exactly what may be happening on your side without seeing it. Are you launching an individual clip or are you launching a scene? I have the individual MIDI control clips mapped to keyboard shortcuts so I can individually turn instruments on or off just by pressing a key. If I have multiple clips that need adjusted at the same time, I arrange those into scenes and launch them as a scene. If I'm using loops or tracks of any sort, I will start them and all my MIDI clips with a scene. If I don't have loops or tracks, I will probably just use the individual clips mapped to keys unless there are several changes throughout the song that I need to change quickly.
If you need to stop other clips from playing, just map a button or key to the "Stop All Clips" command.
Aaron Ott Hey Aaron. Thank you for your reply. Yes, I am using loops so I needed to trigger entire scenes to change things. However, if stop the tracks and hit an individual clip to start and instrument it fires the tracks again. Very silly. However, I just have to use scenes for everything. Thanks sir!
Nicholas Jackson You might want to use the "Stop All Clips" button rather than the global transport Stop. That way it won't resume playing all the clips that were playing when the transport was stopped. I've had the same thing happen...start a dummy clip to turn on a pad at altar and have my previous track start playing. Talk about a heart-attack moment! The solution is to keep the global transport playing continuously and use the Stop All Clips to stop the clip playback.
Aaron Ott That totally worked! Thank you sir!
this is ABSOLUTELY AWESOMMEEEEEEEE!!!
Great video...learned a lot. How would you use vst's like MASSIVE that can only play one sound at a time?
Sorry, I'm just now seeing this comment! I don't have Massive, but I would load several instances in a chain selector and test the heck out of it to see how many Massive instances I can safely run. Probably depends on your processor speed.
This is fantastic. Thank you for posting and sharing the knowledge :)
This is really great, however doesn't work with Arturia plugins - any ideas?
Awesome video. I have one question though, how would deal with controlling the volume of the different sounds?
Thank you for the great ableton tutorials.I am also phasing out mainstage myself because of the same stability issues.I have a newbie question.is there a midi filter section for each patch.for example if I am only using one controller and I want to create a bass/piano split,how do I get the bass to ignore sustain pedal message while the piano still receive those messages?thanks
Nick, there are a couple things you could do for splitting. 1) You could use the Pitch MIDI effect to set a lowest note and a range of notes that a channel receives. This would filter the notes that fall outside that range. 2) You could use an instrument rack and set the key zone to whatever range you want for that rack. That would take care of having different key zones for each instrument or channel.
As far as filtering other MIDI data, you can right-click the chain selector of an instrument rack and choose "Chain Selector Filters MIDI Ctrl." This will block midi when the chain is not active. This doesn't block it while the chain is active, but it would keep other midi CCs from passing through to an instrument while it's inactive. (Think pedal noises that are triggered by cc64, not notes.) I'm not sure of a good way to filter specific CCs on a channel unless the plugin you're using has that ability, or you can find a Max4Live device that does something similar and place it before the plugin.
Very well done sir, I did that for my Triton Rack modules I use clip to change patch on triton rack
Aaron, this is awesome, exciting, and a bit scary. I use MainStage exclusively both for leading worship and also for playing in a pop duo. I am considering moving from MainStage to ableton and trying to understand all the effort to port stuff over and create new setups. The complexity of your setup seems manageable (assuming I can climb the learning curve) for a worship set - as you say towards the end, perhaps an hour. For my band, I trigger tracks and have background tracks for each of about 200 songs currently. In MainStage currently, for my band each gig is separated into 3 sets - 1 'Concert' for each set, and each new song is its own patch. If I were to approach Ableton the same way, I feel like each gig or each 10 to 12-song set within a gig will require a massive Ableton setup. Could you comment? Thanks in advance.
Hi Aaron! This video was awesome! I am moving to Live.... long story short, I think I will get a better performance than what I have on Mainstage 2(which is 32bit)... The problem is that I have Ableton Live Intro... which does not have the External Instrument option... is there a workaround to make something similar without using External Instrument in the Intrument Rack?? If there's a way it will be fantastic!!! thanks!!
+Markus Paulo Rabello Unfortunately, I don't think Intro allows you to create or edit instrument racks. This whole method is based on using the chain selector which is part of an Instrument Rack. You will probably need at least Standard for that. Also, the External Instrument is only available in Standard and up too.
:( Live is new to me... I starting learning... and this would be very nice to have... but it will cost me $349 to upgrade from Intro to Std... so far that is the only feature I would need... does not worth... maybe when I find more Std features to use, I will then upgrade... tks for the reply!! God Bless You!!
Wow! Nice! I am definitely switching from MS to Ableton. One question, how can you transpose a keyboard controller using a MIDI clip? MS has an option to transpose a layer
Yes, it's the Pitch MIDI effect. Drop that on any channel before the instrument plugin and set the desired number of semitones you'd like to transpose.
Thanks for the prompt reply. I was hoping I can do that at the MIDI clip level. Man, thank you very much for this video.
The parameters of the Pitch effect can be controlled with clip envelopes. And you could route your incoming MIDI to one MIDI channel (e.g. named MIDI IN) and then set all your other instrument channels to receive midi from the MIDI IN channel instead of directly from your controller. This way, you can put the Pitch device on the MIDI IN channel and have a global transpose in your live set.
Again, thanks for the prompt reply. I don't want global transpose. I do a lot of splits in MS and I transpose (up or down octave) depending on the position of the keys. Now that you mention clip envelopes can control the the Pitch Effect parameters, I will investigate more when I get home. Thanks again. This is really amazing.
Aaron Ott The Pitch MIDI filter works great. Thanks for this awesome tutorial.
Excellent video ...............................Thank You !!!
Hey Aaron
Awesome video. Thx a bunch. What I don't get is how you where able to tell ableton send the "sustain off" command after switching Instance. Since you no longer send MIDI to the previously selected instance how come they get the sustain off message?
+René J Simonpietri By default, the chain selector is only a gate for midi notes data. That's why other midi controls like CC64 for sustain still pass through. However, you can set the chain selector to filter all midi messages if that is a problem for you. Right-click on the chain selector and choose the top option for "Chain Selector Filters Midi Ctrl". But I like allowing other midi CCs through for how I'm using it.
hello, does this mean that after switching from let say a verse patch to a chorus patch the notes I hold from verse patch will still sound off after switching to chorus patch? for me this is very important becuase I don't want my notes dying, very helpful video btw! thanks!
Yes, using the chain selector allows for smooth transitions from instrument to instrument in the rack.
all CC messages except the notes, so I won't lose the sound (sustain), I get it it now, thanks again!
=)
Can someone help me? I totaly missed. I tried to rebuilt the two strips that Aroon explained. But i dont see see the instrument in the External Instrument plugins MIDI To section. There are only a No output and Configure option.
I'm having this same issue. I think that the external instrument routing only works with multi out plugins... i'm still struggling with this for weeks.
Struggling with the same problem as JuleY2008. Still no solution? It is the only thing stopping me from having a perfect live set...
I have found a workaround. Make a dummy MIDItrack with e.g. NI Kontakt (or another muliti-out plugin) and select this an external instrument from the rack. NOW make a new track with your plugin of choice and set this to receive MIDI from the "dummy". Works for me.
Johannes' workaround is a good idea. Or you can put certain plugins directly in an instrument rack without using the External Instrument plugin. Either way, test it and make sure it works for you.
Hi, Aaron. I wanted to see if I could get your advice. I've created a setup in Ableton as close as I could get to yours for worship on Sundays. I've had fair success with it - I've continued to introduce and stack sound patches over the past year. But now a real issue has shown up. Whenever I press the sustain pedal, the CPU shoots up 40-50%!!! It causes the audio to crackle and fizzle periodically, and it drives me nuts. I'm having to create new sessions now after a recent episode. The sustain pedal caused a huge delay issue during a live performance. At this point, I've sunk many hours into troubleshooting and searching for answers online, and nobody seems to have found a solution. Do you have any idea how I could fix this problem? I'd really appreciate it! Thanks. :)
Jared, I would venture to guess you have too many plugins with sustain samples loaded up! The chain selector turns off midi NOTES, but not CCs. So even though you may have all your chains turned off and not responding to midi notes, they will still respond to midi CCs. So Sustain, midi CC 64, is still being sent to all your plugins. If there's any sort of sustain sample, they will all play every time the sustain pedal is depressed.
The fact that MIDI CCs are passed through even when the chain selector is blocking notes is why you can turn instruments on and off gracefully. Because it continues to receive the sustain on/off after turning off notes. This is precisely what allows you to sustain a sound, turn off the chain, and then release the pedal. But you can right-click the chain selector and have it filter all midi CCs. This means that if you turn off the chain selector while depressing the pedal, the instrument will never receive the Pedal OFF command after the chain is turned off. So, that's one thing you could do.
The other is that you could go into all your instrument plugins and disable all sustain pedal samples. The fact the CPU is spiking really high every time you depress the pedal is probably because it has to go out and load up all the sustain samples from all your plugins.
Aaron Ott Many thanks for the quick response! I definitely understand what you are saying; however, I can't seem to find where I can right-click in the chain selector to filter all midi CC's. Could you explain a little more where I can edit the filter?
Jared, the chain selector is the bar with slots at the top of the instrument rack. You might need to click on the Chain button to the top-left of the instrument rack to make sure the chain is turned on. Then you can right-click the row at the top and choose that option. See screenshot: www.dropbox.com/s/8dqiehpe4akoo7k/Ableton%20Chain%20Selector.png?dl=0
Great video Aaron!
Hey Aaron, Great video! I am having a bit of trouble making this work with Reason in Re-wire. Could you explain how you are doing it?
Whoops...I have it sorted now. Thanks.
I've setup ableton in the same manner as you did... but I have sylenth1 and it will not appear on the chain selector how come??? thank you!!! great work btw
You'll just have to put Sylenth1 directly in an instrument rack, not through an External Instrument instance. That works!
Thank you very much sir! very helpful! God bless...
only the external hardware and 2 tracks that dont have a vst synth loaded appear in the external Instrument?
what criteria allows tracks to show up in External Instrument?
Sylenth, u-he, massive, abl2 ... don't show up
this free sampler (TX16Wx) does show up
and this is adding them one by one to the same blank midi track on it's own.
so what gives???
+Rick Dawson I have the same problem!
+Rick Dawson Rick, I wish I knew exactly what caused a 3rd-party plugin to be available as an "external instrument." I'm guessing it has to do with how the plugin developers opened up access to the plugin from the host.
I struggled with this for weeks. I believe that using the external instrument only works for multiple output plugins like omni, kontact.. i have not been able to use it for anything like synth1 etc...
is there a way to place midi files/ notes to a macro 128
Hey Aaron! Thanks for the awesome video. Please, how can I get or create a synth sounds Like that of Hillsong wake, as well as your own Omnisphere Warm and Blue patch.
Endy Ekpo Those are all stock Omnisphere sounds...you'll find Warm and Blue for sure. I think for the lead in Wake I used the Gaga Fizz patch and removed a layer so it's not so harsh, but any other supersaw or trance type lead would work.
H
I would like to use a lot of sounds from omnisphere. Cant u do that with albeton live 10 connected to omnisphere. Even though theres only 8 channels from omnisphere. Can you just repeat them steps over and over. To get more sounds from omnisphere instead of just eight. Once u use the 8 channels for omnisphere, u cant use omnisphere for any more sounds?
You can load multiple instances of Omnisphere, with each instance having 8 parts. As long as you have enough CPU power, you can keep duplicating the setup to expand how you need.
@@AaronOtt thanks check me out on reverbnation.www.reverbnation.com/Eviloneishere
Hay Alan! You're a genious. This is what i've been looking for. Awesome live rig!
Just one question: I don't understand how do you navigate between scenes. I mean, how do you move from one to another? Do you click with your mouse, or you have it assigned to some midi control or key?
Maybe you always play with click, What if not? How do you do?
Thanks, man! This is solving all my problems.
Joaquin Baranzano I have my < and > keys mapped to Scene Up and Scene Down, respectively. You could also map a rotary encoder to scroll through scenes. Then I have my / key mapped to Launch Selected Scene. If I'm playing live, I can have complete control of selecting any previous or next scene and then launching it. You can also map a key or button directly to a scene (for instance, the start of the next song.)
If you'd rather automate your way through scenes, you can use the Follow device from Isotonik Studios to follow a clip and launch the next scene at the end. This is how I navigate automatically through a fixed song structure.
Oh, and we do always play with a click but not necessarily to a fixed structure from Ableton.
Aaron Ott Thanks a lot, man! I've been using Ableton and playing live with it since 2009 in another way, but this has just changed the way I'll set my projects in the future. THANKS AGAIN
+Aaron Ott Thx a lot for your video it's really really helpfull!!
Just a question, does that mean that you need to use 2 buttons for changing sound when it's not sync to a sequence?
First one to go to the next scene and second one to launch it?
Thanks again
You are correct...I have one button to scroll Previous/Next and one to launch the selected scene. You could midi map any button (or button or pad on an iPad/Lemur/TouchOSC) to directly launch a scene if you need direct one-button launching.
This is brilliant!!
Hi and thanks for an awesome video. I am unable to see from inside of ext instrument the actual sylenth synth on my track 3.? i I dont have anything in my external instrument except no input and configure. Can you tell me how to fix?
i have this same problem.. anybody find a fix for this?
There are certain plugins that the External Instrument cannot see as a MIDI destination. So those plugins - like Sylenth1 - will ahve to be added directly to the instrument rack without using an external instrument. :)
+Aaron Ott this is really great. managed to set it up just like you did and it works great. cpu usage is minimal! one question though....when i use the volume slider on my keyboard, every instrument in the rack receives the cc data and changes volume, even when only one instrument is selected. i'd like to be able to adjust instrument levels independently, of course. any tips on how to solve this?
i have an omnisphere multi set up in the layout as well and that suffers from the same problem - every patch in the multi changes volume when i move the fader on the keyboard...if i send midi directly to omnisphere (bypassing the instrument rack) it works as expected with only the fader on the same channel as the keyboard moving
+Simeon Harris Are you sending CC7 to the rack? I probably wouldn't do that because each instrument will respond to that CC. Instead, I would send each instrument's output to a different bus and then use MIDI-mapped faders to control your output busses, not the instrument channels. That way you don't have CC7 going to the instrument rack.
+Aaron Ott yes, it's cc7. i don't understand why the instrument rack is sending it to every instrument. i'll have to find another way round it, because having multiple instruments loaded into one instance of kontakt means that sending audio to a bus still won't give me independent control
+Simeon Harris There another option to filter the CC data so that only instruments in an active chain selector slot receive MIDI CCs, but if you switch chain positions, any previously-held CC values will remain. For instance, the sustain pedal (if depressed) will not release if you move the chain position while sustaining. However, it might work for you and the volume so that only the active instrument receives CC7. Right-click on the chain selector above the rack and choose "Chain Selector Filters MIDI Ctrl" to turn on MIDI CC filtering. I don't know if that would work with your workflow, but maybe give it a shot.
+Aaron Ott ahh mate, i think you nailed it. i knew there must be an option somewhere. i know it might cause problems with sustained notes/pedals held over during transitions from one patch to the next, but i don't think it's going to be a problem. thank you so much for the help and taking the time to demonstrate your incredibly clever method!
Hi Aaron...
Thank you for the nice advice... I'd like to try it on my church too..
could you give me the computer or laptop specification you are using for playing it live..
God Bless..
Currently, I'm using a 2014 MacBook Pro with a 2.8GHz i7, 16GB RAM, and a 500GB SSD. All other samples are streamed from an external thunderbolt SSD.
Cool video. How can I change between scenes on the moment I press a midi singles regardless the global tempo?
Smart Halayla The global quantize setting affects whether or not the scene will change immediately or wait until the next bar (or whatever is set at the global quantize setting on the toolbar.) You can change the global quantization to 'None' to have scenes change right away, but you can still set individual clips' quantization setting to a bar if you still want certain clips to sync to the Ableton global transport position. Global tempo is just the master tempo.
Aaron Ott Thanks for this info. Here is an example which might help to make it more clear. Its probably much less complex then what presented here.
For example, 4 channels. Drums, Bass, Keys, Guitar. Everything comes in to Ableton as a pre-mixed audio file.
Something as this-
Channel 1- Drums, 7 different audio files.
Channel 2- Bass, 4 different audio files.
Channel 3- Keys, 8 different audio files.
Channel 4- Guitar, 5 different audio files.
All audio files in different lengths.
I want all 4 of them play as they are originally, Without Ableton effecting them in any way exept for being a "Sample Holder" which I can tell it what to play and when to play it, and that everything will move up or down in scenes when I press a key. Each scene will have its own setup and tracks will play according to the scene setup.
I understand its possible in Ableton, and a video of that will cool. Is there any video on that subject?
Smart Halayla That is easy in Session View and it sounds like you're already in Session View. Just create 4 audio tracks (they will show up vertically in Session View) and you can drag and drop your audio files into the session view grid and place them into scenes as you like. To help facilitate the smooth transitioning between scenes, it's good to set your global tempo to match your tracks and set your global quantize setting to 1 bar so that the scene change or clip changes will happen at the beginning of a bar. I'm sure there are many videos on clip playback in session view...just search TH-cam for that.
Aaron Ott Thanks for the fast replay. The thing is, I don't want any tempo dealing through Ableton. Ableton's part is just as a "Sample holder" and that's it without effecting on the wave tempo and pitch of the audio files information. The coming audio files are pre-mixed, and I understand that Ableton can make a mess to the file sound. Abelton is functioning purely a a "Sample Holder" which moves through scenes, regardless what the audio files contain.
Do you know any video of that?
By the way, I saw your "Playing with Tracks in Ableton Live". Very cool.
Smart Halayla If you don't want to use any of Ableton's tempo/pitch features, disable warping on the clips. Select a clip and then in the clip properties, disable the Warp button and it will play the audio clips as-is. Check out Ableton's TH-cam channel for videos that might be helpful in understanding clips. th-cam.com/play/PLnaUMW2QSIinbOcbfc_kJvKQ-MSmIG1WL.html or here's one specifically th-cam.com/video/04W5LkjC4lY/w-d-xo.html.
Is the link for the template dead? only see a text file
I know this video is old now, but when i try and use NI Massive the same way it just shows as in the instrument bank. ANy idea why?
I don't have Massive to confirm, but I do know the External Instrument will only see multi-timbral plugins. If Massive is showing up correctly, make sure the chain slot it's assigned to is active.
Ah, Massive isn't multi-timbral. It only loads one sound per instance.
you can do it, it's just hidden in a panel and then another panel is defaulted to be closed. Thanks!