One controller, many VST's
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- KVRist
- 337 posts since 16 Jan, 2004
Hey, I'm a bit of a MIDI newbie, but I have a question. I have one keyboard that I want to use as a controller for several plugins within Tracktion2. In case it matters, they are Drumatic, TraingleII, Crystal, Stringer, mdaPiano, and Synth1. I want to play these live with a looped beat (one line of the beat with the loop function highlighted). I want to switch between the different plugins at different parts of the song. When I do this, the beat often skips when I am dragging the MIDI input to the new track. Is there a better way to do this? My laptop is a 2.0GHz Centrino (Dell Inspiron 6000) with 1GB DDR2 Ram. It seems like this shouldn't be overloading the laptop.
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- KVRAF
- 12977 posts since 29 Sep, 2003 from Ottawa, Canada
Tracktion isn't optimized for Live performance. There are better tools for the job.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 337 posts since 16 Jan, 2004
Well, I don't have the money for anything else right now. Any suggestions for how to make it work OK for now? What software would you recommend for down the road?
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- KVRAF
- 3345 posts since 8 Nov, 2003 from Amsterdam
energyXT ?
btw one solution to get your MIDI sent to all the channels would be using a rack filter... but then all VSTi's would respond to all the MIDI input all the time...
btw one solution to get your MIDI sent to all the channels would be using a rack filter... but then all VSTi's would respond to all the MIDI input all the time...
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- KVRian
- 1112 posts since 17 Jul, 2003 from Kauai, HI
This isn't too hard to do in Tracktion.
1. Put the controller keyboard on Track 1.
2. Create a simple rack filter that has nothing in it except a connection from the midi in to the midi out.
3. Put a copy of the filter on Track 1 and all other tracks that will have your VSTs.
4. If your VSTs can be told which midi channel to receive on, set them to different channels starting with 1 or whatever. You then use your controller keyboard to swith channels, thus switching from VST to VST. Hopefully, this is easy to do on your controller.
If your VSTs can't be told a specific channel, then you need a midi channel filter on each track. Download MIDI Channel Filter at niallmoody.com and put a copy on each track between the rack and the VST filters. Then set the MIDI Channel Filter to a different channel for each track (drag the bar on the little gui). Assuming your VSTs are able to receive midi on all channels, the filter will pass through the midi to each track depending on the channel you've picked on your keyboard. On mine, it's just a matter of pressing a hardware switch, so it's super easy to go to 16 different VSTs!
But I haven't tried this with a drum loop playing. Any glitches would likely be a hardware problem--not enough memory and the like.
Hope this helps.
Tom
PS--There's probably a way to filter midi in Tracktion, but I'm too lazy to figure it out when the MIDI Channel Filter is so easy to use!
1. Put the controller keyboard on Track 1.
2. Create a simple rack filter that has nothing in it except a connection from the midi in to the midi out.
3. Put a copy of the filter on Track 1 and all other tracks that will have your VSTs.
4. If your VSTs can be told which midi channel to receive on, set them to different channels starting with 1 or whatever. You then use your controller keyboard to swith channels, thus switching from VST to VST. Hopefully, this is easy to do on your controller.
If your VSTs can't be told a specific channel, then you need a midi channel filter on each track. Download MIDI Channel Filter at niallmoody.com and put a copy on each track between the rack and the VST filters. Then set the MIDI Channel Filter to a different channel for each track (drag the bar on the little gui). Assuming your VSTs are able to receive midi on all channels, the filter will pass through the midi to each track depending on the channel you've picked on your keyboard. On mine, it's just a matter of pressing a hardware switch, so it's super easy to go to 16 different VSTs!
But I haven't tried this with a drum loop playing. Any glitches would likely be a hardware problem--not enough memory and the like.
Hope this helps.
Tom
PS--There's probably a way to filter midi in Tracktion, but I'm too lazy to figure it out when the MIDI Channel Filter is so easy to use!
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 337 posts since 16 Jan, 2004
Thanks saviorneeded. That did the trick. I had to use MIDI Channel Filter. My keyboard is an old cheap casio, so I haven't figured out how to use it to switch MIDI channels. But I can do a quick mouse tap and get the job done.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 337 posts since 16 Jan, 2004
OK, I now have a bcr2000. How do I set up a knob to change between midi channels. I am trying to do the same thing as before without having to mess with the mouse.
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- KVRAF
- 3345 posts since 8 Nov, 2003 from Amsterdam
I have a BCR but don't have the answer. However you might consider posting this question in the Hardware forum with an appropriate title... Because what you want is more BCR related than Tracktion related.
btw I looked it up in the manual, but it seems like each knob has the MIDI channel embedded in its programming. Meaning that you cannot change the MIDI channel globally for all knobs. In that case you might want to make 16 (or so) BCR identical presets, one for each MIDI channel.
On the other hand, a common approach - also in the BCR Tracktion template I think, but I don't use that - is to use the the 8 rows of knobs / buttons for the first 8 tracks or MIDI channels (e.g. volume knob, mute/solo buttons, pan knob, etc).
btw I looked it up in the manual, but it seems like each knob has the MIDI channel embedded in its programming. Meaning that you cannot change the MIDI channel globally for all knobs. In that case you might want to make 16 (or so) BCR identical presets, one for each MIDI channel.
On the other hand, a common approach - also in the BCR Tracktion template I think, but I don't use that - is to use the the 8 rows of knobs / buttons for the first 8 tracks or MIDI channels (e.g. volume knob, mute/solo buttons, pan knob, etc).