Simple way to get rid from Ableton Live midi out's limitation when using VST arpeggiators,sequencers,reason 11 players..

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I'm sure many of you know this trick however I regularly see people asking for A way to get rid from this annoying Ableton Live limitation, with A simple midi pipe and plogue bidule its resolved! Cheers!
Multi midi channels outputs for ableton live.JPG
Ableton 2 channels in from reason 11 in plogue bidule.JPG
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Chandran wrote: Tue May 26, 2020 4:22 pma way to get rid from this annoying Ableton Live limitation
There's even better way - get Bitwig! It fully supports MIDI channels and since 3.2 beta5 also routes incoming CC from VSTs, so you can use all the LFOs, Envelopes, MSEGs in Reason Rack VST you want in Bitwig too (you can't in Ableton) ;)
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Hahaha! the DAW war is declared, sorry mate am really satisfied by the stuff I use...And I can use the lfo's and everything I want already, and bidule is A really useful toolbox which I can also use with other DAW I own...However I agree Bitwig is also A nice DAW, and not to forget is USINE HollyHock!!!
Cheers!

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What Live limitation is this?

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double post!
Last edited by Chandran on Tue May 26, 2020 10:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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if you use instruments like virtual analog sequencers, arpeggiators, lfo's, envelope generators VST's or Reason 11 VST plugin rack version, you cant send to more than one midi channel from the one where the plugin is inserted: if you open another midi track with the instrument you want to control from that track "bass for example" you will notice there is only one omni midi channel, that means if your vst can send more than one midi channel, one for bass, another one for melody and so on, you will receive all of them on our "Bass" instrument and you have to use as much VST sequencers sending on on 1 midi channel as your song requires instead of 1 VST able to send up to 16 channels!!! Try for your self and you will know what I mean...(people are asking ableton since decades to change this behavior!!!) however if you use the trick I shared you get rid of that limitation, the bad is you need a Plogue bidule license but is A very useful tool, you can use it also like a VST plugin host and load vst2 plugins on VST 3 host's or save presets with your favorites VST group combinations and load them on different DAW without the need to insert many VST one more time, if you work with different DAW's it's a time saver, the learning curve to master Bidule it's quiet stepped but for simple thinks like creating a rack or the example I showed it's really simple. Hope it helps!

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Thank you for your explanation. Hadn't tried something like this yet.

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This is a frustrating omission from the Ableton Live software. I didn't realize it could be overcome with Bidule, so thanks for the tip. I have read also that it can be overcome with Blue Cat audio Patchwork.

But both those tools cost around $100. The fact that I need to spend that much money to overcome this ridiculous of a software functionality gap really breaks my crayons. So I ain't spending it.

Well... maybe if Bidule or Patchwork go on sale...

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triple 1 post sorry!
Last edited by Chandran on Wed May 27, 2020 1:56 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Chandran wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 1:50 am Yep very frustrating...Be careful in your choice both are nice but the way they work is very different (I mean try before choosing): for example with patchwork you can't send to live midi tracks using midi pipes (as shown, in my example using bidule), you have to load the vst sequencer and the vst instruments inside patchwork and you are limited to 8 instruments (you can open many patchwork's inside patchwork but i'm not sure it'works...) and then you have to route each instrument to different track if you want to mix using live mixer, so more time to set up, on my system is less stable than bidule and you have to deactivate the undo function on patchwork, I tried with modulys sequencer vst and my cpu exploded,and with reason rack is quiet buggy if I bypass the reason plugin it continue to send midi...an I had a crash, but never had problems when using it without vst sequencers inside.
patch work.JPG
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Last edited by Chandran on Wed May 27, 2020 1:59 am, edited 2 times in total.

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triple post 2 sorry!
Last edited by Chandran on Wed May 27, 2020 1:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

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triple post sorry!

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Got to try that with a MUX....
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If I understand this correctly, are you saying that a track can't send on more than one MIDI channel (i.e. Channel 2 and Channel 7 simultaneously) in Live?

That's not a limitation as you can set the MIDI From for each track to receive MIDI from a single master track.

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Thanks, Chandran, for comparing Patchwork to Bidule -- that's very helpful.

Forgotten -- here is my use case. In Ableton, I create a chords track and run it through ChordPortion. ChordPotion is a fun tool that takes chord MIDI information and creates up to four MIDI sequences that can be routed to four MIDI channels. I want to route each of those four MIDI sequences to a separate track in Ableton -- say a bass track, a lead melody track, a chord rhythm track, and a something shiny track. But I can't do that.

I can output the full MIDI output from ChordPotion to another track, but not split it by channels. The workaround is that I create my Chordpotion track with the chord sequence, then duplicate that track three times, so I have four copies of the same thing, and then I can run the MIDI I want to their respective instruments. So whereas I would like to have one chord track and four instrument tracks, now I have four chord tracks and four instrument tracks. Plus, if I decide to make a change to my progression, I have to change it in four places, so I have yet another track for chord source, so I can modify it there and copy to the ChordPotion tracks -- so 9 tracks when five should suffice. I suspect it's a similar scenario with Reason.

It's not the end of the world, which I'm guessing is why Ableton hasn't done anything about it, but it's pretty irritating.

By the way, if I'm using an external MIDI tool, I can route the MIDI to different channels in Ableton. I just can't do it from within Ableton.

Make sense? If there's a solution that doesn't cost a hundred bucks, and I'm just missing it, I would love know what it is.

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