Ableton Template: MIDI Input for Instrument tracks

Signal Flow: Audio and MIDI

In my Live set I have several instrument tracks that I can play from the Compact SL keyboard. Instead of the keyboard notes being directly sent into each track, they are all fed from a single MIDI track. This track has various MIDI effects that can manipulate the incoming notes.

MIDI Effects rack

So for example the Sub-Octave MIDI effect device adds another note an octave below the played note. There is also a MIDI delay that adds delayed notes to the input. All of these plugins are controlled from Lemur template.

Lemur MIDI effects controls

Note that the audio from these tracks are fed into a single audio track, where various effects are added, Before being routed into a Looper device. This way I have one Looper for all my instruments.

PWDM Midi Set up

Thought I would share my own midi set up as an example of what can be achieved using different techniques.

First a quick list of the equipment used with a short description of how it fits into the set.

CME-UF5
 A cheap midi keyboard controller from China. Gives me a 5 octave piano keyboard, 9 faders and 8 knobs.
Has a usb plug but is not very reliable when using it so I stick with the midi out instead.

Behringer BCR
A midi controller with 32 knobs and 24 buttons. A great controller in my opinion and with this editor, very versatile.

Philip Rees C16
Another midi controller this time with 16 faders. Very easy to edit and set up.

Korg Padkontrol
16 pads that make drumming with fingers very easy.

Hello World

If you’re as old as me and bought their first synth before the MIDI revolution in the 80,s.You will be familiar to the pain in trying to sync your Moog Rogue synth to a Roland 606 drum machine. Everything was done by control voltages and triggers (CV + Trig). This would mean that you needed 2 cables.-

CV - Sends a voltage signal to control the pitch of a note. A continuous voltage that went up or down depending on the pitch needed (eg. the higher the voltage the higher the note)

Trig - A voltage spike that told the synth when to play the note.

Now this does not sound too bad but the problem was that each manufacture would use their own standards. This caused all kinds of confusion when trying to get a Roland synth to communicate with a Korg synth.

Then came along MIDI and suddenly life became much easier. One DIN cable was all that was needed to send a signal from your sequencer to your synth. And even better it was an industry standard. Now that Korg synth could be sequenced from any MIDI equipped sequencer.

When I bought my first MIDI gear (Yamaha TQ5 sequencer/sound module + Cheetah MS6 sound module), I was blown away by how simple it was to setup and run in comparision to the older CV/TRIG equipment I had owned.

I realize some readers maybe aware of the shortcomings of MIDI (and there are a few drawbacks). But for a technology thats almost 30 years old it is still being used in almost every studio in the world and new equipments is still being made with the iconic MIDI In/Out/Thru sockets.

In the next few blogs I will be showing my present studio setup in regards to MIDI and how it was all setup.