Disappearing Ableton Live MIDI track faders

[bigster]

Calling all Live experts on this little query...

One thing I cannot get my head around in Live (currently using 8.0.4, but have seen this in previous versions too) is how level faders and pan pots disappear on MIDI tracks whenever you make a specific MIDI output assignment.

For example, whenever I want to drive my external Roland synth, it's easy to set it up as a destination on a Live MIDI track, but instantly I'm left with just a MIDI activity meter, and no way to actually control level or pan position in Live itself. I can't think of any other DAW that does this - surely almost all others do the intuitive thing and have MIDI faders and pots that generate CC 7 and 10 messages?

Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks a lot!

Robin

[Hypagen]

Am I missing something obvious?

External Instrument Device.

If you drop External Instrument or a VST Synth onto a MIDI track then the Sends and Pan Pot will appear.

[bigster]

Thanks for that suggestion - I tried out External Instrument earlier but it doesn't seem to do what I want it to. Adjusting the fader and pan doesn't appear to send any MIDI CC data to the instrument - they seem to act on an *audio* return from an instrument, not for the MIDI going to it. In the case of a hardware synth being monitored separately through a desk, for example, the plug-in achieves nothing.

Of course, monotimbral synths (or multi-timbral synths of which you're only using a single channel) work great - as you say you drop the synth on to the MIDI track and you're away. But there are some situations where this approach just can't be replicated. For example, if you're using a Virus TI (and Live is an approved host for it, after all) then you can only have one Virus Control plug-in open. The additional MIDI tracks for each of the multi-timbral parts will be without faders or pan pots. So you end up having to duck back and forth between the Live mixer and the Virus plug-in just to do simple mixing. In other DAWs MIDI channel faders send out the expected CC messages and the Virus channels respond accordingly. Seems a strikingly simple concept to me.

I've since spoken to Ableton technical support. They acknowledge the absence of this function and have forwarded it as a suggestion to their development team. However, they also said the forthcoming Max4Live would allow it to be added easily. Fair enough - but that seems like a hell of a sledgehammer to crack a tiny nut.

[Hypagen]

I understand what you are wanting to achieve now, but I don't really have a solution.

In the past if I wanted to set different pans and levels for parts within a hardware synth, I would do it using the internal software of the synth. I've also had things set up where I would send the different parts out to different channels on my desk and do the pans,levels and extra processing there.

Once I'm happy with a take now its get recorded to audio, so when it comes to doing the final mix none of my hardware synths are even switched on.

Have you considered recording your synth parts and mixing with audio instead?

[bigster]

I think I will end up doing that, but I have a habit of mixing as I go along, so this MIDI fader thing is a bit of a workflow killer.

Thanks for your help and suggestions with this.