Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

Can most DAWs automate start/stop/select MIDI messages sent to external decvices? I've asked around and no one has been able to show me how to do it in Ableton Live.

Here's what I'm trying to do: I want to be able to set up Live to record and push play/record in Live without the Tempest starting its beat. (By default it starts playing when play/spacebar is hit.) Instead I'd like Live to send a "start" message at a designated time. So for example, I'd like to hit record and let the Live record nothing from the Tempest for bars 1-3 but then on bar 4 a MIDI start message would tell the Tempest to start its pattern. Then maybe at bar 24 Live might tell it to stop--or even change the beat/patch.

Or, put another way, I'd like Abelton to be the start/stop/switch pedal--and automated rather than manual. Seems like an important function for live performance. Surely Live can do that somehow?

It does it, but it does it when you press play in Live, it can't be separated. I used to want to do exactly what you want to do when I had my MPC so I could let it have a couple of bars to get midi sync locked in, the way I did it was to have a blank pattern in the MPC as well which I would use when I wanted the MPC "off". You can do the same thing with the Tempest easily I imagine.

Dang. That's exactly what someone on the DSI forum suggested. Seems like an obvious feature for a DAW. Guess I will have to use the blank patch workaround. Thanks.

If you run out of patterns (for the blanks), you can also just turn the volume down on the tempest or your mixer...

I once investigated into getting Live to send a midi clock "reset" without stopping the sequencer, so in live situations I could reset everything when something went out of sync (my 303 did this often until I started to use only very long DIN plugs). It was impossible to find a solution TBH... We even tried to find a solution with Arduino... In the meantime, I've stopped using computers live...

GuyaGuy wrote:Seems like an obvious feature for a DAW

Not really. The whole idea of sequencer control messages is to slave other sequencers. Since the dawn of MIDI sequencing I've been programming "empty" sections of sequences for that very purpose. It's not as much of a hassle as you think. Sequencer messages are not channelized, so every device on the same MIDI Port will recieve it

I know the DSI Evolver supports toggling the start button via sysex (it also responds to standard start/stop messages), guess they dropped that feature on Tempest

You might be able to do something with Max4Live if you have it.