Ableton drum rack controlling AR with mute - how to

Elektron Gear Analog Rytm
#1

So I spent some time trying to figure out how to set up a scenario where I could use Ableton as the sequencer for the Analog Rytm, and still have performance aspects on the Rytm, especially the mutes. The reason for doing this, in my case, is that I have more controll when making the live set, and don’t have to depend on the AR sequencer and Ableton sequencer to be in sync - so it just feels a little safer when performing with Ableton as clock and main sequencer. Not sure anyone are interested, or indeed if everyone knew how to do this, but got no replies when asking, so here’s how I did it.

  • Midi in and out from Ableton to AR (via Midi cables, but should also work over USB I guess)

Ableton settings:

  • “midiport connected to AR” input : Remote ON (to recive the mute midi data)
  • “midiport connected to AR” output : Track ON (to send the note midi data to AR)
    Optional output Remote On (if you use another controller and want the mute lights to switch)

AR midiport settings:
Out / Throu / Input / Out as you like (mine is set to midi as I don’t use the USB)
Output channel: doesn’t matter for the mutes
Param output: CC
Mute Dest: Int+Ext
Recive Notes: On (to recieve the midi notes from Ableton)
Recieve CC/Nprn: Doesnt matter for mutes, but I have it on to recieve CC for other control changes

Midi track channels: as you like, but mine are set from 1 to 12 corresponding with the tracks on the AR (BD1…CB12), and I assume yours are to in this example

Midi Sync: I have clock recieve, transport recieve and PGM Change recieve on since I want the AR fx to sync with Ableton’s tempo, I have fills etc programmed on the AR and I want Ableton to be ablet ot select program on the AR. However, it will work without any of this.

Setup in Ableton (You can obviously set it up differently, but this is how I did it to get everything on 1 channel and as simple as possible)

  1. Create a drum rack
  2. Drop “external instrument” on 13 of the pads (1 for each drum pad + 1 for the sound / master out)
  3. Set every pad to play “C1” (as that is the root/base note for each drum engine,I assume you can pitch using the piano roll, but haven’t tried it as I’ve not used chromatic mode so far) except for on the 13th pad, which doesn’t matter as it’s only going to pass Audio through
  4. Set the 12 first external instruments (the one that’s going to trigger your drums) to “midi port connected to AR” and channel 1 to 12 (1 for the BD, 2 for the SD etc) and Audio from “No Input”
  5. On the 13th pad, the Main Out, set the midi port to the same, but Midi to No Autput, as you don’t need it to transmit midi, but set the Audio From to the Audio Input you’ve connected the AR to. On this pad I’ve set volume to 0 and boosted the gain, plus inserted EQ and a glue compressor - you can treat this as your drum bus.
  6. Send the audio from the Ableton channel to your master or wherever you wanna bus it.

Now you should be able to program the AR from this track, and click the pads in the drum rack to trigger the AR sounds.

So, how to set up the mutes. As you probably know the mutes on the AR are connected to the sequencer, and not the actual sound, meaning that if you sequence the AR externally (like we do now) and press mute, nothing happens except for the mute pad to dim the ligth from Green to off. The sound still plays.

To get around this I midimapped the mutes to the on/off buttons of the external instruments on each pad.
Simply click the “midi map mode” in Ableton and make sure the midi mapping menu on the left is open (press the upper left arrow to open it)

Then go to the drum rack, select the pad corresponding to the mute you wanna set up (again I use 1 to 12 like the layout on the AR) click on the on/off button on the external instrument for the pad you will program the mute, hit the mute button on the AR and it should record
Channel: X (1 to 12)
Note/Control: CC 94
Path: Name of the Ableton Track with the drum rack on
Name: Device On
And a min and max value. In order for the mutes to work set: MIN to 0 and MAX also to 0

I don’t know the technicals of why it must be 0 on both MIN and MAX, but it’s something to do with CC94 sending out a value of 0 and 1 only. Anyhow it must be set to 0 on both, as far as I have experienced, to work.

And do this for every one of the 12 pads (not the Main Out / pad 13)

Now you should be able to program the Rytm on that track in Ableton and still use the mutes as normal on the AR.

Tip: Name every pad according to what sound is on it (mine are like the setup on the AR “BD1, SD2 etc”) this way you can use the “fold” option on the clip and keep the naming tidy.

Speculation: maybe you can set the midi out on the “Master Track” to your PGM Change channel, if you have problems sending PGM changes… So far I’ve not had troubles with that, so I don’t really know.

Sorry for long post, and sub par English. Hope someone get use from this.

Much love

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#3

Mutes on AR as MIDI controller in Ableton via IAC Driver Bus

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#4

can i watch a demo of this somewhere?

#5

This looks promising, but i’d need a manual or tutorial on how to set this up. I’m no computer specialist. Should anybody know where to find more detailed info on this then pls do not hesitate to point it out

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#6

its in the middle of this video

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#7

Thank you! Kind of had it working, but only with Rytm in normal usb midi mode.
I need to use Overbridge though and when i switch Rytm to Overbridge mode i cannot establish contact with the app anymore. There’s probably a solution to get it to fully work though, or at least a way to find a workaround to achieve what i want.

#8

If you’re using Overbridge, I think a simple way to do this with what comes with Ableton these days (at least, this is how I set something similar up myself) is to take advantage of the fact you can use the lowest 12 MIDI notes on Channel 1 to trigger all 12 drum voices, no real need to do anything complicated.

  • Make a MIDI FX rack with twelve chains (corresponding to the 12 Rytm voices).
  • In each chain put a Pitch MIDI effect that only lets through the corresponding MIDI note
  • After each pitch MIDI effect put a Scale MIDI effect with range set to just the corresponding MIDI note with all the notes in the grid turned off - now turn each of these devices off. These devices are going to block MIDI notes going to Rytm when the voice is muted.
  • Put the overbridge plugin after the MIDI FX rack

Now if you sequence MIDI on these tracks using the lowest MIDI notes you’ll be sequencing the Rytm with Ableton. The trick is to MIDI map each of the pads to the on/off switch of the Scale device. MIDI learn on each Scale device’s On button and hit the mute pad - it’ll get assigned to CC 94 of the corresponding channel. Note that on my Ableton I got a crash every time I MIDI mapped until I did this with the Overbridge VST temporarily deleted, no idea why. The slightly confusing part is that the Scale device being on = the voice being off, and vice versa. If you make the range in the MIDI map min: 1, max: 1 your mutes will correspond to blocking the corresponding MIDI note going to the Analog Rytm.

Now you can save this project as a template and you can mute voices from Rytm that are being sequenced from Ableton. What is nice is you can put all kinds of Max For Live sequencing devices in each of the chains to do fun stuff. I like putting devices that randomise velocity or sample and hold devices that can send a random modulation to Rytm each time a particular voice is triggered.

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#9

Thank you for your detailed reply. Much appreciated!
I’ll investigate some more

#10

In case it’s useful here,
I made a device to access mutes in Ableton Live. I’ve made for my personal use so some things are not settable, but if I were making it public/sharable I would change that.
So you have to enable Maxforlive as your first control surface, and I believe use the default MIDI channels.
CF_Rytm_CS_Chain_Mutes.amxd (405.7 KB)

Also, if you drop this rack in the same track, the maxforlive device will automatically mute the note chains for you (don’t rename it because it uses the name to identify it):
Rytm_Chains.adg (2.6 KB)

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