Controlling Pro Tools Soft Synths with MPC Sequencer

[l'architect]

Great thread! Helped me make my decision to buy an MPC 2000xl, after knowing the way I want to work is so easily doable!

[godphaser]

For Cubase/Nuendo users (it surely has been said somewhere else but this problem is so boring...) :

Go the input transformer, select local, go to the presets of the transformer : channel filtering / Pass CH 01.

So data from channel 1 of the MPC will only affect channel 1 in the host.

To save time, you can save this setting and then recall in 2 clicks via the inspector (under the drum map, I don't know the name in english, I got the french version).

You do this for how many channels you need.

Then in the MPC in case you have a XL, I guess you know it, each device is a channel.

A detail that totaly sucks on the XL : it sends weird notes, I mean it ain't chromatic at all so I had to create 2 programs (one lower, one higher) to have chromatic pads.

But there is a bug that sucks even more.

Let's say drum1 is for your samples, drum2 is the low program for chromatic pads and drum3 for the higher one.

I like to use the wheel on the program change on the MPC to quickly check few presets of the vst, so I'm on drum2 with my chromatic program BUT then as I turn the wheel it changes the assignation and puts the program with the samples instead. So I can't use the wheel for quick program change.

Hope I helped.

[Charlie-O]

Been doing this in Logic for sometime. Only problem is, Logic only utilizes one core/processor at a time when using this method. This can get the system stressed out fast when using taxing soft synths. Maybe its time for me to give Pro Tools another look? Or is there any one out there that know how to fix that?

[Evaw Evisserppo]

If your Remote SL is anything like the Akai midi controllers, it won't be sending out identical midi via USB at the same time as sending out serial midi via the regular midi out. Also it's unlikely that it will take the midi in on the SL and merge it 'thru' to the USB out to PC.

The most effective way to use an MPC to control soft synths is to use regular midi out from your controller keyboard into the MPC in, like you are doing. Then, you want a midi interface on the computer that receives regular serial midi cables from the MPC outs. If you have a soundcard on the computer with 1 regular midi input, hook the MPC midi 1 out to that. If you can afford it, it's even more powerful when you add something like an ESI M8U XL 4 or 8 channel USB2.0 midi interface to the computer (I recommend that one because it has low latency, Ploytec chip inside, and works in Mac, XP, Win7 and Linux)

With a midi interface like that you can hook up all 4 midi outs of the MPC to their own dedicated input midi ports on the computer, giving you a theoretical 64 discrete soft synths worth of control (as if you'd need that...)

In order to control the soft synth instruments, you need to do some level of assignment on the plugins themselves, or on the host. For example say you were running Kontakt, and you want to capture on the MPC track the midi data that triggers a drum loop cycling, but then also capture the movement of the cutoff filter you have assigned to that sample - you'd right click the cutoff knob, say midi learn, and while sitting live on the controlling track on the mpc, you would move a knob/fader on your midi controller keyboard (or alternatively assign Q Link faders/knobs on the MPC) and in overdub you could add filter movement (or record these movements with your note triggering in the first place).

Doing it this way lets you assign lots of different controllers and overdub them in the MPC, when I've done this in the past I tended to keep the midi note triggering in it's own track, and add another track going to the same midi port/channel just for piling up controller stuff on those samples.

If you use something multimbral like Kontakt as your nuts and bolts sound generator it's best to assign a whole midi port to it, with all 16 channels for different instruments. And if you're running in a host say, you could use ports 2,3,4 for other instruments that might just be one soft synth, and dedicate discrete midi channels to them. It's best practice to create a 'studio system' you're gonna stick to, and don't deviate from it, so songs will always load back correctly. Create a template that loads up with everything ready to go, apart from which sounds are loaded.

Many soft synths can't run standalone, so it probably makes sense to run this kinda thing inside a host, I find regular DAWs are more flexible and useful for this than some third party 'host app' like Bidule, especially because the DAWs have their own ability to capture mixdowns and so on.

Be careful which DAW you use though, for example, on the Mac, despite Mainstage being designed for live hosting/gig performance, I've found it's latency to be shockingly shit frankly, compared to even Logic, the app that it comes from. I recommend using something really lightweight yet super low latency and powerful like Reaper, which is free to try out properly and very cheap to buy if you choose to.

In another thread about the new iAkai iMPC's I ranted about the new CONTROLLERS(not mpcs) that Akai is going to release, and I pointed out that you don't need to drop $1299 on one if you already have a decent working MPC, just hook it up to your host/plugs of choice and you are away. Why wait for some new untested yet-another-daw thing from Akai when you can just hook up your MPC midi to something like Kontakt+synth plugins and have all the features you still want like your patterns/note repeat/pads etc on your familiar MPC. !

[Charlie-O]

@Evaw what daw are you using with the mp?

[F Major]

Originally Posted by Evaw Evisserppo

In another thread about the new iAkai iMPC's I ranted about the new CONTROLLERS(not mpcs) that Akai is going to release, and I pointed out that you don't need to drop $1299 on one if you already have a decent working MPC, just hook it up to your host/plugs of choice and you are away. Why wait for some new untested yet-another-daw thing from Akai when you can just hook up your MPC midi to something like Kontakt+synth plugins and have all the features you still want like your patterns/note repeat/pads etc on your familiar MPC. !

Thats the same thing I've been thinking! I've worked this way for years, and there's no reason for me to buy a new MPC just to do this.

[Evaw Evisserppo]

Originally Posted by Charlie-O

@Evaw what daw are you using with the mp?

Ableton Live 8, Charlie-O, although just because that's where I currently do other work too. I still would say that if you plan to set up shop with MPC hitting a DAW host, Reaper is probably the best bet purely because it seems to handle very low latency and very high load all at once without any grief, and you can easily create an overall 'template studio' that you use for each song project, plus Reaper is cheap as peanuts compared to Live and the others.

If it's all about MPC -> midi -> DAW host, i'd say that was the cheapest yet most elegant solution. Also Reaper supports setting up across multiple monitors whereas Live doesn't, so if you use some big VSTi like Kontakt it helps if you can dedicate a screen to your 'sampler' separate from the rest of the DAW view. Chuck in a good low latency midi interface and it should all work great.

[Evaw Evisserppo]

Originally Posted by Ethereralgreta

those are some great ideas Evaw, thanks.
64 channels of midi into the Mac via MPC seems very cool


I wold love to be able to send any midi input to any midi output so I could record all my hardware synth tweaks without having to repatch the midi cable out from each synth, everytime. Now I have looked at the ESI M8U XL 4 or 8 channel USB2.0 midi interfaces but trying to figure out how I would go about re routing the individual midi inputs to the outputs going to the MPC using it?
Is there some kind of routing software available with the unit allow one to do this? If not, how would one accomplish this task?



In the meantime I have a couple of these USB unos lying around I could use.


lying around here too, and was thinking I would merely plug it in to a USB port on the mac and route the chain like this

Remote midi controller MIDI out to MPC MIDI in
MPC MIDI out UNO USB MIDI in
USB UNO MIDI out to MPC MIDI IN 2

I was also thinking since I am running an MPC 5000



that I could use the MIDI learn function of each softsynth and merely assign the akais rotary encoders to send the CC information in real time and simply record tweaks to the softsynths via overdub on the MPC. That way the akai, not the midi controller, becomes the master controller of the MIDI CC information sent to the softsynths, rather than vice versa and trying to get the Akai to read MIDI CC information from the Remote Sl or the Softsynth itself. Trying to do it that way is like chasing a loose hare down a rabbit hole. somhow, things are getting lost in translation between the USB return from the computer and the MIDI ports on the Remote SL wherin that midi cc information doesn't make it back into the akai MPC. I guess a setup can indeed, get too complicated, if we allow it to.

I will try this and get back with the results, thanks.
also, this thread here has a pdf of the midi schematic of my studio in case you need to see how my current setup is rigged and you have some ideas on how to improve or revise it. thanks!

MPC sequencing softsynths/audio units/vsti via MIDI controller anyone?

thanks for your help!

If i'm understanding you right, you seem to have a need for sending midi back out of the Mac Pro into the MPC for capture? I've not worked this way at all, basically if I'm controlling something via midi controllers I do it via assignment on the software so that it responds to the knobs/faders on my controller keyboard or to the q-links/faders on the MPC, meaning that anything I play on those is captured into the MPC sequencer BEFORE it goes thru the MPC and out to those devices/software. Many plugins don't actually send out any midi when you move their 'virtual knobs' on screen, so I gave up early on the idea of trying to capture any visual automation that I did on a plugin. I think the trick is to do it all via assignment so that any control of a parameter is done physically via your controller hardware on it's way to the sequencer to be recorded. That way even in the MPC you can overlay multiple overdubs of controller data on a track, and that is spat out to your a) hardware synths or b) software plugin e.g. Kontakt/Kore whatever.

Looking at your setup you could do a hybrid where you reserve say 2 of the MPC5000's midi out ports for sending 2 x 16 channels into the Mac Pro to control software, running in a host like Live or Reaper, and reserve the other 2 midi out ports for a midi chain to your hardware synths. That way a sequence driven entirely from your MPC can address whatever software you like, but also your hardware (as long as you're happy with recalling your sounds manually!)

After that you have two choices, you can either capture parts coming out of your hw synths and/or software back into the MPC as phrases (since it can sample while playing), or you can arm the DAW you already have floating and actually capture what you spit into it, you could potentially capture Midi from the MPC for the software instrument tracks at the same time as printing audio coming from your hardware synths and end up with a song fully inside the DAW at the end, for mixing/bouncing. I guess it's whatever way you wanna work, of course the other option is the 1990s way and just grab the 'what you can hear' master mix off your mixer and print a live mixdown directly to a recorder/tape machine/wave editor.

The main point of doing this kinda setup is that it allows you the MPC sequencing workflow (everyone who uses their MPC properly knows you make a totally different kind of music/beats driven by the MPC than DAW programming), but coupled with the huge speed bump and power of something like Kontakt for samples.

[Charlie-O]

The biggest issue is the crackling that comes from CPU overload. This happens to me using Reapers. Worse is logic. It only uses one CPU while using input monitoring. Maybe able ton works better? The search continues.

[Evaw Evisserppo]

The ESI M8U XL sadly doesn't have the input to output routing that it's predecessor the non-xl model had, but what you lose there it makes up for in being USB2.0 and ploytec chip, meaning the latency is great.

If you want to route an input to an output, outside of any running audio app, I recommend Bome's midi translator pro. You can set it to run in the background or run at startup, and it has a patching window where you can wire an input to an output directly, and save presets too for routing layouts that you might want to recall. I ran like this for a bit where I had the midi interface hooked up to my hardware samplers and synths, but took 4 channels of midi input and fed them straight through to outputs, allowing the MPC to control the same hardware as the DAW. Nowadays I don't bother but it's still one way of doing things.

One thing that is better about using something like Bome's is that most DAWs tie the audio buffer to the midi buffer in order to perform some tricks like synchronization and delay compensation, but this means if you use a DAW itself to route your midi hardware in and out you will get loads of extra lag. Bome's is just a midi translator and patcher so it'll work as fast as your midi driver can.

p.s. audio interface does make quite a difference with this stuff, I run RME Fireface800 via fw800 on the Mac Pro and I'm running 64 samples latency though I could go to 32 if I'm not running anything off disk, and that would be the level the MPC would be controlling software synths at.... Works fine in Live 8.27 and latest Reaper beta here.

[Evaw Evisserppo]

Having said all this, I'm planning on moving back to just fully hardware composing, MPC hitting other samplers and the synths, with no DAW involved. Just had my fill of the computer being involved in composing, and how the apparent gains of using a modern computer are undone by all the hours, days, months fighting the issues that come up compared to the old school studio where you just made music all day.

[Evaw Evisserppo]

Great post Ethereralgreta,
This is true and for people who don't have the cash or choose not to blow $$ for those new MPC's it is good advice, if you want to end up with a similar setup without spending any new money. There's a lot of power in some of the software tools like Battery, Kontakt or other samplers/synths, and there's nothing stopping you driving it from the MPC, in fact your whole arrangement without the need for any DAW recording. In some ways it's the best of both worlds, your MPC workflow but able to load those 1GB sampler instruments in a few seconds as opposed to waiting for the MPC5000 to load 4 drum banks in 2 minutes...

I would add to your description that you can of course just plug your midi controller keyboard (including those with their own knobs and faders on cc's) into the Midi input of the MPC and use that to directly drive the software instruments in your host from the MPC's sequencer, meaning you don't even need the keygroup midi sending from the MPC, just any 'Midi channel' selected track on the MPC will drive your soft synths, including capturing your knob/fader automation.

I wonder if Akai realise that in some sense they've opened themselves up to more competition by creating a generic controller, because as you described above, people can just use any MPC and their software/host layout of choice to effectively do the same thing, why wait for Akai's software to be written and potentially for it to be...crap?