Automate the switching of Software Instruments (for live)

[David]

Here's an environment that will let you automate the switching of the instruments assigned to your keyboard. Useful for a live situation where you want a certain keyboard to play a certain instrument during a section, and another during the next section...

Building on this template, it's easy to assign many keyboards to many Audio Instruments ... in fact you can easily assign 16 Keyboards, switching between up to 127 different Audio Instruments <i>each</i> (that would be 2032 Audio Instruments, if they were available).

In this environment, we automate the assignement of two live keyboards, switching between 4 Audio Instruments each.

Bar 1 to Bar 3
Key 1 plays an ES 1
Key 2 plays an ES E

Bar 3 to Bar 5
Key 1 plays an ES 2
Key 2 plays an ES P

Bar 5 to Bar 7
Key 1 plays an ES M
Key 2 plays an EVP 88

Bar 7 to Bar 9
Key 1 plays an EVD 6
Key 2 plays an AnSwirl

Always make sure both Keyboard 1 and Keyboard 2 Tracks are rec-enabled. As you hit play you can see the Meta Events change the state of the Instrument Assigner in the environment window, and you can see the blue cabling jump from one Instrument to the next.

To get a full sense of how this environment works, you need to press play and play your keyboard. If you have two keyboards, set one to send to Cha 1 and the other to Cha 2. If you only have one keyboard, you can switch between the 2 banks of 4 Audio Instruments each by switching the send on Cha 1 or Cha 2. Or you can just stay on one of those Channels and enjoy the automatic switching between the 4 Audio Instruments.

Update:
I have added functionality so that there is an "All notes off" event sent to the Audio Instruments upon switching, to avoid stuck MIDI notes in the case you were sustaining notes on your keyboard while logic is switching to another Instrument.

[Mediaspar]

David,

Is there a way to trigger an audio track to play/stop from a midi controller? I'd like to set up a situation in which I load audio clips and have the ability to, for example, assign Pad 1 (on the midi controller) to loop audio track 1 while being able to go to loop Pad 2 (assigned to audio track 2) all with one touch of the pad. Basically, is there a way to set up an environment within Logic that mimics the capabilities of Ableton Live, for example? I'd really like to explore the performane aspect of Logic as I feel it's possible yet under-rated, or underexplored, or both. Let me know as I am very interested.

-Adam

[Anonym]

If I have not misunderstood you, this can be done via touchtracks. You would have to load the loops into a sampler, create a midi-sequence containing a note to trigger the sample, and drag that sequence onto the key ( in the touch tracks window ) your pad is assigned to.

you could then put all the tracks with the sequences to trigger into a folder to clean the arrange window.

[Ware]

David, can your switcher, InstAssign.lso.zip, be set up to use the "Chase Events" function? The " Chase Page" only has a "Text Meta Events" check box, and that appears to be only for song lyrics.

[medusaproductions]

Dave that is amazing. I'm not quite sure what is going on though. This allows for multiple instruments to be played by different midi keyboards at the same time. Simply by changing the midi channel they are transmitting on. (I know more than that is going on here but....) Is that the gyst. That's my goal anyway.

What were the twopieces of icons in the environment? Transformer and ?

[medusaproductions]

Okay I have the alias / Transformer part figured out. Is there a thread that discusses changing instruments by changing midi channels that might be a better starting point for me and then I can work my way up to here.

Thanks

[wip]

http://logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=6098

by changing midi-channels here you can shuffle through the various instruments. excellent for live performances.

[wip]

oh, and david rules!!
you`ve really made me appreciate the meta events!!