How to route multiple midi controllers to fixed Logic tracks

[MrTacos]

Hi-- I'm sure this is basic, but given the commonness of the words in my search, I haven't been able to locate anything in the archives. Apologies if this is asked all the time.

 

I have multiple midi controllers, but lets take the simple case, on my desk right now I have my 88key piano and a 4x4 drum pad controller. How can I set up Logic so that I can force the drum controller to play the instrument on track N (assuming its an Ultrabeat instance, for example), regardless of what the selected track is?

 

I searched the Logic 9 manual, and I flipped through the Logic 8 manual since I still ahve the paper copy, but the only thing I could find was a bit about how "Logic directs incoming MIDI data to the currently selected track". There MUST be some other way to route this?

 

In an ideal world, I'd like the Software Instrument tracks to work more like Audio tracks. With an audio track, I have my mic preamp plugged into say input 13, I can go to any track, assign input 13 to it, and the rest of the objects such as plugins on that track will be fed audio data from input 13.

 

Is there anything like a Channel setting for Software Instruments? That way I could plug in two keyboards and a drum controller and be like "ok, I'd like to control the Ultrabeat on channel X with the drum controller", and then I could disable it and control the EXS24 on another track with same, but, and this is the key, if I had the piano controller set up to play an ES2 instance on track one, I could still reach over and play the drum controller and hear the EXS/Ultrabeat samples being triggered, rather than ES2 notes.

 

This would be especially valuable when working with other people. Someone can be working on a drum pattern w/ the drum controller while I can click around the whole interface and set up other tracks, etc.

 

Thanks in advance

 

(also-- if anyone knows why installing Logic 9 made everything but a few orchestral loops disappear from my Media Browser's Loops tab, I'm all ears on that too)

[vpunk]

I THINK (and that's not something I do a lot of, ask my gf.), that you can do this by specifying the MIDI channel on your controllers, and the midi recieve channel on your software instruments . . .. and THEN, record arm all your tracks. . . . .You need to record arm all your tracks so that they'll play at once.

 

 

For example,

Keyboard Ch. 2, - Piano sounds receive Ch. 2.

Pads Ch. 3 - Drums receive Ch. 3 etc . . . .

 

As per usual, I'm away from my station and working for the man so I don't know if this will work or not. . . .

 

Let me know??

Ty.

[MrTacos]

I'm away from my setup now too, but using some of your terms and googling some more it looks like the answer might be:

 

1) Set a MIDI channel (or channels for splits) on each controller

2) Set up a track in Logic, go to its inspector. Somewhere in there is a setting called MIDI Channel which is by default 'All', so any note event on any MIDI channel feeds through that track. Change this to match the desired MIDI controller's channel(s).

3) Repeat this process till you've mapped all your controllers->channels

4) set up your instruments or what have you on each track

5) Record-enable each track. Im not sure why you need to do this, but I guess if the selected track is no longer guiding midi data to the track, they won't pass midi data to their objects unless they are in record. Sort of like how audio tracks don't pass audio unless they are in record, but to me, that makes sense, whereas the midi version doesn't. It would make more sense to me that you'd only get MIDI regions after recording if you were record-enabled, but that the MIDI data coming in your interfaces on channel N always feeds through to a MIDI track listening on channel N, but clearly, I don't know what I'm talking about. Second, you apparently have to enable all of them? Or something weird happens.

6) Go to Recording preferences and make sure "Auto demix by channel if multitrack recording" is set to true. I don't know what that does, but my guess is Logic would normally put all your MIDI data on the selected track when recording, regardless of channel. This seems dumb to me too. Audio tracks don't work this way, there's no "Auto demix by audio input when recording". But I guess if you tick this, Logic FIRST takes all your MIDI data from a record pass and assigns it to a new region in the current track, but uses channels to route it to the appropriate software instruments to actuallly generate noise. So when you stop recording, it goes over the region, sniffs the channel of each MIDI event, and moves it to the record-enabled tracks that are listening on that channel?

 

This has the smell of something that results from Logic's somewhat schizoid differences in how it thinks of MIDI data being routed through the environment and the more traditional audio sequencer view it trys to present in the Mixer and Arrange windows.

[vpunk]

5) Right - You don't have to record arm all tracks, just the ones you are dealing with.

6) Not sure if this is needed or not, because if you're recording a channel to a selected track, it wuld filter out only the info you wanted - so if you have your key's on Ch.1, and a synth track to Ch.1 only that would record?

 

Dave, anyone, is this right?

[Fred B]

This has the smell of something that results from Logic's somewhat schizoid differences in how it thinks of MIDI data being routed through the environment and the more traditional audio sequencer view it trys to present in the Mixer and Arrange windows.

+1

[David Nahmani]

I didn't read it all - seems right - I wrote a "Tips & Tricks" article on this that I believe is a bit clearer:

 

Control Multiple Instruments on Different MIDI Channels