Ableton Midi Routing for Scaler 3

Scaler 3 General Discussion
94

I was just registering to bring to the community some alternatives. With my solution Scaler is saving the current settings, there is no need for MaxForLive, there is no need to host Scaler in another different (paid) platform.

I solved using the already built in Virtual midi ports in OSX and PlugData (an amazing Open Source Project).

1- First, In your mac you need to activate the virtual port IAC Driver. Is already installed in your system. (I believe for windows there is something similar called midiloop, or something like that). This is a virtual midi cable, what ever you send to this midi-out port it will appear in midi-in.

  1. Install PlugData, is an evolution of PureData but is made to be integrated in Daws as instruments and effects VSTs. Is a vissual programming language and you can build your own patches.

  2. In your Ableton Live, load you Scaler 3 normally. Inside your Scaler 3 Mixer, and create several tracks. Forget the midi channel in the timeline view of Scaler3, focus in the Mixer View and add a PlugData FX

    Before anything, change the midi settings of PlugData to send midi out through the virtual port only (disable the rest)

  3. Create a PlugData patch like this one:

I was implementing a bypass for the audio FX information (adc dac) and what ever midi that come from the midi in (is only the midi information from that specific track) it will me sent to the Virtual midiport in the channel you specify (increase or decrease with the button. You can find the patch in this message (zip file) if you have problems to buid it.

For some reason, the peeople from scaler dont send (to the individual FX tracks) the same midi channel you set in the track timeline. AS far as i saw is always the channel 2, but with this hack you can send the track midi to the channel you want.

  1. Go to Ableton, and enable to Track the virtual port

  2. And finally, go to your Ableton track (with the instrument you want to play), selec “Midi From” the virtual port and choose the Channel you setup in Scaler.

    Two messages for the scaler devs:

    • It would be amazing if Scaler (hosted in Ableton) could write directly to the virtual midi port (with this solution we could avoid to use plugdata).
    • If not possible, at least you could, inside Scaler, send to the individual mixer Track FX the same midi channel as the user select in the track timeline, with this solution we avoid the need to setup manually the channel in the PlugData plugin.

    PS for Scaler Sales: Do you have discount coupons for contributions like this one? Im still in the trial of scaler 3 and checking if fits my needs.

    PS2: I was taking screen shots of the process, but for some reason this stupid post editor was complaining about embeding media in a post. So no pictures.

    midibridge.pd.zip (756 Bytes)