I asked this on the ableton forum, but got no answer…maybe here the chances are better.
I am trying to achieve this:
Create instrument rack that contains a chain with all LIVE stock midi instrument (not drums)
Be able to select instrument from that chain with MIDI CC 1
Within each of the instruments in the chain create a list of presets (variations,subrack,subchain?)
Be able to select those presets with MIDI CC 2
Is this possible at all? I’d love to easily select from different instruments and browse through presets from my controller, as it would make my workflow a lot faster.
I didn’t watch the whole video below (he talks a lot…. Way too much), but he does show how to setup the chain with Live native instrument patches.
You can then map this to a macro, and once mapped to a macro you can assign midi to it.
In a nested rack, you can assign multiple sub rack parameters to the same master Macro (the one that will eventually be assigned to your midi controller).
If I understand correctly maybe the video I made about having several end-of-chain racks should be helpful, this method should apply to instruments as you can put anything in the racks anyway.
I use keyboard mapping for toggling between but you can use midi mapping to achieve the same thing
As far as I can understand that only solves point 1 & 2.
I’d like to take it further after being able to select different instruments with the first macro… and select presets within this selected instrument with a second macro.
I don’t think it’s possible with single CC because every rack would be a separate instance, same CC cannot control different racks, the only way is to create have racks of same instrument with different presets and use 1-127 racks in total to switch between…
maybe there’s a way to achieve this with custom M4L device but I’m not that familiar with it…
As an example, if you have Analog, Simpler and Operator as your instruments and if you have 10 patches for each, there would be 1 chain for your instruments (1-3) and then there would be individual chains for your presets for each instrument patch (1-10 for Analog, 1-10 for Simpler and 1-10 for Operator).
You would map the chain switching to Macro 1 (for the instruments).
You would then map the chain for each of the instruments chains to macro 2.
Then you go into mapping and assign your midi control.
*Edit: One more step (I just tried and confirmed it works) - For each grouped instrument (nested rack), you are mapping that Chain to it own Macro, but you then need to map this Macro, to the top-level Macro, number 2.
btw I’m pretty sure it can be achieved with surface script, I mean there are controllers such as APC 40 mk2 that have DEVICE/BANK controls, and they all use scripts for the integrations, so maybe there’s a way to create a custom script for that…
