Subsequent 25 arpeggiator plugin problems

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

Hallo Everyone,

I am fairly new to Synthesis and I find this entire world amazing. I play electric guitar for many years and I am an effect freak with lots of pedals. So I do have a good basic understanding of music. I am however struggling to get an arpeggiator plugin running and maybe someone can tell me what it is I am doing wrong.

The setup:

I have a Moog Subsequent 25 and I am going MIDI out into an audio interface (which is connected via USB to my computer and to Abelton Live) and from the midi out of my audio interface I go back into my moog’s midi in.

I saw in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdCqDxZQd2A&ab_channel=loopop

(at minute 26.35)

I understand that with my setup it would be possible to use an arpeggiator plugin and bring that back into the moog. So as in the video I turned local off – I am sending midi to my computer and trough the arpeggiator plugin and back into the moog and it WORKS ! I am so happy.

Now the problem. In the video I can see that he is able to use the on board filter and all the other knops on the moog panel while the midi sound is coming into the moog, but all my kops on the panel are disabled (including the filter).

Is there something I am missing here? I am able to get the arpeggiator through and back to the moog but I can’t use the moog’s panel to play with the sound.

Sorry in advance if I used wrong terminologies but maybe someone can give me some advice.

Many thanks in advance to everyone.

Cey

#2

With local control turned off the panel controls also send only changes via MIDI without effecting the device directly. So you need not only send back the note data from the computer, but also every MIDI CC message received from the Moog.

#3

Hi Cey,

The basic issue is that with Local Control off, the knobs are sending only CC data and that is also only sent to Live and not used directly by the Synth (local control means everything, not just notes). So you need Live to be able to send those CCs back to the synth for it to work. In most cases, these CC’s should be passed through by the plugin unchanged and sent straight back to the synth along with the newly generated notes.

Without knowing more details on your exact setup I can’t provide specific advice on how to fix the problem, but an easy test is to first remove the arpeggiator plugin entirely from the track and to make sure that you can still play your synth through the blank track (this will require input monitoring set to ON, or equivalently set to AUTO with record arm enabled - this will permit live MIDI to run through the track in realtime). This should in theory send all MIDI that comes into the track (e.g. if the track MIDI source is the Sub 25 on the correct channel, anything you play or tweak on the Sub 25) to be echoed to the track MIDI output (which again should be the Sub 25 and correct channel). If all is well here, the Sub 25 should act as expected - notes should play, knobs should take effect, etc. If not, there’s something incorrect about your MIDI setup in Live that needs to be solved first.

If the test passes, however, and the Sub 25 with local control off works fine without the arp plugin but suddenly stops responding to knobs with the plugin in place, then the plugin itself is likely blocking the CC.

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#4

Oh, the Sub 25 has a MIDI Output Filter that can disable sending CC’s, make sure you have set that hidden parameter to “Filter OFF” to make sure you’re sending all of the MIDI data to Live so that it can be reflected back to the synth.

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#5

Might help to think in a slightly different way.
All you are doing is using an external arpeggiator to trigger notes.

So all you need to do is set the moog to recieve notes. Nothing else. Send no midi from the moog. No need. Then all the knobs will work just fine.

Hopefully that helps?

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#6

First of all thank you very much everyone for the great responses. I will try some of the points mentioned during my lunch break (working from home due to COVID --) and also do a fair bit of reading around CC’s. My biggest fear is always “I hope nothing is broke here”… haha I know that sounds silly.

I will first try to send the moog via midi straight through without plugin and take it in steps. I might also contact Moog directly to double check (I discovered they have a chat function on their webpage).

I will report back after I try a couple of things and keep you posted.

Thanks again for the help.

Cey

#7

Screenshot 2020-11-12 at 15.19.56
Screenshot 2020-11-12 at 15.19.562372Ă—1353 414 KB

I finally managed to get it running as I planned. I still don’t understand fully why but what I did was to clicked on IN in the monitor section and the sound appeared in my Moog and I was able to tweak the sound with the Moog’s panel! So that’s the good news. The bad news is that I found this “solution” just out of luck so I haven’t really learned anything.

The monitor before was turned to “auto” and not sure where I could listen to that at the end. Maybe there is a different way of doing this … please correct me if I am wrong here.

Many thanks

Cey

#8

I suggest you take the time to read the Ableton manual. It’s well written and will explain in detail these things. Understanding the track routing and monitor modes is essential to working well in Ableton.

To briefly answer your specific question, though, here is a page detailing what that section does and why it’s important (please refer to my answer where I discussed the equivalency between “In” and “Auto + Record Arm” when you read this to understand what’s going on with respect to your situation): https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006569179-Monitoring-in-Live-FAQ

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#9

Thank you @delta-c I completely agree with you that I do need lots of reading and learning. Please apologise if I waste anyone’s time here but it does help to reach out to others. I am very new to Ableton and before that I had a Yamaha Cassette Recorder …

I am mainly learning from Youtube videos but if anyone has good reading material for “basics” that one can recommend? I am more or less going into DAWs completely cold and I was recommended Ableton to be most “accessible” .

Thank you so much again for all the responses.

#10

The Sub 37 has an option to turn off the keyboard. I believe your Sub 25 should have the same option. This is what you want.

EDIT: oh sorry. The sub 25 doesn’t have this. The sub 37 does though! :confused:

#11

I still wonder if I should got the 37 over the 25 but I think the sub 25 is a way better snyth than I am a player :slight_smile:

@Prinzabu I think I do need to keys to play the tones (send signals out to the plugin)… I know the sub 37 is also the one that has an arp. included … But I was told that if I use it with a DAW the sub 25 should be more than enough for someone like me.

#12

I opened this thread thinking you were running 25 arpeggiators together and hoping to solve a problem with that!

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#13

@taxhaven maybe I do that one day … not sure how that would sound at the end :slight_smile: Sorry to disappoint you

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#14

This may sound somewhat old school, but the manual of Ableton Live is actually quite a good read.

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#15

Dude. The arpeggiator in the sub 37 is the best hardware arp I’ve played. It goes almost seamlessly through the subdivisions, it has swing, and it’s p-lockable through an electron sequencer. The sub 25 seems really awesome as well, but i thought it had the arp and other features it doesn’t! Get the sub 37! :wink:

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