Logic 7 Working With M-audio Keystation 88, Want to control soft synths with m-audio Options

[bennymeeky]

Have just purchased m-audio keystation pro 88. I want to control my soft synths in logic 7 using the keystation pro 88 for live. My problem is that once i have assigned parameters to the controllers on the keystation, for lets say EXS24 on instrument channel 1, i have to have that track selected in the arrange window of logic for the controllers on the keystation to work. As you can imagine when i am running 4 soft synths on different instrument channels at a time this is unhelpful for when playin live.

Can any1 help us out.

Cheers

This post has been edited by bennymeeky: Thu 6 Oct 2005, 13:21

[rotekz]

You need to add a multi-channel instrument object in the environment on the 'audio' layer page. Call it something like 'keystation'.
Then add a channel splitter object to the same page and drag a virtual cable from the 'keystation' multi object to it. They should now be connected together. In order to see the cables you may have to enable the option to show them in the 'view' menu. Then you see 16 cable outlets from the channel splitter, one for each midi channel. For each softsynth drag a cable from the splitter to the mixer channel object that houses the softsynth.

Now with the multi channel instrument object you need to click the bar at the top above the 16 channel buttons. The parameters section to the left of the environment window will now show the 'all channels' setting info. Make sure the icon tick-box is ticked.

Go to the arrange page, create a track and set it to the keystation all-channels instrument. When this track is selected now your midi data should go to the different softsynths you have wired up, to depending on the midi channel the keystation knobs transmit on.

It is possible that there may be greater latency than the current method you use. Try it, I have not done myself within the last few years so the latency and timing jitter may have improved since then. I'm a pc user and still on version 5.51. Let me know how you get on.

In fact I just found this article that explains better than I can. It also shows a way to get all soft synths to sound at once using the I/O plugin:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep04/arti.../logicnotes.htm

You might also want to read these articles as they cover similar territory:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun04/arti.../logicnotes.htm
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec02/arti...icnotes1202.asp

For what it's worth I too have a keystation pro 88. How do you label the controls? I am having to use strips of paper, a right pain. We need to lobby M-Audio to manufacture some overlays.

This post has been edited by rotekz: Wed 12 Oct 2005, 16:01

[bennymeeky]

Many thanks for your advice, unfortuneatly im away from the studio, but once i'm back i'll let you know how i got on.

Again many thanks

Ben