OldRhymeRadio wrote:Hello people,
I really need some help, I have a Roland S-550 that i would like to sequence with Ableton Live. I have a usb to midi in and out interface. Can someone instruct me how to set this up. New to ableton, drop some knowledge on me if you can.
I have no experience with a S-550 but I've used Live for years.
Looking at the back of a S-550 in a photo I see you have standard MIDI In. Out and thru ports. You'll want one standard MIDI cable for the S-550's MIDI In connected to the MIDI out on the USB to MIDI box or cable you have.
As long as the USB/MIDI device is class compliant (no driver needed) or the driver is properly installed, it will appear in Ableton's MIDI preferences screen.
Whatever the name of the USB/MIDI interface is will show up on the Live MIDI I/O list in preferences. Enable Track and Sync. Remote is not necessary as the S-550 isn't going to have knobs and faders you want to double as Live MIDI controllers. (On a synth with a lot of controls you might use Remote)
In Ableton go to the "View" on the top toolbar. Enable "Show Ins/Outs" if you haven't already. (why it's not the default I have no idea, it's incredibly useful to always have up on the channel strips).
Once In/Out is viewable in the MIDI and Audio track columns you take a MIDI track and Choose MIDI To as "name of your USB/MIDI interface". You can then take an audio track and use Audio From to record the output of the sampler. (maybe an audio interface you may have or just the computers built in input)
You may also want to go in Preferences/Record,Warp,Launch and set "Exclusive" to Solo rather than Arm. When exclusive is set to Arm you can only monitor the current recording track. (With it off you have to just be more careful of feedback loops. You have a 12 bit Roland sampler, probably old hat to you with hardware mixers, avoiding the feedback loops
).
You can also use the "External Instrument" device in Ableton's library to have the MIDI and audio on one track if you like things more compact.
You'll have to refer to the Roland's manual to set up up a proper MIDI handshake/sync but because the Roland has no sequencer you could get good results recording with no sync. But to get the recording perfectly in time with you in the box sounds you might want to do a proper MIDI sync.
Live's really easy to get used to, very cleanly laid out. If you can run a S-550 or old rack samplers you'll be mastering Live quick.
