After answering a lot of posts where i ended up suggesting Plogue Bidule as a solution. It became clear that not many people where too enthusiastic about the idea of running a second application.
Some people discovered Bidule though. And for those people it is pretty much the same experience as for me. Whether you are a beginner or an expert. You will always find something inspiring in Bidule and Live 4 working as one.
In this tutorial, we are going to do something simple. We will set up a 16 step sequencer in bidule, that outputs to Live.
But first things first. Plogue Bidule is a modular environment that allows you to do some things Live 4 can't do (yet)
You can download the latest version at www.plogue.com
This tutorial is made with screenshots out of osx. But they apply to windows users as-well. The only difference is virtual midi. When you start up Bidule on osx, it creates 4 virtual midi in/out's. On windows you will need a utility like "midi yoke" that will create virtual midi i/o in Live and Bidule. You will need to start up your virtual midi application before you start up Live and Bidule, and create at least 2 virtual in/out's.
Ok, lets get started with setting things up.
Start up Live and create a midi track with any instrument in it.
Now start up bidule.
Don't mind this dialogue. We don't need any rewire for now.
This is how everything should look like when you start it up. And assuming there are no other midi devices hooked that would show up as a default.
We don't really need all this stuff. So lets delete it.
Drag them closer together if you prefer and select them all by dragging a window around them. Right-click and select delete.
Ok. Now lets mess with midi a bit. Open a virtual midi out and a 16 step sequencer. Then connect them.
Now go to Live 4 and select in a midi track the output from the step sequencer as midi input.
Add an instrument to that track and turn monitor on.
If everything went right, then you should be hearing a sequence now. If thats not so, check the midi preferences in Live and see if your input or output is not disabled.
To configure the step sequencer, just double click on it in Bidule.
You can adjust the frequencies, bpm, value,....
If you have a midi controller like a uc33 hooked up, you could assign 16 knobs to the 16 frequency values. You can't miss the "learn midi" button in the sequencer window.
If you find that controlling a range from 0 to 12000 is a bit to much for a midi controller with 127 values. Then click on the parameters knob. There you can adjust the range of the values. If you are getting a bit confused with all these frequencies, you will like this next link.
http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eemusic/hertz.htm
I think this pretty much is as basic as i can get. Plogue Bidule has so much more to offer then what i just showed you. But hooked up to Live 4, the possibility's are endless.
Live lets you work in a structured environment, if you want it to be.
But we really need to start discuss more of the experimental stuff we all do. It may distract you from the way you work now. But it will also show you how powerful these apps are together. There are a lot things you will be able to do when it comes to midi routing. But more on that later.
I hope this tutorial made sense. If you have any questions or comments about this tutorial, feel free to share them. The whole point is to get a discussion going that actually leads to something we all can enjoy. Experimentation and exploration.
If i made any mistakes in explaining how to do this for windows, excuse me then.
Enjoy
Cheers
-Bjorn
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