What better title for a little chapter on the Chain Select Ruler? I see too many posts on forums, suggesting that Ableton needs to implement program changes for their devices. In a way, they gave us a better solution and that solution is what we're going to explore today.
Before I go into the details of Ableton's way off switching between presets, I'll just give a few reasons of why Ableton's solution can be better than traditional program changes.
- Program changes are messages that serve the purpose of changing one instrument on a MIDI channel. Program changes would not allow Live users to switch between independent effects that come behind the instrument's output signal.
- By design, Live will only allow you to send 1 program change to 1 MIDI channel from 1 MIDI clip. In other words, Live's program change implementation is very limited and originally designed to work with hardware instruments.
- Most sequencers will read program changes as an automation line that can be changed over time. Live doesn't. 1 clip can only contain 1 program change. Therefore, the method I'm about to suggest yields many more advantages over the theoretical benefits you would get if Ableton were to implement program changes for their instruments.
Racks
In Live 6, Ableton gave us Racks. Racks came with a bunch of cool features and a manual, but that was about it. Although Racks serve an obvious purpose as a container of multiple instruments and effects, most of the possibilities were left to the imagination of the user.
As you probably have noticed, the imagination of Live users is unlimited. What really inspired me to start writing this piece was the lack of know-how available in written form. The Covert Operators have been using this feature intensively in our previous and upcoming products. I've also written a piece on "Making a dry/wet control for custom audio effects". But apart from that, you wont find any real good documentation on how this feature is better then traditional program changes. I hope the following chapter will enlighten some people to the benefits of using the Chain Select Ruler.
The Chain Select Ruler
What is the Chain Select Ruler? To understand that, you first need to know what a chain is. A Chain is a feature that allows you to place instruments and effects in parallel. Before Racks, we were only able to place one instrument on a track. All the effects that come behind the instrument could only be placed in a serial manner. Each Chain is equal to an Audio or a MIDI track within a Rack. You can have as many chains as your CPU will allow. Before racks we could only make 2 instruments be played from 1 MIDI source by using at least 2 MIDI tracks. If we wanted to send a signal to 2 effects at the same time, we needed at least 2 Audio tracks. This is all a thing of the past, thanks to the Chain Select Ruler. The Chain Select ruler is the orange bar you see to the right of the "Hide" button on the image below.
This orange Ruler lets you select different chains by moving the Ruler over a Chain Zone. In the image above, the Ruler isn't over any Chain Zone. So no signals are being allowed to come in to the Rack to be processed. This also means that no devices are using any resources, though that factor highly depends on the design of the device. Ableton's devices don't use any CPU when they are idle. All except for the Beat Repeat, which is always calculating. Chain Zones are used to determine the range of a chain in relation to the Chain Select Ruler. Here are a few examples: In the following image, you see 2 effects stacked in parallel. The Chain Select Ruler is directly above the Chain Zones, so both chains are receiving and outputting Audio signals.
The next image shows you how you would fade the signal from the reverb effect to the delay effect. Its the same method I've covered in the article "Racks: Making a dry/wet control for custom audio effects".
The third example picture is one I've taken from a MIDI Effect Rack that was created to let me select 1 chord from a small collection of chords with 1 knob. This is pretty much the same principal as sending a "Program Change" message to the MIDI Effect Rack.
Total Control
We can control the Chain Select Ruler in any way we want. We can map a macro to it, automate it or control it by using Live's MIDI/Key mapping. This means we can assign a specific instrument or effect to a clip and switch to other instruments and effects by triggering other clips that contain an automated Chain Select Ruler. If you still doubt the power of the Chain Select Ruler, have a look at the Covert Seq. This is a fully functional step sequencer, driven by an automated Chain Select Ruler.
All I did was ensuring that each consecutive note is sent to a different chain which contains a custom MIDI Effect Rack that processes that note before it is outputted to the synth. Its really as simple as that. I'm currently developing a new version of the Covert Seq that uses even more powerful tricks that are possible with the Chain Select Ruler. There lies the difficulty in talking about the Chain Select Ruler.
There are so many tricks, I wouldn't know where to begin covering them all. In the coming weeks, you'll see some big things coming from the Covert Operators. The packs we have unleashed perform as the perfect source material for future revelations of the massive amount of know-how we picked up over the years.
I hope you enjoyed this article and experiment with the Chain Select Ruler. The next article I'm writing on this will assume you know all of the above. So it'll be pure uncut tips and tricks. Thank you for reading and staying tuned for the madness we are eager to share with you all.
