Tag Archives: Ableton

Ableton Live + Reaktor MIDI OSC workaround

In this video, John Burgess demonstrates how to route MIDI over OSC between different instances of Reaktor in Ableton Live, in order to send on multiple channels to Kontakt.


I’m not the biggest Ableton Live fiend on the planet, so if there’s a different workaround, let me know in the comments and I’ll add it here. Nevertheless, John has created a very cool introduction to Reaktor’s ability to send MIDI over OSC, something I haven’t experimented with much. Besides its applicability in Live, this technique could also come in very handy to route MIDI over the network in Windows, or between Windows and a Mac – or between two Macs if for some reason you don’t want to use the built in network MIDI facilities.

John also created another video on Reaktor in Live, demonstrating how to keep Live from putting Reaktor to sleep when you’re using it to transmit MIDI. Handy to know in conjunction with the other video!

More on routing Reaktor in Live: multi out audio UPDATE: VST works too, not just AU

Reaktor has flexible audio out ports – you’re not limited to stereo, and you can take advantage of that in Live.

Fire up Live and load the Reaktor AU (UPDATE: VST version will work too). Load the Aerobic ensemble, and in the lower right corner, turn on the “out” switch. This will enable multi-out for Aerobic, so each drum unit can be routed to one of four stereo pairs.

Then go to an audio track, select audio from your Reaktor track, and select either the pre or post FX for the first stereo pair, or one of the three others.

This means you can apply effects to each stereo pair by routing them to different tracks.

But what if you don’t want to use Reaktor’s outputs in pairs? Let’s say you’ve built a crazy custom ensemble with a mono sampler, a sine, a square and a saw wave, and you want to route them individually to the first four outputs. What you can do then, is use Live’s mono track insert effect to choose either the right or left channel exclusively.

So there ya go – easy flexible routing. I’m not sure why it won’t work with the VST version of the plugin, and I’m too bushed to fire up Windows and find out if it works properly there. Are there any Windows users who’ve tried this?

UPDATE: turns out routing with the VST plugin version does work properly after all. I think I had the monitor setting wrong in the receive track. Sorry for the disinformation! Remember to turn off the track activator for the track holding Reaktor, and if you want the first stereo pair, choose pre or post FX in your target track, not post mixer (that would be the muted signal).

Frame: A Reaktor Freeform Looper

Frame: A Reaktor Freeform Looper from Peter Dines on Vimeo.

This is a stripped down version of a looper built to work the way the Simpler instrument from Ableton Live loops. That is, you can set an arbitrary loop length and scrub across it in realtime without glitches or clicking.

In this video I’m using the Frame beta in Kore, which allows me to control the loop start and end points much more accurately than your standard 7 bit MIDI controllers. There’s also some saturation and echo on the Frame channel; however, it’s capable of sounding as clean as whatever sample you throw into it.

I have far more complex versions of this but I cut this one down to essentials for two reasons – one, so it would be obvious what I’m talking about when I say freeform looping, and two, so that it will have a clear structure to hot-rod when I release it.