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MIDI Automation Channels


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It's definitely the Control Tab.

The dropdown lists most common CCs or you can go by "Index" which in Midi-speak would be the CC-number.
I don't have many Midi files with automation, but the one I tried had Pan and it showed up when I selected Pan from the dropdown as well as "By Index Only" with Controller Index 10.

Seems that by index you can also have multiple CCs "10 7" loads Volume and Pan both.

I still get a headache from how chops "think"...   ;-)

Cheers,

Tom

Edited by Thomas Helzle
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Hey Thomas,

Yeah I tried dropping a * into the index, I figured it  would show anything that's there up. But it didn't. But it's interesting to know it's possible. Maybe it's a Mac thing?

I don't mind Chops. I think it's because it's one of the first things I've learnt so I'm not polluted from all the other 'proper' Houdini workflows :)

 

edit. Now I look, I don't think I'm exporting the Automation from Ableton. I think I need to read up a bit more and try again

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Yeah, make sure you actually automate Midi CCs.

It's been a while since I used Ableton (switched to Bitwig when it came out ;-) ), but "Volume" in Ableton isn't identical to "Midi Volume". DAW-internal the automation is much higher res (floating point 0-1 usually instead of 7 bit 0-127) and usually does not use Midi. If you explicitly automate Midi CCs it should work though, at least in theory if Ableton hasn't borked it. ;-)

Cheers,

Tom

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You should check out Andrew Lowell's ebook on procedural animation of audio and Midi data with Chops. It may date back to Houdini 9.5 but Chops hasn't changed massively over the intervening years. It's only $30 and well worth it (250 pages and a bundle of example HIP files).

http://www.andrew-lowell-productions.com/andrew-lowell-productions/resources.html

As an Ableton user, you're probably familiar with Max4Live (and Cycling 74's Max). Working with Midi in Houdini is closer to working with Midi in Max, in that it's a far lower level affair (direct manipulation of sample data) so it lacks the UX niceties of a typical DAW such as Ableton. But much like Max this enables you to build your own tools so the extra effort is worth it. Annoyingly Chops is fundamentally a single threaded affair (other than the new Constraints stuff added in H16), so learning workflows based on H9.5 is no bad thing, as these workflows worked well when computing power was a fraction of that in a modern day workstation.

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Ah thanks Tom, that's it. I now have my lovely Automation running through into Chops.

One problem is that I really don't know DAW stuff so now I don't know how to use that Automation to map to what I want in Ableton although I assume it's easy. Sure I can link... somehow...

And hey Jon, yeah I've got Andrew's book. It's where I've learn pretty much everything audio related. Some of it is still somewhat over my head but I love it!

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Great it works now! ;-)

Well, that depends on what you want to do.
With midi CCs, you can for instance directly midi-learn many VSTs (many have right-mouse menus for that on every control) and you should be able to do that with Live factory stuff too. That's mostly used for life use with hardware controllers though, since the DAW-automation is much finer so you don't get stepping.

If direct mapping does not work as you want it, you can try to simply copy and paste the automation curve from the midi CC to the volume or pan in the Live mixer and see if that is compatible - you would have two identical automation curves then, one for midi and one for the dedicated Live stuff.

Cheers,

Tom

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