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Hey! I am trying to use Notion 6 along Ableton Live 9.5 via Rewire. Because I love both.

It works almost fine. The only problem I find with Ableton Live is that the transport (playback control) doesn't work perfectly from Notion to Ableton.

Ableton is the Master, Notion 6 is the slave.

From Ableton, I can play, stop, go to any point of the timeline and start playing from there. Notion will play along.

From Notion, I can play and stop, but I can't jump anywhere. AS soon as I hit PLAY, the playback resumes to where it was, no matter if I go to the start of the music or to any other point in time.

They play along right, there's no sync problem - but if I click anywhere, or hit the 'Rewind to start' button and play, the playback cursor will just jump to the place it was playing before.

So, the only way to navigate and play from where I want is to doing this in Ableton.

My setup: a Windows 10 64-bit i7 machine with 16GB RAM.
Ableton and Notion are all 32-bit versions

(i decided for better vst compatibility over computing power. But I also tried the 64-versions of these apps and I have the same problem).


The questions are:

Am I alone?
Is this a Windows only problem?
Is there any setting either on Ableton or Notion, or a Rewire reinstallation I could try?

Emilio Le Roux
Composer | Film Director
Win 10 i7 Desktop / Win 8.1 % Win 10 Surface Pro // Notion 6.3.454 64 bit
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by Surf.Whammy on Wed Oct 26, 2016 10:18 pm
As you probably know, I do everything on the Mac, so I cannot be much help with Windows, but so what . . .

I did a bit of research and discovered that several years ago I made a video about Ableton Live 9 (early version) and NOTION 4 during which apparently I was pretending to be President Bill Clinton and had a pretend German lady saying nonsensical things every once in a while--phrases like "Do you have LSD?", "Are you human?", "Is this the way to OZ?", "Do you like my tambourine?", "Are you experienced?", "Do you have a cowbell?", "Is that a whammy bar?", "You have a big saxophone!", and "Is that a monkey?". . .

I have no idea why I did this, but so what! I was young and had no sense . . . :P

phpBB [video]


More recently, I just downloaded the current 30-day trial version of Ableton Live 9, and if it works I will do a few experiments . . .

THOUGHTS

It's possible, if not likely, that Ableton Live 9 does not allow its ReWire slaves to control the transport, and this is consistent with the transport controlling events in the YouTube video . . .

When I have more information, I will post a follow-up . . .

Lots of FUN!
:)

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
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by elerouxx on Thu Oct 27, 2016 7:39 am
Thanks for your quick reply.

What I can say about how Ableton + Notion behave today is:

- Ableton as a master of course can control playback, and Notion plays along.

- Ableton Live takes PLAY, STOP from Notion, but it doesn't take timeline jumps, it just ignores them. Meaning, if you click anywhere in the Notion timeline (score), the Ableton timeline cursor doesn't move

- When you then hit PLAY in Notion, Ableton resumes playing from ITS cursor position, and Notion plays along from there too. So you have to make this jumps from Ableton.

- When using REAPER as a slave instead of Notion: everything works either way - if you move the cursor to any position in Reaper, Ableton immediately jumps to that time too. So, it doesn't matter if you use playback controls, pause or jumps from any the master or the slave, the results are the same. Ableton doesn't 'forbid' commands from a slave, when the slave sends the right commands I guess.

- When using Reaper as a master and Notion as a slave - It's the same, everything works either way. So Reaper understands Notion's 'jumps' but Ableton doesn't. And Ableton understands Reaper's jumps.

Emilio Le Roux
Composer | Film Director
Win 10 i7 Desktop / Win 8.1 % Win 10 Surface Pro // Notion 6.3.454 64 bit
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by phonolith on Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:05 pm
Hey,

did you manage to send MIDI from the Notion Slave to the Ableton Live Host? I would really love to do that and basically bought Notion 6 for that specific feature. No luck so far though, I cannot see Notion 6 as a MIDI input in Live, even though I am using the Rewire Midi staves in Notion.

Thoughts? Is it possible?

Music: Troll Breeder

Gear: Studio One Professional & Notion | Mac Mini 2018 | Mac OS X 10.15.4 | 3.2 GHz Intel Core i7 | 64 GB RAM | Intel UHD Graphics | Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 Mk1 | a bunch of guitars, MIDI controllers and lots of software
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by Surf.Whammy on Fri Feb 16, 2018 8:44 pm
nilsblum-oeste wroteHey,

did you manage to send MIDI from the Notion Slave to the Ableton Live Host? I would really love to do that and basically bought Notion 6 for that specific feature. No luck so far though, I cannot see Notion 6 as a MIDI input in Live, even though I am using the Rewire Midi staves in Notion.

Thoughts? Is it possible?


It's been a while since I did anything with Ableton Live, so I downloaded and installed the 30-day demo version for Live 10 and did a few experiments . . . :)

At first I was not able to send MIDI from NOTION 6 to Live 10, but after doing some reading I found a note at the Ableton website regarding what to do when Live is not getting MIDI input on the Mac, which is to create a new MIDI configuration in Audio MIDI Setup . . .

No MIDI Ports Available After Upgrading Mac OS X (Ableton)

I tried a few other things, but creating a new MIDI configuration worked . . .

[NOTE: I also had to reboot the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (Early 2008) running Mac OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan), which included rebooting the MOTU 828mk3 that I use for the external digital audio and MIDI interface . . . ]

Prior to doing this, I was getting audio in the ReWire session with Live 10 as the ReWire host controller and both NOTION 6 and Reason 9 (Propellerhead Software) running as ReWire slaves, but no MIDI . . .

THOUGHTS

It's easier to host virtual instruments in Live 10 and to get everything routed, but it took me about two hours to get everything working correctly, with most of it devoted to determining why I was not seeing MIDI activity in Live 10 (see above for the solution) . . .

I watched my YouTube video from a few years ago (earlier post in this topic), but mostly to hear the virtual German lady saying surreal stuff, which continues to be a bit wacky . . . :P

Whatever I was doing in October 2016 worked, but I forgot all of it . . .

The way it works here in the sound isolation studio is that once I get something working, I can get it working in a new version of the respective software if I click in enough places and perhaps do a bit of reading when nothing else appears to help . . .

Based on actually reading the relevant sections of the Live 10 User Guide, I see nothing about ReWire MIDI, so at present I think that Live 10 does not support ReWire MDI . . .

However, Live 10 supports MIDI via a "virtual MIDI cable", which at least on the Mac is easy to do, since Mac OS X provides "virtual MIDI cables" via the Audio MIDI Setup application . . .

If you are doing this in the Windows universe, then you will need a "virtual MIDI cable" provided by a third-party developer; and there are two of these that Windows users here in the forum recommend (listed alphabetically):

LoopBe1 (nerds.de)

virtualMIDI (Tobias Erichsen)

Instead of using ReWire MIDI staves in NOTION 6, you will use External MIDI staves in NOTION 6; and you will need to specify the names of the "virtual MIDI cable(s)" for MIDI Output in NOTION 6 Preferences . . .

[NOTE: In the Mac OS X "Audio MIDI Setup" application, I name the virtual MIDI cables "IAC Driver IAC Bus 1" and "IAC Driver IAC Bus 2". "IAC" is the acronym for "Inter-application Communication". Each bus has 16 channels, and it's an inter-application communication "pipe" that applications use to send and receive MIDI on their respective MIDI "ports". Works for me! . . . ]

Image
NOTION 6 Preferences ~ "MIDI IO" Pane

[NOTE: You can have 16 channels per MIDI Port, so the maximum is 64 channels. One channel can be used to play more than one Live 9 or Live 10 hosted virtual instrument; but generally I prefer mapping each virtual instrument to its own MIDI channel. In NOTON 6, there are four MIDI Ports (A, B, C, D), and each MIDI Port has 16 channels . . . ]

Once you do this and start a new ReWire session (Live 10 first, then NOTION 6), everything will work nicely . . .

This also is the case with Live 9, but I am running Live 10 now . . .

I plan to do a new YouTube video to show Live 10 as the ReWire host controller in a ReWire session where NOTION 6 and Reason 9 are ReWire slaves and (a) NOTION 6 is sending MIDI to Live 10 to play virtual instruments hosted in Live 10 and (b) NOTION 6 is sending MIDI to Reason 9 to play virtual instruments hosted in Reason 9 . . .

I might include Live 10 sending MIDI to Reason to play Reason synthesizers, with the resulting Reason audio being sent to Live 10 . . .

As a bonus--if I am in a particularly surreal mood--I might make this the initial version of a new Asynchronous Demi-Melodic Death Metal song named "Metal Monkey", which is a song idea the Aliens From Outer Space beamed into my mind about two weeks ago . . .

Lots of FUN! :)

P. S. If you want to use ReWire MIDI, then consider using Studio One 3.5 Professional (PreSonus) as the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application and ReWire host controller . . .
Last edited by Surf.Whammy on Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:47 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
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by Surf.Whammy on Fri Feb 16, 2018 11:01 pm
elerouxx wrote- Ableton Live takes PLAY, STOP from Notion, but it doesn't take timeline jumps, it just ignores them. Meaning, if you click anywhere in the Notion timeline (score), the Ableton timeline cursor doesn't move

- When you then hit PLAY in Notion, Ableton resumes playing from ITS cursor position, and Notion plays along from there too. So you have to make this jumps from Ableton.


I think this has been fixed in Live 10, at least in a practical way . . . :+1

THOUGHTS

I did a few experiments, and I can stop and start the transport from NOTION 6 without problems, which includes jumping along the timeline . . .

Ditto for Reason 9 (Propellerhead Software) . . .

I can move the transport to measure 22 and press "Play" in NOTION 6 and both Live 10 and Reason 9 start playing at the correct measure . . .

And I can "Stop"; move the transport to measure 10 in NOTION 6; press "Play"; and everything follows correctly . . .

This works nicely in all three applications (Live 10, NOTION 6, and Reason 9) . . .

However, Live 10 remembers the starting measure and beat for the arrangement, so if you want to change this, (a) you can click on it in Live 10 and enter a new arrangement starting position or (b) click on it and drag vertically upward or downward to set the new arrangement starting position . . .

If you are focused on working in NOTION 6, then use the NOTION 6 transport until you want to record. This is the same for Reason 9 . . .

When you want to record, then switch to the Live 10 transport and set the arrangement starting point as desired . . .

The rule I use that I nearly always start recording new material in a ReWire session from the start of the song; but sometimes I just want to record a few measures from a different starting location, so it depends . . .

You can do it this way in Live 10, but you need to set the arrangement starting location first . . .

[NOTE: In this example, the arrangement starting position is set to measure 46, beat 3, tick 1, and this is where the Live 10 transport will return when you click on "Play" or "Record". When Live 10 is playing or recording, the numbers track the actual measures, beats, and ticks; but this does not change the arrangement starting position . . . ]

Image

Live 10 is the ReWire host controller, so it's the ultimate authority in a ReWire session . . .

NOTION 6, Reason 9, and other ReWire slave applications can be secondary authorities for a while, but (a) Live 10 has an arrangement starting position and (b) when Live 10 is doing something that only the ReWire host controller can do, its arrangement starting position sets the rule . . .

When you consider it from this perspective, the behaviors are logical . . .

I did an experiment with Live 10 as the ReWire host controller and both NOTION 6 and Reason 9 as ReWire slaves . . .

In the experiment, I made some changes to the notes in the bass line in NOTION 6 and used the NOTION 6 transport to navigate,"Play", and "Stop" . . .

This works nicely, and so long as I use the NOTION 6 transport when doing this, the behavior is very logical and convenient . . .

When I decide to record, I switch focus to Live 10 and set the arrangement start position from which I want to start recording; and this also makes sense . . .

In this experiment, I wanted to change a simple bass line to a walking bass line; and since I have Live 10 at the top of the display and NOTION 6 in the bottom of the display, I have two transports . . .

If I want to listen to the song from the arrangement starting position, then I use the "Play" button on the Live 10 transport; but when I am changing bass notes in NOTION 6, i use the NOTION 6 transport, which is very nice . . .

Making it all the nicer, when I stay in NOTION 6, everything (Live 10, NOTION 6, and Reason 9) loops based on the starting position in NOTION 6 . . .

Since I do everything mostly "by ear", this is very convenient; and once the notes sound correct, I can use a bit of music theory to make additional enhancements; but I always do the "by ear" thing to check the way it sounds after I make changes, because in a few instances I have identified instruments where a few of the samples are wrong by a half-step, which mostly happens on very low bass notes . . .

Lots of FUN! :)

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
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by phonolith on Sat Feb 17, 2018 1:15 am
Amazing, thanks a lot Whammy!

Music: Troll Breeder

Gear: Studio One Professional & Notion | Mac Mini 2018 | Mac OS X 10.15.4 | 3.2 GHz Intel Core i7 | 64 GB RAM | Intel UHD Graphics | Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 Mk1 | a bunch of guitars, MIDI controllers and lots of software
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by Surf.Whammy on Sat Feb 17, 2018 10:31 am
nilsblum-oeste wroteAmazing, thanks a lot Whammy!


Glad to help! :)

As promised, this is the new YouTube video that shows Live 10 (Ableton) as the ReWire host controller and both NOTION 6 and Reason 9 (Propellerhead Software) running as ReWire slaves . . .

NOTION 6 is sending MIDI to Live 10 to play some instruments hosted by Live 10; and NOTION 6 also is sending MIDI to Reason 9 to play some instruments hosted by Reason 9 . . .

[NOTE: I use ScreenFlow 7.2 (Telestream) to make YouTube videos, and for some unknown reason it makes the audio monaural when it's actually stereo; but it's good to listen to mixes in monaural mode. When I use ScreenFlow with Mac OS X Core Audio it garbles the audio, so I use a MOTU 828mk3 external digital audio and MIDI interface, which doesn't overload ScreenFlow. However, ScreenFlow doesn't see the default Main 1-2 stereo outputs from the MOTU 828mk3, so I have to use a pair of Analog outputs. Live 10 appears to do the same thing--except for keeping it stereo--so that took a while to discover a working set of rules. "Main 1-2" tends to be the industry default, but different applications use other audio output channels. When I use "Analog 1-2" as the output from the MOTU 828mk3, ScreenFlow sees it as a higher set of channel numbers, but Live 10 sees it as "3-4". The MOTU folks told me to try all the channel pairs when stuff like this is a bit strange, and that is good advice. I need to call the Telestream folks to see if there is a way to get stereo, but for now monaural is interesting, and it's a good way to check a mix. None of this stuff is documented, probably because the presumption is that everyone is born-knowing it, which would be great if everyone was born-knowing this stuff. On the good side, after a while it starts making sense; and all things considered, it no more complicated than flying a spaceship or running a Fortune 500 corporation . . . :P ]

phpBB [video]


The song is "Faster" (Techno Squrrels) and is a demo song that came with Reason 6 . . .

I use it for educational purposes to show how NOTION 6 interacts with Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) applications and Reason . . .

This is done with External MIDI staves in NOTION 6 for the MIDI, since as best as I can determine, Live 10 does not support ReWire MIDI . . .

With ReWire MIDI, you don't need a "virtual MIDI cable", and some of the configuration is a tiny bit easier with ReWire MIDI; but the practical aspect is that External MIDI staves work just as nicely, and in Live 10 they are easy to configure . . .

For reference, once I have the first MIDI instrument track configured in Live 10, I duplicate it and then change the instrument, MIDI Port and Channel, label color, and track name, which makes it easier and faster to configure . . .

Lots of FUN! :)

P. S. I did a bit of "scouting around" in ScreenFlow and discovered there is a way to set the panning for MOTU 828mk3 output channels; so I think this will solve the "monaural" problem . . .

If it does, then I will do a second YouTube video with stereo audio, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :ugeek:

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
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by Surf.Whammy on Sat Feb 17, 2018 11:13 am
This is the stereo version of "Faster" (Techno Squirrels), Live 10 (Ableton), NOTION 6, Reason 9 (Propellerhead Software) in a ReWire session with NOTION 6 External MIDI staves sending MIDI to both Live 10 and Reason 9 . . .

[NOTE: A few years ago, I composed and played in real-time the rapid stuff on a Behringer 25-key MIDI keyboard and recorded it in NOTION, which is how that stuff appeared. Later I copied and pasted the notes onto a VSTI virtual instrument staff to be played in Kontakt 5 by a "sassy" Cuban trumpet that is part of their "Cuba Collection", so it's played on a FabFilter Software Instruments Twin 2 synthesizer and a "sassy" Cuban trumpet . . . ]

Image

phpBB [video]


THOUGHTS

I learn by doing, and when I first started using NOTION in 2010 nearly nothing made much sense; so I worked on it at least 12 hours a day and often 18 hours a day . . .

Making sense of ReWire was the most difficult activity, although since MIDI was a new technology here in the sound isolation studio, making sense of MIDI also took a long time; and at one point I purchased some MIDI courses from Groove 3 and macProAudio, both of which were excellent and eventually made it possible for me to make sense of MIDI . . .

The fact of the matter is that nobody documents everything necessary to do ReWire--including the Propellerheads, who with a bit of initial help from the Steinberg follks are the folks who created ReWire and are the authority on ReWire . . .

The reason is that ReWire is a real-time interapplication communication technology, which means that it involves at least two digital music production applications, although technically when a ReWire-aware application is running by itself, it's in a special type of ReWire session, but so what . . .

Explained differently, fully documenting every possible combination of digital music production applications in ReWire sessions on every possible type of digital music production computer is an impossible task, because everything changes in often small ways due to new versions of software, hardware, and so forth . . .

Initially, it took me about three months to make sense of ReWire; and during that time if anyone from Apple, MOTU, Notion Music, or Propellerhead Software had knocked on my front door and said "How's ReWire working for you?", I would have chased them around the front yard with an axe . . .

I was not a happy camper! :readit:

Everybody told me "Our stuff works", and the MOTU folks told me to download Reason (Propellerhead Software), since Reason is the gold standard for proving that a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application does ReWire correctly, which I did and that helped . . .

Eventually, I discovered the rules; and after about 18 months, the Propellerheads approved my application to become a registered ReWire developer, but mostly because I also was interested in being a Rack Extension developer . . .

On the ReWire side, my primary interest was getting the software development kit (SDK) for ReWire, so I could see exactly what happens in a ReWire session; and due to being a longtime software engineer, (a) I have the necessary credentials and (b) I am skilled in getting approved for things like this, which at one time years ago made it possible for me to be approved as a UNIVAC 1100 Series Mainframe Computer site, even though I did not actually have a UNIVAC 1100 Series Mainframe Computer. They sent me nearly a ton (approximately 2,000 lbs.) of internal documentation, user guides, and all that stuff, which was great, since I was doing UNIVAC 1100 consulting at the time . . .

Now, I can show someone how to do ReWire in about five minutes . . .

It's easy once you know the rules! :roll:

Another thing I started doing in 2010 was replying to questions in the Notion Music Forum, which continues in the PreSonus NOTION Forum; and it's not unusual for me to work on answering a question for 12 to 18 hours, and sometimes to working on the answer for several days . . .

My perspective is that it's like a POP QUIZ; and after doing this for nearly nine years, I am getting very good at pop quizzes . . .

I think this helps folks, but it also helps me . . . :+1

For example, in this current pop quiz I discovered how to solve the "monaural" problem in ScreenFlow; and along the way I discovered how to do "callouts" in ScreenFlow, which is nice for highlighting part of a screen capture and then annotating it with text, which works for 4 seconds per callout . . .

Lots of FUN! :)

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!

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