Ableton Live with Kronos

[Darkmata]

How well does the kronos work as a workstation along with ableton live?
I mean for building midi loops on the fly, easily changing instruments and adding layers without stopping.......Id love some feedback if anyone has or is doing a bit of this!

[gjvti]

Live doesn't support sysex messages, which are quite important to have full control over Korg Kronos - otherwise you just sync them via midi (or usb midi) and send audio channel pair in either direction via usb or if you want more channels you use your audio interface.

[cynkh]

How well does the kronos work as a workstation along with ableton live?
I mean for building midi loops on the fly, easily changing instruments and adding layers without stopping.......Id love some feedback if anyone has or is doing a bit of this!

I don't currently have Ableton Live but I do a fair bit of work with Logic 8 and can say that with MIDI loops already created I can switch between patches on the Kronos very quickly- most of the time without any audible artifacts like clicking or popping. I've let loops run while messing with just about any parameter including program change and the Kronos has always kept up.

Cheers!

[Darkmata]

So i should be able to have ableton control up to 16 miditracks, wether it be looping or just playing, and have one stereo track coming back into ableton, whilst having all parameters on the kronos controlled via midi with say an APC40 as a controll surface. Will it work like this?
It's probably a standard setup and common with workstations, i'm a bit of a noob so i just have to make sure for i know exactly what i want and don't want to make anymore financial mistakes in buying the wrong gear!! Cheers guys, i'm lapping up the info!

[Darkmata]

I do a fair bit of work with Logic 8 and can say that with MIDI loops already created I can switch between patches on the Kronos very quickly-Cheers!

How many instruments at the same time are you controlling via midi from logic to the kronos?

[gjvti]

So i should be able to have ableton control up to 16 miditracks, wether it be looping or just playing, and have one stereo track coming back into ableton, whilst having all parameters on the kronos controlled via midi with say an APC40 as a controll surface. Will it work like this? ...

You should be able sending 16 midi tracks from Live to Kronos and getting one stereo return via USB - Kronos has a sound module/midi interface functionality. I've done something like this with M3 using Novation SL keyboard as midi interface from Live to M3 and motu 828 for audio return. Kronos is supposed to handle that via its USB without additional hardware. But from live or APC you can send only note and cc information (haven't tried program changes, but should work too). However you won't be able to switch on/off Kronos drum track for example from Live or APC since this requires sending 16bytes long sysex message. I think also mute/unmute tracks require sysex and so on. It is Live/APC limitation not Kronos. Kronos has so many features they all simply can't be controlled using standard continuous controller messages.

[Darkmata]

However you won't be able to switch on/off Kronos drum track for example from Live or APC since this requires sending 16bytes long sysex message..

Wow really is that because it's a karma thing, surely you can easily do it on the kronos, as in staying in time with midi sync, bring the drums in and out..yeah?

[SanderXpander]

Drum track has nothing to do with karma, it's a separate track with a basic drum loop, mainly meant as a "play along" inspiration type of thing. In your setup it's unlikely that you would use it at all as it's not very programmable or very flexible in a live situation. Better off using one of four karma modules or just programming your own midi loops in live using kronos' sounds.

That said, the reason you can't turn it off and on from Ableton is because it needs a sysex message, which is a type of message that Ableton doesn't support as of yet. Midi, basically speaking, has 128 available "continuous control" (or cc) messages that you can send and receive on any one channel. These are just numbers that the sound engine interprets. Some of them are somewhat standardized and you might recognize (CC#1 modulation, CC#74 filter cutoff), but most of them are different across synths. The Kronos however has many more than 128 parameters that you could control over midi. Therefore, it uses something called sysex messages (which are like little data packets that the sound engine reads and processes) for some more obscure/less used parameters. The drum track on/off is one of these, and as mentioned before, since Ableton doesn't send or receive sysex, you can't automate it from there. You could still hit the button on the keyboard though.

[Darkmata]

thankyou Sander, you answered alot, yes i would be setting up the loop in ableton to control the drum kit in kronos via midi notes, but no sysex mesages in ableton ey, what about midi learning, having abletons knobs control parameters in the kronos, that would work fine wouldn't it?

[cynkh]

I do a fair bit of work with Logic 8 and can say that with MIDI loops already created I can switch between patches on the Kronos very quickly-Cheers!

How many instruments at the same time are you controlling via midi from logic to the kronos?

Usually at least 8 via a Combi or in Sequencer mode. I've done the same with my Triton Extreme and have been very impressed. The Kronos ups the ante, though, with the sheer number of sounds and engines accessible concurrently.

As for the APC controller, I'm not sure how that works since I don't use Ableton or the controller. From what I read it didn't sound like it was a standard MIDI USB device but rather a proprietary interface/protocol; but, like I said this was just based on some non-technical literature I've read about the controller. Even if this is the case, though, it may be possible to route messages out of the Kronos's MIDI/USB device in Ableton or assign some sort of macro or MIDI sequence to each button on the APC via Ableton. Definitely worth a close look at Ableton's routing capabilities either way.

Good luck!

[Lou]

Using the LaunchPad in Live is a great tool. You can set up a track in Live and record a drum loop, then select another clip and record another and keep going.
Then on playing back of your other Kronos tracks/clips, select and fire any drum loop at will, or no drum playing at all. Very cool..

(Unfortunately, the drum track, as of now can only record midi from Program mode and not combi or sequencer.. Hopefully this will be fixed in an update.)

[Darkmata]

[/quote]
Usually at least 8 via a Combi or in Sequencer mode. I've done the same with my Triton Extreme and have been very impressed. The Kronos ups the ante, though, with the sheer number of sounds and engines accessible concurrently.

Good luck![/quote]
thanx for that, sounds like its definately got some power!