Using Program Change Messages to Switch Kits in the Sensory Percussion Ableton Plugin

[stevenz]

Hey everybody!

I recently revisited this forum post from a while back, and I realized my reply on that post was a bit out of date because it was made before we released the Ableton plugin, and so I figured I’d update it here.

Here’s an updated template: Sensory-Program-Change-Kits.als.zip (19.7 KB)

And here is a version where the kit switching is setup to be launched in clip view, rather than on the timeline: Sensory-Program-Change-Kits-Launch-Clips.als.zip (21.3 KB)

Read below for an explanation on how it works.

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The steps are largely the same as the original post, except now you don’t have to use a midi bus to go between Ableton and Sensory Percussion, since Sensory is hosted as a plugin inside Ableton.

The goal is to automate kit switching in Sensory Percussion via program change messages on MIDI clips in Ableton. That’s really just a techie way of saying you can change all of your Sensory Percussion sounds on the fly at a specific part of the song, or by pressing a button.

In order to do it, you first need a MIDI track (it’s the track named “sensory kit changer” in the templates).

Then you need to select SP plugin as that track’s MIDI output, and 1-SensoryPercussionPlugin as the sub output:

Then you’ll need to create a MIDI clip and double click on it to reveal its attributes in the bottom panel:

Add a program change message. No need to select a bank or a sub bank, just a program number 1-99, which corresponds directly to kit numbers in Sensory Percussion.

And that’s it. When the clip plays, it will change the kit in Sensory Percussion. The first template above is set to switch to the next kit (1-10) every sixteen bars. The second template is set up to change kits when a clip is launched in clip view:

One thing to keep in mind is your kit transitions in Sensory Percussion. You most likely will not want a hard cutoff between kits:

[Mason]

I was demonstrating this in a lesson recently and Sensory Percussion 1.8.5 does not seem to respond to Program Change messages anymore. I know V2 is out and kicking but this feature being repaired would preserve the functionality of a lot of my (and others) old live sets

[Tlacael_Esparza]

Hm, that’s weird. Nothing changed around midi or program change processing in the last update. I’ll take a look.

[Tlacael_Esparza]

So, it looks like its an issue with the VST3 version, but the VST works as expected. Turns out it probably never worked for VST3 because its not implemented. VST3 doesn’t pass program change in the MIDI stream so it has to be handled differently. I’ll push an update, but in the meantime you should still be able to use the VST version.

[Mason]

Using VST instead is an easy enough workaround thanks for looking into it!