The HMT1 topic

[DMt]

Hey Costas, just got this working, driving an external synth with an identical patch on each string/channel - huge. Great job, seems to grab the G-50 output very nicely. I may explode from sheer bombast.

[admin]

Careful now, we don't want anyone exploding!

[mbroekhuijsen]

Hi,

I want to use HMT1 in Ableton Live 8, how do I configure it? I dragged it a MIDI channel and set it to listen to my MIDI port which is connected to my Axon 100 MK2 device. Although Ableton seems to be receiving MIDI input, the HMT1 plug-in does not seem to receive anything (i.e. the MIDI IN light don not light up). Can you please give me instructions on how to setup HMT1 in Ableton? Thanks in advance.

[admin]

Hi - sorry for the delay getting back to you, somehow I missed your post.
Did you get this sorted out yourself, or do you still need help?

[mbroekhuijsen]

Hi,

No I didn't figure it out yet. Please advise.

[costas]

Hi again, I have been experimenting with HMT1 in Ableton Live 8, but no luck yet

There are two problems:

1) For plugins that have no audio outputs (like HMT1) Live does not even send the midi. This is why the lights do not flash.

2) Even after I changed HMT1 to fix problem 1 (pretend it has an audio output) there seems to be no way to send the separate midi channels that HMT1 produces to an instrument. Everything gets moved onto one channel whatever I try. I found this thread which also says it can not be done: http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=126598

I can send you a version with problem 1 fixed if you would like to play around with it.

[mbroekhuijsen]

Costa,

Sure just send the fixed version, I'm happy to try it. Can you please also provide me some instructions on how to set it up? Thanks in advance.

[costas]

Which OS are you using, Windows or OSX?

[mbroekhuijsen]

Windows XP.

[costas]

OK, the ableton friendly version is here: http://evenharmonic.com/hmt1_win_1001.zip (this version also fixes a problem in SONAR)

Using these things in Ableton is not easy (Gtak is the same) because if you just insert it into a track and set the input to your guitar to midi converter Ableton will squish all the data onto midi channel 1 before it gets to HMT1. The way around this is:

• Insert HMT1 in a track and set the MIDI in section to 'No Input'
• Insert 6 MIDI tracks
• set the input of all of the MIDI tracks to the MIDI input that your guitar to MIDI converter is plugged into
• set the output of all of the MIDI tracks to HMT1
• set the first MIDI track's input to Ch 1 and output to 1-HMT1
• set the second MIDI track's input to Ch 2 and output to 2-HMT1
• and so on for the other 4 midi tracks
• insert the instrument you want to play
• set the instrument's midi in to HMT1, and in the box below (where you choose PreFX/PostFX etc) choose HMT1
• set all the monitors to IN

Note that with this setup the instrument will receive all the midi on channel 1, even if HMT1 is sending them on other channels - I still can't find a way around this. However, the string enables, pedal control and block pitchbend all work, so maybe it still will be useful?

Also see this tip from Andy to avoid having to do this every time! (He's talking about Gtak, but I think it will work for HMT1 too).

The end result should look something like this (Fireface800 is the MIDI port my Axon is plugged in to, and I am using Kontakt as the instrument):