Hey everyone, I’ve got a bunch of loop-based compositions (patterns) sequenced on my motif. I’m trying to figure out the most efficient way to get these recorded track by track into Ableton Live, to work the transitions in detail and produce the final mixes. Some of these have 16 tracks or more. 15 years ago I saw someone who was able to record multiple tracks simultaneously but I haven’t found any specific info about this in the manual, nor online tutorials.

Can anyone walk me through this? I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks - Ryan

Hi ryanluckey,

Welcome to the forum.

I’ve assumed that you are talking about audio and not MIDI.

Here is a thread which may be of interest to you:

http://www.motifator.com/index.php/forum/viewthread/481062/

From an engineering point of view, to ensure the best possible quality of recording and control, I never try and record multiple tracks at once in any situation, unless I absolutely have to e.g, when recording a real drum kit with multiple mics or a horn section etc. It’s just a lot easier on you and your music to pay attention to one thing at once.

If you have other reasons for wanting to record multiple channels of audio simultaneously, then it might be a good idea to mention them.  Keeping all your tracks of loops in time with each other might be one, and in that case, you might wish to explore your synchronization options, too.

This is probably a poor effort at humour, but If you are looking to just save time recording your loops, is it safe to say that you probably could have got it done one track at a time in the time it has taken to read around and find answers to your question?  You did after all use the word “efficient’ :-)

thanks for the reply!

About efficiency, I have over a hundred of these, many with 16 tracks or more, so it adds up.

About midi vs audio: I understand that my patterns are midi on the motif, but if I export them as midi to Ableton, I will lose the motif-specific information, including the sounds, the volume/pan settings, and any motif effects on the tracks. so if i have to recreate all of that in ableton, it’s a much longer road to get where I want to go.

The alternative as i see it is to convert the midi to audio during the recording process, and any way to speed that up is going to be a big help. If recording multiple tracks simultaneously and separately is not an option, then at least synchronizing the clocks would be helpful, as you suggest, although I’ve never done that and don’t have any idea how to do it.

Any and all workflow suggestions are welcome… Thanks again - Ryan

UPDATE:

I’m new to MIDI so I’m working through this slowly but making progress.

I’ve figured out how to record my tracks into Ableton Live, as midi tracks, which to my happy surprise I have found does include volume and pan information (maybe that is common knowledge (?) but I had no idea).

Ableton recognizes the motif as having three input ports, so I’m now trying to figure out if I can assign those 3 to 3 separate tracks on the motif for simultaneous recording. So far, no go.

The big downside to this method is losing the original Motif sounds that I recorded the tracks with, so I’ll have to either emulate them as best as possible with the Ableton instruments, or record audio tracks for the specific cases that I need the original sound.

If anyone has experience with a setup like this and has suggestions, I’m all ears…

Thanks again - Ryan

ryanluckey - 02 June 2019 01:35 PM

Ableton recognizes the motif as having three input ports, so I’m now trying to figure out if I can assign those 3 to 3 separate tracks on the motif for simultaneous recording. So far, no go.

Ports 2 and 3 in Song/Pattern modes are for access to optional PLG boards. See page 38 of the Motif Owner’s Manual for details.

I understand that my patterns are midi on the motif, but if I export them as midi to Ableton, I will lose the motif-specific information, including the sounds, the volume/pan settings, and any motif effects on the tracks. so if i have to recreate all of that in ableton, it’s a much longer road to get where I want to go.

That’s not strictly true. You can make the best of both worlds.

If you have an audio interface that works with Ableton, then there’s nothing to stop you exporting the MIDI data to Ableton and routing it from Ableton so that your Motif plays back the music with correct Voices and original settings (still in Pattern or Song mode, or whatever mode you are using)

You can then connect the Motif’s analog L/R audio outputs to audio inputs on the audio interface and capture the audio simultaneously to an audio track in Ableton each time.  It will also work with the S/PDIF output if you have one of those on your audio interface, too.

This way, your music will stay in time track by track. Ableton will be triggering your Motif and recording its audio at exactly the same time with each recording you make.

The alternative as I see it is to convert the midi to audio during the recording process, and any way to speed that up is going to be a big help.

The only way you are going to be able to speed things up is by having a Motif with multiple physical outputs and the only way to do that is mentioned in that thread I linked you to in my first post.  If you haven’t got anything like that, then I’m afraid it’s always going to be just a small number of tracks at a time. Pay special attention to 5pinDIN‘s note about support for recent platforms and applications.

Wow, OK great, this is very helpful, I’m going to try a few different things and see what I come up with. I appreciate the responses! And i’ll let you know how it goes..

The S/PDIF output is a digital version of the Main L/R analog outputs, a digital duplicate if you like.

You should also have some assignable analog L/R outputs.

Theoretically you could record two stereo tracks simultaneously max, or 4 mono.

I had to take a break on this for a few months to deal with some other projects.

Getting back to it now, I can say that I don’t have the expansion boards for the Motif, so that rules out the mLAN8E and AIEB2 options.

I have three audio interfaces, an old presonus firestudio project, an even older mbox, and now an apollo twin, as far as I can tell none of these support the S/PDIF option.

So it sounds like I want to do exactly what user “philwood music” is saying…

1. sync clocks
2. import the midi tracks to ableton live
3. program the new midi tracks in ableton live to playback via the original instruments on the motif.

I would be recording tracks 1 at a time, but because they are synced this shouldn’t be an issue, it will just take longer.

Does anyone know of any video tutorials that would show me the step by step of this setup? I’m going to try on my own but any additional help will be greatly appreciated…

Thanks for the comments back in June, pointing me in the right directions…

Cheers - Ryan

My progress so far:

I’ve got the clocks synced up, so I can start recording in ableton live and it triggers play on the motif. GREAT!

I am successfully recording the midi data into the track on ableton. CHECK!

I haven’t been able to figure out how to get the midi track in live to playback the original instruments from the motif. I’ve only been able to get the live track to playback via the virtual instruments in live. What am I doing wrong?

Still stuck at this point, but I think I might have realized what my problem is (maybe haha).

Up till now I have been connecting via USB cable directly to the computer rather than routing via a midi interface. The ableton live instructions however focus on working through a midi interface *unless the usb connection is audio enabled, which I am guessing it is not.

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209774265-Using-external-hardware

Above is the article I am using to try to play the motif sounds via midi data in ableton.

Seems like maybe this is only possible via a midi interface, in which case I can try to rout through the firestudio project and see if it works. If not, I just invested in the iconnectivity mio10 so that should be a more permanent solution.

Hello again,

I’m back trying to figure this out.

I have been able to simultaneously record 16 tracks of MIDI data from my Yamaha Motif (in pattern mode) to Ableton Live. This is awesome! At least I have made some progress.



My first question is: I have not figured out how to sync this recording automatically to start at the record downbeat, so I have had to sync this manually, which is a bit of a pain, so if anyone could help me getting that synced up, that would be extremely useful!

My intention is to record the MIDI data into Live, play this back through the original sounds on the Motif, tweak things as needed in Live, add in additional elements, vst’s, effects etc and then print audio of each track in Live to create a final arrangement that is independent of the Motif.

I’m having trouble setting up the Motif as an external instrument to be able to access the original sounds I recorded my patterns with. (When this didn’t work right away, I tried to replace the sounds with Ableton Live sounds, but as you can imagine I came away pretty unsatisfied with the results.)

So my second question is: How do I use the external instrument plug-in to point to the original pattern on the Motif which indicates the 16 patches I originally used?

I am running through a mio10, primarily because I have a couple other midi devices that I am hoping to have connected simultaneously. 

Attached are images of my Ableton Live MIDI preferences as they currently appear, and the external instrument plugin, which does not give me any option for communicating with the motif.

Any further help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance - Ryan

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