Notion 4 as Rewire Host to Ableton Live 9 - Help please?

[trevorblu]

Hi All,

I am trying to use Notion 4 for the NTempo feature for a musical being performed at a local church. However, I needed more instrumentation and expression than is available through Notion, so I orchestrated the piece via input in Ableton Live 9. I purchased Notion after viewing a YouTube tutorial demoing that it could be the ReWire HOST to Ableton Live. I have had no luck getting Notion to host, but I can get it to slave. When I go to the mixer to add the ReWire Aux, it says no ReWire outputs available. And then when I open Ableton, I get the dreaded message that "Live has detected another active ReWire master application. No ReWire slave applications will be available for use with Live unless you quit the current ReWire master application and restart Live." I'm down to the wire with 2 weeks until the show and have not been able to rehearse with NTempo and the frustration is extremely high. Help please?

PS - I've tried running both in 32 and 64 bit with no luck, as well as trying Cubase 6 and Sonar x2 (which I already know won't run as a slave)

Thanks much,

Trevor

Windows 7 x64 SP1
Intel i5-2520 (2.5 GHz)
16GB memory
Steinberg UR-22 USB interface

[Surfwhammy]

When I go to the mixer to add the ReWire Aux, it says no ReWire outputs available. And then when I open Ableton, I get the dreaded message that "Live has detected another active ReWire master application. No ReWire slave applications will be available for use with Live unless you quit the current ReWire master application and restart Live.

Getting ReWire working correctly can take a while when you first start making sense of ReWIre, and when everything gets a bit confused, it is a good time to reboot the computer to clear any buffers or whatever that might be temporarily confused . . .

It also is important to start the application that will be the ReWire host controller first, since this establishes it as the ReWire host controller, so the message (see above) probably is caused by NOTION 4 already running at the time when you start Ableton Live . . .

So, reboot Windows 7 and then start Ableton Live, followed by starting NOTION 4, at which point Ableton Live will be the ReWire host controller and NOTION 4 will be the ReWIre slave . . .

[NOTE: ReWIre is doing a lot of internal work behind the scenes, and it is possible that the ReWire infrastructure or one of the applications will do something that confuses the operating system if everything is not configured correctly for ReWire sessions, and when this happens the only way to get back to normal is to reboot the computer, which also happens on the Mac. But once you discover the correct configuration and set of procedures to follow, everything works very nicely without problems . . . ]

It also is important to match the bit-mode, since ReWIre is either 32-bit or 64-bit but not both at the same time . . .

And if you switch from 32-bit to 64-bit, you need to open NOTION 4 and go to Preferences where you will uncheck the "Enable ReWIre" option, followed by checking it, which causes NOTION 4 to load the correct set of ReWIre drivers, libraries, and so forth . . .

So, you need to know how you are going to run Ableton Live (32-bit or 64-bit), and this will determine how you run NOTION 4, since it needs to be running in the same bit-mode as Ableton Live. Also, it is a good idea to toggle the "Enable ReWIre" option to force NOTION 4 to reset its ReWire infrastructure . . .

THOUGHTS

I do everything on the Mac, and everything works very nicely. It should work just as nicely on a Windows computer, but I cannot verify it, and there is not so much I can do to help with problems on a Windows computer at present . . .

I was helping someone in another FORUM with an Ableton Live 8 problem, so I downloaded the free trial version of Ableton Live 9, and according to its User Manual, Ableton Live 9 will run as a ReWIre host controller or as a ReWire slave . . .

NOTION 4 also will run as either a ReWire host controller or as a ReWIre slave, so you should be able to do what you want to do, where as I read it, NOTION 4 needs to be the ReWire host controller if you are going to use NTEMPO, although perhaps not . . .

This is all that comes to mind at present . . .

[elerouxx]

I've been trying to get them to work together for a while.

I never got Ableton Live to open as a slave. Live 8 used to freeze when Notion 4 was already open. Live 9 just says 'Live has detected another active ReWire master application'... but it doesn't seem to try going on slave mode.

Live is an extraordinary application for live music, and it makes very easy to find, try and use live instruments. It's a wonderful music scratchpad - but I've only been able to run Ableton as master, Notion as slave, and with the additional problem that Notion doesn't have any control on the 'timeline' - meaning that wherever measure you click on in Notion, when you hit 'play', Ableton will always continue playing where the cursor was left the last time. So you have to get used to control the timeline from Ableton always, which is a little annoying.

I have no idea of what can be done for this to work. In this page you can read a little about ReWire, from the authors: http://www.propellerheads.se/products/reason/index.cfm?article=rewire&fuseaction=get_article

and from this page I can read this text, among ReWire features:

"-Common transport functions - if both applications have built-in sequencers of some sort, you can play, stop, rewind etc. in any of the applications and they will both locate to the same position."

But in the case of Notion4 and Live, this feature just doesn't work. Tempo markings in Notion are also useless in this scenario.

Sorry I can't help with this n-tempo issue. Ableton Live has its own tempo tapping feature, maybe you can use it (as it is used for live performance).

What I was able to do is to open Notion4 as a slave for Ableton Live 9. Not only you can have a 'notion' track in Ableton (which takes the mixed audio from Notion) but you can also add Live's instruments into tracks, then have Notion staves control these tracks via MIDI external output. I like this because I like to write music instead of using a pianoroll or such.

[elerouxx]

Just read on another forum that Ableton Live 9 is broken - they are working to fix this but for a while it won't work as ReWire slave.

[Surfwhammy]

I have been experimenting with the free trial version of Ableton Live 9 on the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (early-2008) with 20GB of memory here in the sound isolation studio, mostly to help someone in the IK Multimedia FORUM, but I had a bit of time this evening, so I did a quick experiment with the 32-bit version of NOTION 4 and the free trial version of Ableton Live 9, which also is a 32-bit application, and after trying a few things I discovered some of the rules, and it looks to be working nicely . . .

I made a video showing NOTION 4 (32-bit) as the ReWire 2 host controller and Ableton Live 9 (32-bit) as the ReWire 2 slave . . .

NOTION 4 (32-bit) ReWire 2 host controller and Ableton Live 9 (32-bit) ReWire 2 Slave on the Mac -- QuickTime Movie -- MOV (26MB, approximately 6 minutes)

And I did a bit of reading in the NOTION 4 User Guide on using NTempo, and it also work when NOTION 4 (32-bit) is the ReWire 2 host controller and Ableton Live 9 (32-bit) is the ReWire 2 slave on the Mac, as demonstrated in the following video, which is the music without any spoken word comments, really . . .

NTempo: NOTION 4 (32-bit) ReWire 2 host controller, Ableton Live 9 (32-bit) ReWire 2 slave on the Mac -- QuickTime Movie -- MOV (7MB, approximately 1 minute and 39 seconds)

Really!

THOUGHTS

Relative to the original topic and constraints, if I were tasked with providing the virtual orchestration for a live concert in less than two weeks, there are a few things I would do posthaste:

(1) Change my underpants after the panic attack subsided . . .

(2) Get a new Apple computer, MOTU 838mk3 Hybrid digital audio interface, and install NOTION 4 on the new Apple computer, as well as the driver for the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid . . .

(3) Get everything out of Ableton Live and put it back in NOTION 4 (64-bit) using only the NOTION 4 bundled instruments and any Notion Music Expansion Sounds instruments I needed . . .

(4) Restrict the articulations and dynamics in the music notation to only what actually makes sense when the NOTION 4 generated audio is being played through a sound reinforcement system at 85 dB SPL, which for the most part makes having anything other than simple and necessary articulations and dynamics a bit frivolous . . .

(5) Practice using NTempo, in particular the Up and Down arrows on the Mac keyboard, which is what I used in the video demonstration (see above) . . .

And the reason for using the NOTION 4 bundled instruments and Notion Music Expansion Sounds is that they are designed specifically for this purpose, hence are fine-tuned and tested accordingly with the overall goal of working reliably all the time every time, which is what you want when doing this type of live performance work, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

P. S. If getting an Apple computer and MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid digital audio interface is not possible, then I would do essentially the same thing but on a Windows computer, where the key aspect of the strategy is to do it solely with NOTION 4 and the NOTION 4 bundled instruments and Notion Music Expansion Sounds, for sure . . .

For sure!

[trevorblu]

Thanks for the very thorough explanation and video showing that you made it work Surfwhammy! I myself am getting used to Ableton. I've been a Cakewalk/Sonar user for over 15 years and made the transition recently for better live performance support. It's definitely been a learning curve. I'm going to try your recommendations and I will let you know how it turns out.

Thanks all for the responses!

Trevor

[Surfwhammy]

Thanks for the very thorough explanation and video showing that you made it work Surfwhammy! I myself am getting used to Ableton. I've been a Cakewalk/Sonar user for over 15 years and made the transition recently for better live performance support. It's definitely been a learning curve. I'm going to try your recommendations and I will let you know how it turns out.

Thanks all for the responses!

Trevor

Glad to help!

As noted in one of my earlier posts somewhere, I use Digital Performer 8 (MOTU) on the Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio, in part because it is the professional full-featured upgrade to Audio Desk (MOTU) where Audio Desk if the free DAW application that comes with the various MOTU external digital audio interfaces, hence was the first Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application I used nearly a decade ago with I started making sense of all this stuff and got a MOTU 828mkII external digital audio interface . . .

I like Digital Performer 8, and it is very easy to use when doing ReWire 2, but I also use Logic Pro 9 (Apple) occasionally, and both of these at present are Mac OS X applications, although MOTU is working on getting the Windows version of Digital Performer 8 ready for release . . .

I have not used Ableton Live 9 other than to do a few experiments, which as I recall I did with the free trial version of Ableton Live 8 perhaps a year or two ago, but the more I use Ableton Live 9 the more sense it makes, and I like some of its features and capabilities, but I am by no means expert in using it, which is the same thing that happened when I first started making sense of Logic Pro 9, where at first nothing worked but after a while it started making sense and then everything started working . . .

Ableton Live 9 might work just fine in Windows, but I have no way to test and to verify this . . .

On an important related note, Notion Music had a service called "NOTION Live" where they provided certified music specialists who did scores for live performances, Broadway shows, and so forth, which included doing the production work during live performances, which they did with computers and other hardware that were certified and tested in advance by Notion Music, and this is the reason that the NOTION 4 bundled instruments and Notion Music Expansion Sounds are so important for this type of work, since they are designed, recorded, tested, and integrated specifically with NOTION 4 to work accurately and reliably in live performance conditions, which is not always the case with third-party VSTi virtual instruments, although perhaps more so in the 32-bit universe, because in the 32-bit universe the 4GB 32-bit application workspace limitation becomes very important, and using third-party virtual instruments rather than the NOTION bundled instruments and Notion Music Expansion Sounds tends to be less optimal and not so reliable, if only because instead of everything being done solely with NOTION, it involves using third-party applications and sampled sound libraries which might not be so rigorously tested in live performance conditions . . .

If you can get everything back into NOTION 4 using the NOTION 4 bundled instruments and any Notion Music Expansion Sounds instruments that you might need, then I think the results will be better, and this also applies to articulations and dynamics, where I think it makes sense to focus more on loudness (pianissimo, forte, and so forth) and a few of the articulations that an average listener can discern than to focus on elaborate and complex articulations, since as noted in my previous post the reality is that the music will be played via a sound reinforcement system (PA loudspeakers and so forth) at sufficient volume to be heard, where 85 dB SPL is about as loud as necessary, which combined with general audience noises and so forth makes more subtle articulations and dynamics a bit inaudible, but I can see the need for having louder sections and quieter sections of orchestration, which is necessary and useful, as well as not being a computing burden and so forth, and there are ways to adjust the loudness during a live performance, since you have access to the NOTION 4 Mixer and can make adjustments there from time to time . . .

You also can create, record, and edit an NTempo staff for the score, which at present is about all I know about using NTempo, since the first time I used NTempo was to make the video in my previous post . . .

Keep us posted on how everything is going!

[Surfwhammy]

I did a few more experiments with NOTION 4 (32-bit) as the ReWire host controller and Ableton Live 9 (32-bit) as the ReWire slave, and it makes more sense, now . . .

I also found some options at the Ableton.com website that apply to ReWire, so I tried two of the options, where as best as I can determine one option tells Ableton Live 9 not to run as a ReWire host controller and the other options tells Ableton Live 9 to provide 64 channels (32 channel pairs) for ReWire, which it does, and the channels are referred to as buses, where you set the output to ReWire and then select a bus pair . . .

In NOTION 4, since it is the ReWIre controller, you create the incoming ReWire stereo channels to receive the audio from Ableton Live 9 via the ReWire button in the NOTION 4 Mixer, where there is a "+" symbol, which when clicked presents a fly-out menu where you select Ableton and then select the bus pair, so the technique is to set the bus pair in Ableton Live 9 for each ReWire track, followed by creating incoming ReWire channels in the NOTION 4 Mixer with the corresponding channel or bus pairs. You can send everything to one bus pair, but you have more control if you send each track in Ableton Live 9 to a separate bus pair and ReWire channel in the NOTION 4 Mixer, where I NOTION 4 use "channel" instead of track in its terminology, but it also uses "Channels" for the ReWIre channel pairs, which is a bit confusing, hence I use "tracks" since it avoids confusion . . .

This is a video that demonstrates a few more pieces of the puzzle on the Mac, and since Ableton Live 9 is programmed in Germany, probably by Germans, I decided to have a bit of FUN with silly German phrases using Google Translate during pauses when I zoned-out or whatever. I have no idea if the German translations make any sense, but it is what Google Translate does with them, and I thought it was funny, where the phrases in no particular order are "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?", which is fabulous . . .

NOTION 4, Ableton Live 9, ReWire, Options, and Tips -- QuickTime Movie -- MOV (45MB, approximately 10 minutes and 19 seconds)

Fabulous!

[elerouxx]

Thanks, Surfwhammy, your posts are very detailed as usual. The conclussion is that it's working on a mac but not on windows. I hope they fix it soon, and I would really like to see this working as well as in Mac.

Have you tried running Notion as slave? Does Ableton 'obbey' the playback when you jump to different times on the score in Notion? (transport control). This is one thing that doesn't work in Notion as slave and Ableton as host, in Windows.

I agree that, in a perfect world, Notion should be enough. I like to write music, not to edit pianorolls and the likes of that, but for starters you can't record a voice in Notion. So if you are working on a song, ReWire is very welcome so you can record audio tracks in other application.

And Abbleton is a different tool - it's not just a multitrack editor, but also a live music tool, and what is most useful for some kinds of creative workflow is the easy way in which you browse and use the instruments - I haven't seen such a interface before. It's fabulous! It's fantastic that you can control Ableton's tracks via a Notion staff with external MIDI out and not only ReWire. This is becoming a very efficient music scratchpad for me.


Of course

[Surfwhammy]

Thanks, Surfwhammy, your posts are very detailed as usual. The conclussion is that it's working on a mac but not on windows. I hope they fix it soon, and I would really like to see this working as well as in Mac.

Glad to help!

I think that Ableton Live 9 (32-bit) is working nicely with NOTION 4 (32-bit) running on Mac OS X 10.8.3 (Mountain Lion), which is the current version of Mac OS X, and the more I use Ableton Live 9, the more I like it . . .

Although I am going only by intuition, since I do not have a Windows 7 machine to do testing, I am not convinced that Ableton Live 9 will not work in Windows 7, and there are several reasons for this bit of guessing, primary of which is the fact that there is so much stuff happening behind the scenes in ReWire sessions--including deeply intimate interactions with the operating system--that all it takes for everything to come to a screaming halt is one tiny mistake in configuring the applications and anything else associated with the ReWire session, in which case it will appear that ReWire does not work, when the only real problem is that some apparently insignificant parameter is set incorrectly and instead of being an insignificant parameter it actually is a significant parameter . . .

Another reason for suggesting this is based on my experience getting NOTION 3 and Digital Performer 7 (MOTU) to do ReWire, which took about six weeks of work, typically 12 to 18 hours a day, in part because ReWire at the time was a new technology for me and nothing made any sense, but after doing a lot of often frustrating experiments and getting some help from MOTU Technical Support (which curiously was two-fold, specifically [a] it works with Digital Performer and [b] test it with the free demo versions of Ableton and Reason, where it also works), eventually I discovered the rules and got it working accurately and reliably on the Mac . . .

As you might know, I have a Computer Science degree and switched from doing mainframe programming to doing Windows programing beginning with the first version of Windows, but some things just make no sense to me at first, and I have to do a lot of learning, which mostly maps to doing experiments toward the goal of discovering what is happening behind the scenes, and one of the things I did, which took approximately 18 months, was to get approved by Propellerhead Software to be a ReWire developer, which in a practical way maps to my having the ReWire software developer kit and documentation for the Mac and Windows, which since it came much later, long after I had discovered the rules, mostly just verified that what I thought was happening is correct, and it is a bit mind-boggling, which is the best way I can describe it in a simple high-level way, and it is all the more amazing because everything is vastly time-dependent, so everything needs to happen virtually instantly . . .

Another useful bit of information is that I tend to be operating system agnostic, but at the same time I am practical, where my perspective is that I want to focus on music rather than on messing with computers, although I devote a good bit of time to messing with computers, but mostly to help people, except that it is a bit of FUN, and I like knowing how to do stuff, and this perspective is the reason that I do everything on the Mac, which is based on a key fact, which is that most digital music software is developed first for the Mac and then ported to Windows, which is done at the dawn of the early-21st century for several reasons, one of which is that for companies that have been in business for a long time, it is natural to focus on the Mac, but also because Apple is the only company that has a complete infrastructure in terms of platforms (Mac OS X and iOS), where the code essentially is the same for Mac OS X and iOS applications, with a few variations but not so many, such that you can develop one set of base code and then use it to create applications for the Mac (iMac, MacBook, Mac mini, and Mac Pro), iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, and Apple makes a diligent effort to keep all its hardware devices consistent with Mac OS X and iOS, and this does not happen on any other platform, where the other platforms generally keep everything in constant motion, changing all the time, which for software developers is a mess . . .

I am not suggesting that Apple never changes the code base, but Apple makes an effort to keep any changes at least somewhat to a minimum and not a complete and total hassle, at least most of the time . . .

Consider the realities from the perspective of a software developer, beginning with Mac OS X 10.0, which was released in 2001 along with the first iPod . . .

There have been eight major operating system upgrades over the past 10 or so years, and once iOS was released there have been a total of six major versions, along with a lot of new hardware devices (iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch), but in some respects everything is similar . . .

Then consider Windows, where in 2001 there was Windows 2000 and Windows XP, as I recall, along with various versions of Windows Server, but then there was Windows Vista, followed by Windows 7 and most recently Windows 8, and each one of the major versions of Windows involved radical changes in everything, where my current hypothesis is that the "logic" for doing it this way is based on Bill Gates doubling his wealth in the early years with each new and completely different version of Windows, hence it is based on a formula that made excellent sense in the late-1980s and 1990s but makes nearly no sense today at the dawn of the early-21st century . . .

So, the key bit of information regarding ReWire and Windows is that it makes sense to determine which version of Windows is favored currently by software developers, and my best guess is that it is Windows 7, hence intuition suggests that if you are running Windows 7 on reasonably current hardware and are doing it in a way which is consistent to the way software developers do everything, then I would not be surprised if Ableton Live 9 does ReWIre nicely with NOTION 4 . . .

And part of the logic is that it makes no sense for Ableton to release a Windows version of Live 9 and to say that it does ReWire when it does not do ReWire . . .

It might not work with Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 8, but the software developers at Ableton got it working on some version of Windows, and my best guess is that they got it working on Windows 7, probably by porting it from the Mac OS X version . . .

Remember that all it takes is one tiny configuration mistake to make ReWIre stop working, and it could be something so simple as having ReWIre working nicely in 64-bit mode with NOTION 4 (64-bit) but then switching to a 32-bit Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application and forgetting to toggle the "Enable ReWIre" option in the 32-bit version of NOTION 4 so that NOTION 4 loads and initializes itself to use the 32-bit version of ReWire . . .

Another example on the Mac happens when you are doing ReWire with Digital Performer and NOTION and start a song at the first beat of the first measure, which Digital Performer does not like and immediately crashes, where the solution is to insert four empty measures in the NOTION score and then to start on the first beat of the fifth measure or later but never earlier, although sometimes I back up to the first beat of the fourth measure with no problems . . .

Explained another way, it is like making Italian Meringue cake frosting, which is not difficult to do once you discover the rules but can be extraordinarily difficult otherwise, where this recipe works if the altitude of your kitchen is in the range of sea level to 200 feet above sea level. if you are on a mountain, then best wishes . . .

Code: Select all

Italian Meringue Cake Frosting (Low Altitude, Relative Kitchen Humidity 50 To 75 Percent, Ambient Kitchen Temperature Approximately 72-Degrees Fahrenheit)

1 and 1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of water
1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
the whites of four extra large eggs

(1) Put the sugar and water in a small pot and heat it to 245 degrees Fahrenheit, measuring the temperature with a Taylor® candy thermometer . . .

(2) Whip the four egg whites in a mixer at high-speed adding the cream of tartar until the egg whites make peaks .  .

(3) Slowly pour the 245-degree Fahrenheit sugar syrup onto the whipped egg whites at the side of the mixer bowl while continuing to whip the egg whites at high-speed . . .

(4) Add the teaspoon of vanilla extract and whip perhaps a minute more, but stop while the Italian Meringue continues to make peaks, and avoid over-whipping, since if you over-whip it changes to a texture like Elmer's Glue . . .

~ ~ ~ Continued in the next post ~ ~ ~