Saving patches in Ableton

[obelisk]

Hi there, is anyone familiar with perhaps a way to save patch/sound settings for a Prophet 5 patch within Ableton? I’ve never really done it as I’ve either had non midi hardware which I just track or always used software synths. Just wondering if I’m missing a trick? I don’t have the sound tower editor but I do have a max4live patch that helps with automation from ableton to the synth.

Does anyone have any tips? It’s obviously just useful if I come back to an old project to have a way to see how I built a patch without hand making a patch sheet or saving a preset and making a note of what preset was used on the project.

[dr.sax]

You can just record a patch via sysex dump for one sound patch. See the midi specs of the synth for the dump request.

[johnsimmons]

Can you record this patch Sysex info properly in Ableton, though? I didn't think you could. I'd love to be wrong. It would definitely work better than typing "U232" or whatever, as mentioned.

[chysn]

Can you record this patch Sysex info properly in Ableton, though? I didn't think you could. I'd love to be wrong. It would definitely work better than typing "U232" or whatever, as mentioned.

Ableton won't directly record sysex, but you could use some Max for Live device.

But the whole idea seems damn clunky to me. Program change to an existing sound, indicating the program number in the track name, is the elegant way to do this.

[johnsimmons]

Program change to an existing sound, indicating the program number in the track name, is the elegant way to do this.

I forgot about this technique, thanks. Can you tell me if theres an easy way to have Ableton select the patch you're using automatically in these fields, so i don't have to figure out the bank, sub, and pgm numbers? For whatever reason i never learned how to do this and the way the Prophet stores in, like a base-8 kind of system, makes it seem just that much more elusive.

EDIT: So far it looks like you would use Bank 1 for all, and for Sub you would enter which Prophet "bank" starting with User 1-5 as 1-5 and then Factory 1-5 would be Sub 6-10. It's PGM that i just need to get straight, like whatever method to make patch #121 be 9 and 131 be 17... for now i just use a M4L patch selector and spin it until i see patch #121 be selected and then use that number. It's not that i'm too lazy to do math it's that i don't want to do it while i'm musicating.

[obelisk]

You can just record a patch via sysex dump for one sound patch. See the midi specs of the synth for the dump request.

thank you, I have never used syses so will research this. 

[obelisk]

Program change to an existing sound, indicating the program number in the track name, is the elegant way to do this.

I forgot about this technique, thanks. Can you tell me if theres an easy way to have Ableton select the patch you're using automatically in these fields, so i don't have to figure out the bank, sub, and pgm numbers? For whatever reason i never learned how to do this and the way the Prophet stores in, like a base-8 kind of system, makes it seem just that much more elusive.



EDIT: So far it looks like you would use Bank 1 for all, and for Sub you would enter which Prophet "bank" starting with User 1-5 as 1-5 and then Factory 1-5 would be Sub 6-10. It's PGM that i just need to get straight, like whatever method to make patch #121 be 9 and 131 be 17... for now i just use a M4L patch selector and spin it until i see patch #121 be selected and then use that number. It's not that i'm too lazy to do math it's that i don't want to do it while i'm musicating.

Thank you, I will also explore this technique.