Need help with Ableton Send effects.
 

Dear Anyone.

OK, this'll prob. be easy for you lot, be gentle with a dumb noob.

So I've got Ableton Live 8. Got 4 VST plugin instruments on 4 MIDI tracks. And in the RETURN columns I've got 4 different effects set up, say Reverb, Compression, Flanging and Stereo Widener (for argument's sake.) BUT on my Instrument's MIDI track I've only got 2 buttons, A and B.

Does that mean I can only use 2 effects at once? If so, how do I choose WHICH effects to output the MIDI to? If I wanted to use 3 effects on one instrument (or maybe more!) how would I control the other effects as I've only got two control buttns?

Just pretend that at one point only, I wanted to send an instrument through an effect I'm not using on it anywhere else. Would I have to have a separate instance of that instrument to just use at that point? If so, how would I route it JUST through that effect and none of the others?

Basically what I'm asking is how do you control the amount of signal you're sending to more than 2 effects as you've only got 2 control buttons, A and B?

Please, I HAVE looked in manuals - it's a legit. copy, got the PDF manual - but I'm missing where it's telling me how to do this. I don't know enough to know when I've found that bit of info or where to look for it in the 512 pages! I get how to send the MIDI info to ONE effect, can SORTA do it for 2 effects, any more than that I thought would generate extra control buttons but I can't find them - doesn't matter how many return channels you have, you still only get 2 control buttons which has totally baffled me. Last question.

If you - say - wanted to sent your Guitar's MIDI to Compression and Flanging SOMETIMES in the piece, and Reverb and Stereo Widener at OTHER times in the piece, how do you tell Abelton to stop sending the signal to the first two effects and only send them to the second two, or visa versa, or hopefully any combination of the 4! (I say 4 cos I can only find 4 return tracks, one for each instrument, so I'm assuming you can't have more Return tracks than amount of instruments you've gotten.

Yours hopefully - god, I'm lost here! -

Chris.

I'm a little confused as to what your problem is, I've been using Ableton daily for a while now and I've never been limited as to how many effects I can lay on each track.

Do you mind snapping screenshots and explaining exactly what you're trying to do?

Yeah I'm confused as well.

Sorry for the confusion,everybody.

I'm trying to get the hang of SEND effects as opposed to effects dropped onto the actual instrument. As far as I can tell with Ableton Live, after having studied the manual, you do SEND effects by putting the effect itself on a channel marked RETURN (I suppose that means you're SENDING the sound to that channel and that channel is then RETURNING it with the effect on it.)

What's puzzling me with SEND effects is that on the MIDI channel where the VST instrument is, you've got just 2 buttons, marked A and B. Which as far as I can see would be fine if you just had two SEND effects set up.

But if you've got 3 (or more) SEND effects set up, how do you control the third (or fourth/fifth etc.) considering you've only got 2 control buttons on the VST's MIDI channel, button A and button B?

The second question which, as far as I can see (and I'm totally lost) leads on from that is if you've got several effects set up as SEND effects and you want to route a sound to different effects at different points in the track (for instance, you wanted compression/reverb on the guitar at one point, EQ/Flanging at another point) how do you re-route the MIDI signal to the different pairs of effects in-track? I mean as you've only got two control buttons as far as I can see, you must be using the effects in pairs, no?

If I've got the wrong end of the stick and there's another way of controlling multiple send effect that I don't know about, please tell me. I know I could drop them all in as INSERT effects on the different VSTs, but I want to get the hang of SENDS and this only-two-control-knob business has stumped me totally. I thought if I added more RETURN tracks, I'd get more control buttons, one for each RETURN track with an effect on it. But nope, you seem to be stuck with only two control knobs in the MIDI channel, knob A and knob B.

So how do you control multiple SENDS, with only 2 control buttons? Where is my understanding going wrong?

If this still doesn't make sense I'll do the screenshot thing.

Yours, very puzzledly,

Chris.

I'm still confused, because unless I'm not doing what you're doing I created two additional Return tracks and lo and behold: C and D control knobs.

http://i.imgur.com/mn6Ixck.png