Best way to run Elektrik Piano and B4 together

Hi Guys..

Brand new to NI's products. I have the Elektrik Piano, and B4 products, and I'm looking to do a couple of things.

First off.. is there a way to run both products in stand alone mode simulataneously and switch between the two? It seems that I can only run one product at a time in stand alone mode.. if you switch to the other product, there is no sound.

Currently I've been loading both Elektrik Piano and B4 as RTAS Plugins in Pro-Tools 6.4, and switching between them in Pro Tools.. but it seems like there must be a better way.

Is there a way to control the volume of both products using the volume slider on my old Korg SG-1 Sampling Grand?? Whats the trick to doing that?

Is there a way to play both the Elektrik Piano and B4 at the same time.. must I have two separate midi controllers to do this..?? or can I somehow split my midi controller keyboard?

Thanks very much for your answers.

 

I'm not familiar to Pro Tools, but I'm using Ableton Live myself. In Live, it's quite easy to split a keyboard for this kind of thing.

Anyway: I recommend you to use them as plugins in your host and then split the signal in your program. At least in Logic it worked so, that you play into a midi channel with your keyboard. Then you split the signal from the midi channel into both of the plugins and possible add some filter between them to let only the certain area of the keyboard pass through to each one.

I'm sorry I can't advice you to do this in Pro Tools, but like I said, it's very easy to do in Ableton Live. Just in case you happen to switch. The main point was, I recommend you to use a host software and run them as plugins to be able to use them in more free way.

 

You might want to look at tracking down a free vst host program, less complex than a sequencer it would alow you to run both ElektrikPiano and B4 simultaneously as plugins. But a sequencer has more tricks up it's sleeves, like effects routing, I run ElektrikPiano through B4II's amp and cabinets, also with a sequencer I put ElektrikPiano's E7 Clavinet on the same channel as a sampler adding squeaking sounds like on Stevie Wonder's Superstition.( I think they had the mic sitting on top of the Clavinet itself and it picked up some of the fretting mechanics squeaking sounds.)

 

The not being able to run both as standalones at the same time's due to your audio and/or MIDI interface and not the programs. If your audio and MIDI drivers are multiclient, you can run anything that doesn't specifically reserve drivers simultaneously.

Right now, I'm running Reaktor, Akoustik Piano and Reason together as standalones; all using the same drivers.

ew

 

The Korg SG-1 has a function within it that alows you to split the keyboard, I dont know if the volume slider can be assigned but the other sliders can, you could test this buy using the learn function on B4, see if B4 will learn from all the sliders including the volume slider. I think the SG-1 has a lot to offer you function wize, and you should defenently get stuck into the manual.