Control the INTEGRA-7 with Ableton Push

A Step-by-Step Guide

Control the INTEGRA-7 with Ableton Push

The INTEGRA-7 Module holds over six thousand tones. These include tones using Roland’s proprietary SuperNATURAL technology and thousands of Roland’s classic EDM phrases, drum kits, and hits from the built-in SRX expansion boards. This makes the INTEGRA-7 a great library of sounds to expand your sonic choices alongside Ableton or any DAW.

The INTEGRA-7, being a sound module, doesn’t have buttons on its front panel specifically for a “favorites” mode like a Roland keyboard (FA-06/08, VR-09, RD-800, etc.). Using a control surface like the Ableton Push enables you to create an auxiliary “favorites” controller by simply using an Ableton project to organize a sound palette of your favorite sounds from the INTEGRA-7.

In this short video you’ll see that we have conjoined the Ableton Push and the INTEGRA-7 into a virtual groove box. Using Ableton Live’s Session mode, we can try out different combinations of phrases and sounds using the Ableton Push to control the INTEGRA-7.

If you want to try this yourself, the steps are simple. We’ll assume that you have some familiarity with Ableton Live, and you already own an INTEGRA-7 and the Ableton Push. Here are the steps on how to set-up a MIDI clip so it can recall a sound on the INTEGRA-7.

Configuring Ableton Push…

1. On the Ableton Push, press the Session button.
2. In the Session grid in Live, select or create a new MIDI track.
3. Select a location for your new MIDI clip.
4. Right click and select “Insert MIDI clip.”  A new MIDI clip will be created. When you create the MIDI clip, it will automatically appear on the Ableton Push.
5. Double click the clip to bring up the MIDI Note Editor.
6. You’ll need to designate what kind of instrument that the MIDI track is playing. Choose from Live’s CATEGORIES and drag and drop “External Instrument” onto the MIDI Track.
7. Make sure you set the “MIDI to” to INTEGRA-7 and the MIDI Channel to “1” (or which ever channel you want to control with your Live MIDI Track).
8. In the Note Editor, go to “Pgm Change.” This is where you will input the information needed to recall the tone in the INTEGRA-7. The parameters in the “Pgm Change” area are “Bank,” “Sub,” and “Other.” This corresponds to “MSB,” “LSB,” and “Program Change” (the data that denotes a tone’s location within the INTEGRA-7).

Configuring the INTEGRA-7…

To find the MSB, LSB, and Program Change number in the INTEGRA-7, first select the sound that you wish to use. Next, press the “Part View” button twice. The following screen will appear on the INTEGRA-7:

At the bottom of this screen you will see the MSB, LSB, and Program Change address for this tone. These correspond to the parameters in Live’s “Pgm Change” as:

• Bank = MSB
• Sub = LSB
• Other = Program Change

In our example, we will assign the INTEGRA-7 tone “SecretDancer” to our MIDI clip; however, there’s one small “gotcha” that you have to be aware of before inserting the MSB and LSB numbers into your MIDI clip. Because MIDI devices do everything in steps of 127, some devices see this numerically as 0 through 126 or 1 through 127. In the case of our MSB and LSB numbers, you will need to add an additional value of one (1) to the numbers.  For example, “SecretDancer” shows the following on the INTEGRA-7:

• MSB = 93
• LSB = 4
• Program Change = 1

When you input the value into the “Pgm Change” parameters in Live, do the following:

Therefore, the value for Bank, Sub and Other would be:

• Bank = 94
• Sub = 5
• Other = 1

Now, input the number into the Pgm Change area of the MIDI Note Editor. To test to see if you did everything correctly, change the tone on the INTEGRA-7 and then press the pad that corresponds to your MIDI clip on your Ableton Push. Live will start playing, and when the clip cycles back to beat one, the tone will change to “SecretDancer.”

You can also record or draw in notes into your clip. When you do this, and have a number of clips arranged with different musical phrases, then you can use the Ableton Push and the INTEGRA-7 like a virtual groove instrument.

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