Disabling automation when muting MIDI track? Optional MIDI Controller setup

Hey there,

The question in the title might be an X/Y problem, so here’s an explanation of what I’m trying to do.

I want to set up a “MIDI controller optional” setup in which I’d be able to mute a pre-programmed MIDI input so I can play a synth myself using an external MIDI controller (I use an Arturia Keystep 37). The reason is that in the smallest venues there is not enough room for me to play the MIDI keyboard, so we’d put those synths on playback.

I achieved this using the following setup. I decompose each “controller-optional instrument” like so. 1) A MIDI bus with the synth plugin (eg Surge-XT). 2) A “Controller” MIDI track which receives MIDI from the controller hardware input and sends it to the MIDI bus. 3) An “Auto” MIDI track with pre-programmed MIDI regions. Now if I mute the “Auto” tracks, I am free to play the synth myself.

The thing is, when playing live I also use the CC knobs on the Keystep 37 to play certain parameters on the synths, like filter cutoff or a crossfade between two instruments.

I figured I could pre-program these knob movements as Play-mode automation lanes on the Auto track thanks to the Morph plugin.

But then when I mute the Auto track, those automation lanes will remain active and I can’t control the parameters anymore from my Arturia!

I guess I’d need to toggle between Play mode for playback and Manual mode for using the MIDI controller.

The thing is, I only have one push-button on my Arturia which I use to toggle the Mute state of the “Auto” group which I assigned using MIDI Learn, and I don’t think I can use it to MIDI-Learn multiple actions.

What would work with my setup would be to mark certain automation lanes as being affecting by the muting of the track. Is this even possible?

Thanks for any ideas

Well, I think i’ll be able to solve my use case with bouncing / freezing. I think I can record the pre-programmed MIDI track to audio for a new track, and then deactivate the source MIDI track which will also deactivate the morph automations, allowing me to control parameters with the MIDI controller. Now my MIDI controller will have to toggle the muting of these pre-bounced tracks.