It’s still anyone’s guess exactly what fruit parent technology maker may soon ship, but the touchscreen is getting a component update soon. points to a quiet from JazzMutant with the details of a coming manufacturing change.
“…the next batch of Lemur will feature the latest generation of our multi-touch technology: better optical performances, higher precision, greater accuracy and responsiveness. It will be clearer and have brighter colors. We plan on launching the new Lemur in early October, and of course we will keep you updated as we get closer to launch date. We once again thank you for your patience, and look forward to sharing the excitement early October!”
It’s actually quite remarkable to me that JazzMutant remains alone in this market – and with Stantum focused on the mass market, that could be the case in the future, too. The issue is that doing multi-touch well still costs some money. There are basic implementations on computers that are cheaper, but that restricts you to a few computer models, because slapping multitouch overlays on displays remains pricey. So HP can get a few computers to the mass market, but not without cutting some corners and not even on that company’s full range. The iPhone has brilliant multi-touch control, but a mobile form factor makes this much easier.
I’ve got some videos demonstrating what’s possible with the Lemur coming soon, as well as some notes on how the software has evolved since I first saw it in its initial release. Even if you don’t want or can’t afford a Lemur, it’s a fascinating demonstration of interaction design and OSC, with lessons (inspiring and tough alike) for other interfaces.
The market is clear: guitarists (and other instrumentalists) want to plug in a piece of hardware, fire up their Mac, and start playing with GarageBand right away. The announcement of Apple’s new Logic Studio 9 last week coincided with the release of new hardware from Apogee, the audio vendor that has gone Mac-only and Apple-centric. Today during a meeting with Apple, I got my first in-person look at the GiO (pronounced “Geo,” like the compact car, not G.I.O. as would rhyme with G.I. Joe).
A number of impressions that I didn’t get from the press announcement:
The hardware looks great. It’s tough to describe until you see in person, but while it seems to look almost cheap or toy-like in photos, the hardware is quite substantial, solid, and attractive. It’s also nice to see a pedalboard that’s fairly simple, with ample clearance between controls – essential for playing with your feet.
It has awesome colored lights. No, really. Not only do the lights change color, but they’re actually color coded. So you can see, for instance, which stompboxes you’re using based on the color.
It uses MIDI. Let’s get this out of the way. Apogee made such a big deal of saying this was compatible with GarageBand and Logic that I began to wonder if they’d somehow found a way to make something as simple as a pedalboard incompatible with everything else! Not so – the GiO just sends standard MIDI over USB. I’ll have to ask Apogee how this maps, and you may still be Mac-only assuming they wrote their own drivers. But I would imagine at the very least, if you want to swap between Logic and AmpliTube or Logic, you should be okay.
[Apogee Digital]
If you’re in love with Logic and GarageBand, GiO looks quite nice. $399 would be steep for a few buttons for your feet, but in a nice housing with an audio interface, if you get heavy use out of it, you may feel differently. You get integrated control, low-latency audio (instrument in + line out), 5 stompbox buttons + 5 transport controls + next/previous controls, and expression control. Of course, this is not news if you’re happy with similar solutions from IK Multimedia, Line6, Native Instruments, and WAVES – all of which also have impressive software and integrated hardware. And there’s nothing stopping you from using that hardware, or other MIDI pedalboards, even with Logic. And I’ll just keep dreaming of a thin-but-large magical pedalboard that I can toss in a bag with a laptop. My feet need more to do.
A Traktor setup, ready to go. Now make sure your files are, too. Photo () (not the one who’s creator of Reaktor).
Here’s a superb reader tip: DJ Josef Prusa has been using SugarSync to synchronize Native Instruments’ Traktor Pro DJ software, so that he and his brother have their full music collection at the ready at gigs. (Naturally, this same technique means that if one of their MacBooks should die, bro to the rescue!) Not only does music get synced, but playlists, collections, MIDI mappings, and settings do, too. Now, you could use something like the ubiquitous free command line utility to do the same thing, but SugarSync has the advantage of giving you cloud storage, too, so you have an additional backup and always-on access to your files.
Traktor is just one example. You could do the same with any other essential files. Josef also syncs Max/MSP patches for monome, plus a promising-looking, in-progress . File sync in SugarSync works across Mac, PC, and now iPhone, Windows Mobile, cell phones, and Android. (One gripe: no Linux support, something DropSync can muster.)
Before this becomes a SugarSync ad, though, I am interested in what other solutions people are using. There are various cloud storage and sync services. SugarSync is fairly unique in providing both true sync/remote access with cloud storage. But maybe you have added your home server to the mix, or found another solution.
Josef seems to be the perfect geek DJ – check out his and (while not musical) .
AP - A Boston University graduate student accused of illegally swapping music online nonchalantly admitted in court Thursday that he has downloaded and shared hundreds of songs by Nirvana, Green Day, The Smashing Pumpkins and other artists.
A lot is happening and changing (it never seems to stop) in the world of technology and music. I wanted to focus today’s post on the shift from ownership to access.
As everything tech seems to shift to the , the need for actual storage space on your computer/ipod diminishes. You don’t have to worry about losing your music and files if your hard drive crashes. The computer world is betting on the cloud with to be the next big thing. Super cheap computers with hardly any hard drive space because all your data will be on a cloud hard-drive.
Web-applications are becoming standard (vs downloading software). Speaking of web-apps, is a great example of a web-based app. Voyno and I wrote the first draft of using Google docs to make sure we didn’t lose the working copy (we trusted Google enough).
To catalyze the cloud movement, the world is going full-on wireless. You’ll be able to tap into the cloud anywhere and pull/stream songs you want either from or an online hard-drive with all your songs.
What does this mean for musicians?
Since the empahsis is going to streaming vs ownership, a system where people pay a fee for access looks much more viable now than it did a few years back. It would be a big pot where artists would get paid per stream and labels could pay extra to feature their artists on the main site. You’d still need to promote an artist to get the streaming hits, but I think a lot of people would pay $3-$5/a month for access to all the music they wanted.
Think about this:
If 50 million people across the world (that’s really nothing) paid $3/month for access, that’s $150,000,000/month. In a year that’s $1,8o0,000,000. That’s not bad. Sure, there will be a lot of competition for streams if it’s open to any artist, but that’s where marketing comes in.
In a Hollywood overrun with remakes, a new Tron has quite a daunting challenge. The original film may be a cult hit for its 80s arcade cool, but it also was a seminal moment in the evolution of computer animation, at the nexus of obsessive-compulsive optical effects that came before and digital effects that came after. (Google Perlin Noise, if you must.) But where the bits of the effects look uneven or dated alongside the brilliant, it’s nearly impossible to top the genius of Wendy Carlos’ score. Her deft blend of choirs, orchestras, organs, and rich electronics wasn’t just forward looking: it’s fresh today, an alternative to some of the signature sameness in today’s games and films.
Perhaps Tron Legacy will do what other belated sequels have not: express love for the original. With Daft Punk helming the score and a reverent, inspired crew ready to make Tron live again, the trailer last week was the real sleeper hit of Comic-Con.
If that’s not enough layers of fandom, though, head to GearSlutz for a lesson in film scoring and a recreation of the trailer in Reason, custom Reaktor patches, and Ableton Live. This is not much of an infomercial for Live: because Ableton’s arrange view doesn’t quite understand frames, scoring with Live is a bit of a beast. (Live 9, anyone?) But it’s a great example of love for the movie and its original score. And hey, everyone need a source of joy, even a film.
[GearSlutz forum]
Stripped the original audio and redid all of the sound from scratch using Reason/NI Reaktor/Ableton Live 8. An M-Audio Axiom 49 was used to perform the Lightcycle Engine Oscillations
Wendy Carlos, if you’re out there, we get it. You revolutionized film scoring and electronic orchestration, and we’re all in your debt. It’s not so much that you switched on Bach or switched on Moog or even switched on Kubrick and guys in glowing skin-tight outfits. You switched on sound, and nothing has been quite the same since.
Now, we just have to hope 2010 can show us a good time, too.
Joel Tenenbaum’s case has been the background for a week of a very bizarre copyright law and file sharing policy changes. Curiously, the Tenenbaum team won’t be shaking up the way the law is applied, but seems to be seeking to actually minimize the actual damages under the 8th amendment. This is the proverbial other side to the recording industries lawsuit coin, can they justify the damages that they’re claiming? After all, it’s not like stealing a CD from the store. It’s not like they could just take an original copy and make as many other ones as they wanted so long as they had space…
As a lot of individuals are keenly aware, the music industry has been declining for years. The slumping sales are blamed on a number of factors, ranging from an increased emphasis on other entertainment products (DVDs and Video Games), the economy slumping, and lets not forget a pirates. The deficit that was developed in the industry was somewhere around $10 billion in loss of revenue from 1999, the point where Napster came into being. Now, I’m not an economist, but it’s assumed that pirates make up a relatively small portion of the internet (which isn’t really what you’d believe based on the claims of the recording industry), then in the US, a 1% piracy rate is about 3 million people at any given time sharing. That’s about $3,333 in lost sales per pirate. It’s stated that the industry charges retailers $.70 per $.99 download. Essentially, Mr. Tenenbaum would have had to share 4,761 songs to have made an impact on the industry.
Given that Mr. Tenenbaum is being sued for 30 songs, at the minimum rate per song, $750, he at best faces fines of $22,500, a rate of over 7 times the quantity of music that he allegedly stole and distributed. For those familiar with this argument, you’re realizing that how Peer 2 Peer sharing works is that it’s assumed that the next guy down the line passes the buck to the next guy. Based on this thought, our 3 million people downloaded about $30 in songs, and have caused the recording industry an estimated $67.5 billion dollars in minimum damages under the current fines.
Now, I’m not a doctorate in math, but I’ve had a few college courses, and I kind of doubt that $67.5 billion is the same as $10 billion. Now, if you look back at the case featuring Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the amount of $150,000 per song was considered a fair fine by Sony Music Entertainment Deputy General Counsel Wade Leak. If Mr. Leak is correct, then the amount of damage that the pirates have caused to the music industry over the past 10 years is actually $450,000,000,000 [and that's 1 song, per person, I don't want to try to write out what an album of 10 songs per person will cost]. For those that don’t know, the Iraq war is estimated to have cost $3 trillion. In other words, 3 million people downloading music from the internet have cost the music industry a little less than a 7th of the Iraq war. What’s truly scary, is that’s a conservative estimate.
Based on this, the music industry was about to experience the most significant growth spike in the history of business, or because the industry can’t figure out how to quantify damages (which they’ve more or less admitted).
There are important ramifications to the outcome of the damage awards in this case, as their is a good opportunity for Judge Nancy Gertner to give the people of the US some reasonable protection against a clearly unfair law.
But wait, there’s more!
Meanwhile, the background noise is no less distracting. The house today essentially heard a proposal from Edolphus Towns representative to New York calling for a ban of Peer 2 Peer or… Predator – Prey file sharing. Now, I’m not entirely sure if Representative Towns has seen our flag, but it’s not Chinese. More importantly, I’m not sure Mr. Towns has noticed that the government isn’t so good at designing Internet based systems. How often is it that some teenager hacks into the Pentagon, and it shows up in the odd sock drawer of the New York Times? Someone needs to step up to the plate and remind the government that it’s job is not to protect every citizen from themselves. Some level of personal responsibility must be given.
Just to ice the recording industry cake, the fiasco with music sold with DRM is coming to a head. With Walmart planning to shut down it’s DRM server again, the only choice for customers is to burn all the DRM laced content to CDs. Big Content, a group representing the recording industry and MPAA, suggests that, actually instead of trying to explain it, I’ll let their representative Steven Metalitz put it in his own words:
“We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so.”
In other words, we don’t really see why we should ensure content for a system we asked for which is now causing a problem.
Really? Last time I check I bought that copy of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and didn’t really expect that the MPAA would show up at the door asking for it back in a few years because their plan to protect it’s content failed. Given that DRM free media is now more or less standard for download services like Amazon or iTunes, it’s confusing why there would be opposition to granting an exception to the licensing for these individuals who stand to have to buy all their music all over again. Get real. I’ll be over to Mr. Metalitz’s place since I want that couch back.
In a final bizarre turn of the day, Podcasts have now been patented [potentially on unstable ground], and the AP is still trying DRM it’s news content. Just a suggestion for all the would be copyright loving nutters out there who want to make money on everything: Eventually, there has to be a justifiable loss in order to claim that information being taken caused you to lose something. I.E. Someone else taking your headline is at best ad-revenue, and you’re probably going to have a very hard time quantifying what visitors would have come to your content, and which users were already going to the other content provider.
I’ll be away the next few days, but make sure to keep reading up on Tenenbaum, the ending should be something to speculate over.
So I’ve never bought an product. Not a Mac, not an iPod. I do, however, have a 4th gen iPod Nano. Now, for someone who’s obviously a bit into music, I’m not actually that into the hardware… I’ve always bought cheap (but good) hi-fi gear from (right back to the late 80’s when I got my fist amp at the London Bridge store – still got the amp ) and as long as it sounds OK to my ears, that’s cool.
So, I won this iPod (thanks Gadget Show!) and meant to use it quite a lot. But for a few reasons I left it gathering dust (mainly I didn’t get a case for it and couldn’t be arsed loading my music onto it) but not through any anti-Apple sentiment, I didn’t bother for the first nine months or so of ownership. I had a 60GB Vision:M and a 1GB 1st gen Creative Stone and they did me fine. But about a month ago, I thought I’d buy a case for the Nano and give it a whirl.
Blimey. The sound quality is fab. Beats both Creatives hands down. Listening to The White Album on the way to work yesterday, I was hearing bits I’d never heard before in over twenty years of listening.
So there you go – another Apple convert. Well, I like to let things bed down a bit before jumping in…
The KORG nanoSERIES has a rabid following among many Ableton Live users, and with good reason. The nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL street for about US$60, provide basic knobs + faders + transport (KONTROL) and pads and X/Y control (PAD), plus a fully-featured, cross-platform editor, but still fit in a backpack. They’re small enough to use in coach on an airplane.
Having to open Live templates, however, just to get the mappings you want is a big pain. So, instead I’ve created a basic set of MIDI Remote Scripts and Kontrol Editor templates for Mac and Windows, Live 6.x and later, and wanted to share them with you.
If you’re Windows-based and a big fan of the nano, I will say that I recommend you use something else altogether – the brilliant nativeKontrol. It’s a hell of a lot more sophisticated, gives you more control, and still requires no template:
Of course, there are some advantages to my (otherwise inferior) humble solution. It’s free, it works on Mac, it’s completely editable, and much of the idea was to provide an easy way of learning about MIDI Remote Scripting. (Check out the tutorial below.) Now, knowing CDM readers, I imagine someone out there can improve what I’ve done, so feel free to modify it and please send us a copy of what you’ve created!
[Cross-platform archive; will update with a fancier release later on once I've gotten some feedback]
And, of course, read all the instructions…
Install instructions:
1. For full control, upload the templates to your Korg nanoSeries using the Kontrol Editor, via the Communication menu. (See your manual for more.)
2. Place the proper folder(s) in your User Remote Scripts folder, inside your user preferences folder (NOT the Live program folder). That’s something like (Windows Vista/7):
[boot drive] > [Library folder] > Preferences > Ableton > Live [version] > User Remote Scripts
3. Start Ableton Live 6.x or later (restart if it was already running)
4. Select the device. Choose Preferences > MIDI/Sync, select Control Surface in the first column (nanoPAD or nanoKONTROL), and then its Input and Output ports. Finally, enable the Control Surface Input for Track and Remote. Note that you can have more than one control surface, so if you’ve got both nano’s plugged into a hub, set them both up!
Usage instructions
nanoKONTROL Scene 1 is for device control. The buttons act as triggers for pads in drum devices, and the faders control the eight Macro encoders in any selected Rack. You’re free to assign the scene 1 knobs to whatever you like.
Scenes 2-3 control tracks: the top button record arms tracks, leaving the button button free for whatever you like (mute, enable/disable). The faders control level on tracks 1-8, and knobs control the first send for each track.
Scene 4 is basically unassigned and ready for custom assignments.
Across all scenes, fader 9 is the master level. Transport buttons are automatically mapped and will work as expected.
Because there are so many controls free, I’ve created a sample template that pre-maps some parameters. In case you prefer to work that way, that template can get you started.
nanoPAD: The nano is much simpler, but I’ve set up the X/Y pad to dynamically trigger the first two parameters in a rack, making this much more fun to use with a Drum Rack. I like having access to all 8 Macros, so I’ve spread them across the four scenes. The pads will dynamically map to the first 16 pads, with 1-12 on scene 1 and 13-16 on the top of scene 2. There was some trickery to allow you to map these pads more or less as you see them in the software, beyond those first 16. I’ve provided alternative versions that allow easier continuous melodic control or keep CC 1 + 2 consistent across all four scenes.
(I didn’t say that very well, so if anyone’s feeling really motivated and wants to do a quick post or video of this or even modify them and make them better, feel free!)
To avoid accidentally triggering parameters with the X/Y pad, you can either turn flam/roll mode on all the time, or make sure instruments you want to play are added to racks first.
For more detailed instructions on Live setup and how MIDI Remote Scripts work, !
Scripts for KORG nanoSERIES and Ableton Live by is licensed under a .
Want to help motivate me to do more stuff like this? (I and others on Planet CDM really will — open to non-KORG, non-Ableton requests!)
A handsome shot of the Korg nanoSERIES pad and controller makes them look pricier than they are. Photo () .
When software has “Live” as its name, you know control will be everything. So it’s great that many control surfaces will behave intelligently out of the box with Ableton Live, including devices like the Akai APC40 and Novation ReMOTE SL. If you’ve used one of these products, you’ve no doubt been able to click a device rack in Live and have a blue hand icon appear in the title bar, automatically assigning, say, the first eight macro knobs in a drum rack to your eight hardware encoders.
But what if you have hardware that isn’t covered by this functionality that you want to use? The easiest solution is something called MIDI Remote Scripting. It’s been available since Live 6, but it seems not many people know that it’s there or how to use it. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s such an easy hack that it’s worth at least exploring.
For this tutorial, I’ll take the example of the Korg nanoKONTROL and nanoPAD. They’re a likely candidate, at about US$60 street each and with some handy controls (kontrols?) for mixer channels and drum racks. But you could take any hardware and apply the same technique — even something you’ve built yourself — so long as it sends simple MIDI messages.
The upshot: you get simple “automap” functionality without something specific like Automap (or drivers, in general).
Caught blue-handed: dynamic control of any device means never having to open a template.
Required for this tutorial: Ableton Live 6.x or later. I’ve tested only the full version of Live on Mac and Windows, though I think at least some of the “lighter” versions should work, as well.
This is a long article but a relatively short and easy process. I’m just giving you everything you could possibly want to know about the nanoSERIES and MIDI Remote Scripting!
Introducing MIDI Remote Scripts
Ableton Live uses compiled Python scripts to provide custom support for controllers, as I understand it. I’ve never looked into this specific functionality, and generally you wouldn’t unless you’re a hardware vendor working with Ableton.
As of Live 6, though, there’s a hack provided for everything else, called MIDI Remote Scripts. They’re simple text files that let you specify mappings of MIDI note, Control Change, and channel messages to common parameters in Live. This text file is compiled into a Python script for the hardware when Live launches. Basically, the Remote Script covers:
The 16 visible pads in Drum Racks
Device Rack encoders (the 8 Macros for each Device Rack)
Bank parameters for switching between banks of encoders in devices that aren’t in racks
Volume faders 1-8, plus the master volume setting
Sends for tracks 1-8 (just the first two sends)
Track arm buttons for recording into tracks 1-8
Transport controls
Now, if you’re not familiar with Device Racks and Drum Racks, and how to use them for instruments and effects, you should absolutely go brush up now. Really, go ahead – I’ll wait. The rack functionality introduced in Live 6 is essential, because it allows you to take complex sets of effects and instruments and map them intelligently to just eight controls.
You’ll notice there’s plenty of stuff that’s not on here. There’s nothing to do with clips. There’s no way of banking up to track counts higher than 8. There’s no way to easily bank between sets of pads in Drum Racks with more slots. There’s no headphone level. There’s record arm, but not track enable/disable. I could go on…
But you do get a pretty decent base set of functionality if the list above looks appealing. Since you’re just using MIDI, you can manually assign any additional remaining hardware MIDI controls to your favorite parameters.
And the most important thing about all of this is that parameters for the Device Rack are dynamic. So while there are eight of them, that covers any selected device anywhere in your set. Click on the device, and the blue hand lets you know the device is under your control. Whichever controls you’ve chosen — say, eight huge mechanical knobs on a DIY hardware controllers — will map automatically.
Finding and Editing the MIDI Remote Scripts
This file is the extent of the documentation of the MIDI Remote Scripting feature. Tells you everything you need to know, right?
I do mean finding. Your first job is to find the MIDI Remote Script location on your drive.
First, here’s where it’s not: it’s not in the Ableton program folder itself. There is, in fact, a User Remote Scripts folder in there, but it’s not the one you want to use. (I bring this up only because I tried to put my customized text file in that folder, had my script show up in Live’s preferences, but then couldn’t understand why nothing was working. Learn from my mistake, and be wiser.)
Instead, you’ll want to navigate to your user preferences folder.
On Windows Vista/Windows 7, my Live preferences live in:
[Windows boot drive] > Users > Peter > AppData > Roaming > Ableton > Live 8.04 [or your version] > Preferences > User Remote Scripts
(Yours may be in Local rather than Roaming, depending on whether you installed Live for all users. On XP, the path is similar, but in your boot drive’s Documents and Settings.)
On Mac:
[Library folder] > Preferences > Ableton > Live 8.04 [or your version] > User Remote Scripts
Note that on the Mac, in similar fashion to the Remote/Roaming difference on Windows, you may need either the Library folder at the root level of your boot drive or the Library folder inside your user folder (the one you see when you click Home, Documents, etc.).
You’ll find two files in that folder. One is a how-to text file, as pictured above, though it doesn’t tell you that much. The other is a sample file.
To create your custom script, you’ll want to duplicate the UserConfiguration.txt script and place it in a folder with the name you want to appear in Live. So, for my custom nanoKONTROL script, I have:
User Remote Scripts > nanoKONTROL > UserConfiguration.txt
Note that the new file will still be called UserConfiguration.txt.
Customizing in the nanoSERIES Editor
The nano in action, live. Photo ()
Let’s take a quick side trip to set up our KORG nanoSERIES controllers the way we want.
Out of the box, the KORG nanos don’t come with any software disc, because you don’t need them – just plug them in, and they work. And, in fact, if you’re happy with the default MIDI assignments, you never need to go beyond this. In this case, though, I was interested in remapping some stuff, particularly on the nanoKONTROL buttons, so I went ahead and started editing.
You can head to the site and navigate through support, or even easier is to head to this direct link:
(If you’re outside the Americas, there may be a different link.)
Click Downloads and choose Kontrol Editor for Mac or PC. (You may also want to grab KORG’s own USB MIDI Driver.)
The Kontrol Editor is really quite nice to use and surprisingly powerful for a $60 piece of hardware. At the top, you’ll see buttons for the scenes on the nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL. There’s a visual representation of the controller which, by default, displays MIDI Control Change and note number assignments. (To change what this preview displays, select the dropdown just below the picture of your nano.) The Browse tab allows you to navigate your file structure, but keep Control selected to change assignments.
You can safely ignore the boxes above the controller for now, which control scene settings and channels. Instead, focus on everything on top of and below the controller. On the nanoKONTROL, the faders’ CC assignments are just below the faders. (Look carefully; that can be a bit confusing at first.)
I’m providing my download of my template, so you don’t have to muck with this, necessarily. But here was my strategy:
nanoKONTROL I was most interested in reassigning the buttons next to the faders. Selecting “Momentary” lights up the button only as you’re pressing it; “Toggle” has it turn on and off. Note that this doesn’t actually impact the messages it sends; just the lights. For Scene 1, I wanted these buttons to double as triggers for my drum pads, so I changed all of them to Assign Type: Notes and adjusted Button Behavior to Momentary. For the remaining scenes, they’re record arm buttons, so those I left as Control Change assignments and Toggle behavior.
Custom assignment in the KORG Kontrol Editor.
The tricky part of this is that KORG has nine faders and encoders instead of eight, and everything in Live is grouped in eight. I made the ninth fader a master. You might manually assign the knob above that ninth fader to headphone out.
nanoPAD All the fun in the nanoPAD editor is to be had on the X/Y controller. The two boxes that are pre-assigned represent X control and Y control on the pad. The third box allows you to define an additional controller for touch across the whole pad. On the pads themselves, note that you can assign up to eight(!) control change or note messages, not just one.
For this project, I just wanted to adjust the note settings to map more intelligently across my Drum Racks, which I’ll explain with the download. That means, unfortunately, going through one by one and changing pitch assignments. For the pad, I’m of two minds. You can keep those CC assignments consistent across all four scenes, or use each scene to control different parameters for a total of eight (conveniently, the number of macros on a Live Device Rack) Note that the scene descriptions at top are just text you add, so the “Drum Kit” or “Chromatic” labels are really just suggestions; they have no functional purpose. You can change them if you want, but the editor is the only place you’ll see them.
User Configuration Settings
Lastly, let’s walk through the changes to make to UserConfiguration.
[Globals]:
For InputName and OutputName, it’s essential that you match exactly the text listed by a MIDI device when it’s connected to your computer. For the nanos, that’s “nanoPAD” and “nanoSERIES.” You can verify this by opening your Live preferences and checking under MIDI.
You also need to double-check your GlobalChannel. Numbering starts at zero, so channel 1 is channel 0, and 10 is 9. You can plug multiple nanoSERIES devices into a USB hub — even an unpowered hub, the power draw is so low — so I like to assign different channels to different devices to avoid confusion.
In the rest of the document, any channel that references “-1″ is equivalent to the default. For that reason, I recommend leaving channel assignments along and just changing the default global channel.
Pads and Device Controls
Here’s the fun part: you can set up pads and Device Controls (Macro) encoders to dynamically control the active device. Choose note messages for the pads, and Control Change messages (with the associated numbers) for the encoders.
Here’s the trick: you need to have everything assigned, or it won’t work. In other words, you can’t assign just the first few encoders or just the first few pads, or, oddly, Live will refuse to recognize this as a mappable device.
Banks and Locking
I didn’t find Banks as useful. Banks allow you to choose banks of unassigned controllers. That can get confusing, though, so I still recommend using Device Racks to manually pick and choose which macros you want assigned.
There is, however, an assignment for LockButton. This allows you to pick a button that will “lock” your dynamic controls to one device. So, for instance, let’s say you have a rack of effects you want to control with your nanoKONTROL. When you’re at home in the studio, you might want to mouse around and click different devices for tangible control. But live onstage, you want just one live performance effects rack. Lock the device, and you won’t accidentally click something else and lose control.
I didn’t assign this on the nanoKONTROL because there wasn’t a convenient parameter to assign, but you can still lock a Device from within Live.
[MixerControls]
This gives you limited automatic control of mixer levels (for channels 1-8), sends (1-2 for each of those channels), record enable (for arming tracks), and the master mixer level. I like having a master to control, so having that ninth fader on the nanoKONTROL wound up being very nice.
Now, it is a little annoying to be limited to eight tracks, but there are two important factors here. Firstly, this is a dynamic assignment, meaning you don’t need to manually assign anything or make a special Live session template. That means you can mix and match MIDI and audio tracks arbitrarily, which you can’t do with a template. Secondly, sometimes having the arbitrary limit of eight channels is ideal in live performance — and it means you don’t have to bank around.
Transport
This winds up working perfectly: you get play, stop, record, forward scrub, reverse scrub, and even a loop on/off switch. Of course, you don’t get some of the other parameters you get from an Akai APC40, like turning on and off MIDI overdub. But, hey, you spent sixty bucks on the Korg and you really can’t balance an APC40 and your laptop on Greyhound.
Setting Up Live
Once your MIDI Remote Script is in the proper folder, your device will show up automatically in Live. That’s especially cool if you’re a DIYer; you could have Maria’s Arcade Button Mashapalooza show up if you want.
Select a configured device just as you would any other control surface. Choose Preferences > MIDI/Sync, select Control Surface in the first column (nanoPAD, for instance), and then its Input and Output ports. Finally, enable the Control Surface Input for Track and Remote. This will allow you to manually override assignments if you want, and to assign controls on your hardware you didn’t assign in the MIDI Remote Script, both via the usual MIDI Map method.
Arm multiple tracks for recording simultaneously by turning off “Exclusive” arming.
Because I want to be able to easily record-toggle multiple tracks — and because anything else will mean the “toggle” lights on the nanoKONTROL are wrong — I also like to turn off “exclusive” arming in preferences. This way, you can record-enable multiple tracks at once, so that when you want to feed MIDI into your soft synth on track 7, your vocoded vocal track on track 2 doesn’t immediately switch off. Go to Preferences > Record/Warp/Launch > Record > Exclusive and make sure Arm is unlit. (Pictured above.)
Using Auto Select in Drum Racks can make managing bigger racks much easier.
One last tip, as suggested by Mike Hatsis of Trackteam Audio: use the Drum Rack’s Auto Select feature, and you’ll automatically toggle the interface to whatever part of the rack’s various pads you happen to trigger. (This works in Live 7 and later only.) This way, you can easily toggle more than the 16 visible pads. On my nanoPAD template, for instance, I’ve already gone to the trouble of mapping the remaining scenes, so the first 16 pads map automatically, and then scenes 2-4 can access other pad slots.
To enable Auto Select, make sure the Chain is visible in the rack, then click the small A button as pictured above.
Alternatives, Future
Now, go forth and have fun!
Granted, this isn’t a perfect control mechanism. If you need to bank more easily between tracks, control a whole lot of mechanisms that aren’t here, focus on clips, or … well, do anything other than the stuff described above … it’s not ideal.
On the other hand, I find this resolves about half of the situations that would otherwise require manual MIDI assignments and, worse, templates rather than dynamic assignment. For basic MIDI tasks, it’s a hack, but a useful hack.
What about the future? HyperControl from M-Audio and Automap from Novation both have more sophisticated integration. The Akai APC40 goes further than previous devices as far as dynamic clip triggering and shortcuts. And other integration is possible with Ableton’s own scripts than what you can do here, although you don’t necessarily get support for all the hardware you’d like to use.
MIDI Remote Scripting is frozen in time in Live 6, so as its own documentation says, there’s some stuff missing. I don’t expect it to be updated, however — too bad, as it is a nice hack.
Max implementation of the Live API, coming in the Live API. Courtesy Cycling ‘74.
The Ableton Live API is likely where future action is at. While it’s not an official or supported feature, I have no reason to suspect that it’s going away. On the contrary, you should be able to use API functions controlling clips and most functions of the user interface in Live dynamically. This functionality will be baked into Max for Live if you’re a Max user, but should also be accessible via the hacker-spported, community-based Python API wrapper. Most promisingly, hackers have already wrapped this Python API into both MIDI and OSC implementations, meaning you should have a choice between using Max for Live and supporting this functionality directly from hardware, even without M4L.
I’ll be documenting what’s coming very soon, both on the Max and Python/OSC sides. In the meantime, here’s a preview of what the API will do from our friend Andrew Benson at Cycling ‘74. Andrew is himself a visualist, so I expect we’ll see some nifty visual applications.
And looking beyond even Live, I think we’re now in a world in which we’re finally moving beyond simple MIDI learn. That’s a big relief. Next stop: OSC.
KORG owners: Downloads coming in a separate article later today!
Corrections/tips: More to add? Let me know and I’ll update the story. -Ed.
) and as long as it sounds OK to my ears, that’s cool.
