Ableton Live, buttons trigering loops with led's?

[style_riser]

Is it posible to build the midio128 with the buttons trigering loops in ableton live with led's indicating which loop was trigerered? i use an existing midi controller with ableton but to build one with led indicators seems good idea!

How are the led's maped to the buttons? is it by uploading text file config by midi? thanks...:)

[style_riser]

im guessing sinse it has 128 buttons and led's, the first led is maped to first button, second  led is maped to second button etc. Does ableton automatically supply the midi controller the correct led to display as you could chose a loop with the mouse? Any extra info with using midiio128 with ableton most apreceated!

Im planing on building a midi64 and midiio128 into one 19 inch rack cab.

[drin]

Chances are you're better off with a MIDIBox64 rather than a MIDIO 128. My suggestion is:

Step 1: Go to http://www.ucapps.de.

Step 2: Start reading. I'd suggest (in order):

http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp.html - Introduction

http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_core.html - Core Module

http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_din.html - DIN Module

http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_dout.html - DOUT Module

http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_ain.html - AIN Module

http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp_aout.html - AOUT Module

http://www.ucapps.de/midibox64.html - MIDIBox 64 Design

http://www.midibox.org/users/tor_arne/midibox64_walkthrough/index.html - MIDIBox 64 Walkthrough

Step 3: Read them again.

Step 4: Consider reading them one more time.

Step 5: If you still have questions, search the forums for the answers.

Step 6: If you still have questions, ask away.

-drin

[dj_statikfire]

This is a probelem that I've been thinking about myself.

Basically, another way to state the problem is this:

If the clip contains data, LED is ON

If the clip is playing, LED is BLINK

I have no idea how to implement this! Ableton doesn't have scripting!

Don't know if there is a way to put the program burdon on the MIDIBOX to use MIDI to check if a clip is empty or not.

I'd certainly like some advice.

THX,

JasonD

[style_riser]

Heres a layout design ive came up with, anyone see any problems?

Anyone know a uk supplyer for cheap red buttons with inbuilt independant led's?

[style_riser]

Im presuming ablelton sends out midi data for the led's? but how does ableton know which controller to send it to as it can use multiple controllers and i wish to use 3 (my custom built counts as 2 and im using an Evolution x-Session for DJ Control)

[moebius]

Well, *presuming* doesn't really get You anywhere.

Reading The midi specification for the Live (Traktor) ((whatever)) REALLY helps the setup. I know lot of people want to use Midibox with Live (Traktor), but Why on EARTH they consistently seem to bypass reading the documentation for the software?!

Moebius

[style_riser]

Well, *presuming* doesn't really get You anywhere.

Lucky i have this forum! :)

P.S. Ableton live is NOT Traktor.

Does anyone have any experiance with live and midiio128 and midi64?

[moebius]

I was referring to 2 user groups - One being Ableton Live users the other being Traktor DJ users..

By the way - The FULL legal version of the Live comes with documentation  ;D  ;D  ;D

Moebius

[style_riser]

By the way - The FULL legal version of the Live comes with documentation 

So does the Warez version, but i wouldnt know cus i spent my money along with my £3000 amps &speakers etc. ;D ;D ;D

[style_riser]

Can any 'Ableton live' user tell me if it's simply: when you press a button on any given controller, live sends out a midi message back to the same controller thus lighting the buttons led?

[dj_statikfire]

I'll see if I can detect something thru midiox or similar.

Let's get back to the question...

is there ANY ableton scripting available?

THX,

JD

[style_riser]

is there ANY ableton scripting available?

Just googled 'ableton live script' and nothing interesting came up, so probably not  :(

[dengel]

Heres a layout design ive came up with, anyone see any problems?

Without Giving some indication of what the things do, It's honestly hard to tell.

One thing you might want to try is to use something like MidiOX and watch the commands that come across when you activate things via midi. There are even programs that will turn midi events into KB events, so you might consider testing by seeing if you can get Ableton to "type" something, which would be evidence of a midi return event.

Remember though that the folkshere are MIDIBOX experts, not Ableton experts. Have you searched at the Ableton forums, or asked the question there? That might be a better place to ask Ableton specific questions.

Oh, and for the RTFM crowd, the official docs don't have as much tech info as one would like. The answer might not be there.

[audiocommander]

I don't think that LIVE sends a status back by midi. How should it? (Besides the fact that this would generate some nice Feedback Loops)

And I also don't think that LIVE is scriptable, and if it were: what would you do? (Besides the fact that scripting is always quite slow)

Next problem is that there isn't only ON/OFF in LIVE. There is ON/OFF/LOOP/ONCE/TRIGGER...

Question: Why don't you simply look on your monitor? Or buy a touchScreen overlay?

Should be a lot easier than soldering 127 * xTracks LEDs/Buttons? What if you had more tracks than there are on your controller?

Best,

Michael

[style_riser]

I don't think that LIVE sends a status back by midi. How should it? (Besides the fact that this would generate some nice Feedback Loops)

found an interesting thread here: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20031&highlight=midinotefeedback

http://www.ableton.com/index?main=faq&sub=options

Question: Why don't you simply look on your monitor? Or buy a touchScreen overlay?

Too much of a pain moving hands from controller to touch screen, on-screen loop buttons too small etc.

Should be a lot easier than soldering 127 * xTracks LEDs/Buttons? What if you had more tracks than there are on your controller?

nothings perfect :)

[audiocommander]

found an interesting thread here: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20031&highlight=midinotefeedback

indeed, seems to be a nice hack 8)

I hope for you, that Live5 Live6 has the same options available if released this summer/autumn (when your box is finished) ;D

(just joking....)

Edit: Sorry, meant Live6

[style_riser]

I hope for you, that Live5 has the same options available if released this summer/autumn (when your box is finished)

Lets just pretend the worlds perfect and my controller will work forever!  ;D

[pappajackson]

I've been thinking about this myself, I've been using Ableton Live since version 2 and from my experience of the program I don't think it's possible. The only way it might be done is via follow actions, although I think the Midi commands it uses are all internal and there would be no way of routing them out of Ableton.

Check out this tutorial of the ableton site (:::whistles::: nothing to see here).

http://www.ableton.com/index/tutorials/tips1104

HOWEVER...

What you want my friend is Max/MSP. If you don't know it's an object orientated scripting language - and it's all things to all men. :) What you could do is run a small patch created in Max alongside Ableton that also recieves the Midibox commands at the same time as Abelton and then sends information back out to the LEDs.

Once my Midibox is built I'll be creating a large collection of open source Max/MSP patches designed for use with Midibox64's and LC's that I'll distribute to the community. If you can wait until maybe September/October I might have something for you. Alternativly you could buy it yourself (http://www.cycling74.com), but to become competent in the program you really have to immerse yourself in it. Luckily I get taught it for my Digital Arts degree... ;)

[style_riser]

What you want my friend is Max/MSP

Noo! not another language, i know 11 languages,  :'(

As ableton comes with option '-midinotefeedback

' and midi controllers nowdays can come with led's as standard, im going to guess it will work, fingers crossed!  :)

I might go buy a controller from a shop, check it works like i would like it to and return it to shop and start building my custom  :)

[Rowan]

I just tried the -MIDINoteFeedback hack and it works in Live 5 on a Mac ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Nice work finding that

That's another issue solved.

It sends an Note number message of the number you assigned (in my case C2) to it with a velocity value of 127 when your triggered clip starts to play, every loop cycle it sends a Note on message with a velocity of 1. then when the clip stops it sends a note of with a velocity of 0.

16:55:30.100 To MIDI Monitor (Untitled) Note On   1  C-2  127    (Clip Start)

16:55:52.699 To MIDI Monitor (Untitled) Note On   1  C-2  1      (Clip Repeat)

16:56:03.993 To MIDI Monitor (Untitled) Note Off   1  C-2  0      (Clip end)

This is very cool, We can have the LED's Flash or blink when the clip has looped again.......and I sure lots of other things. The core could count the number of Note On Velocity 0 messages and display on the LCD how many times the clip has looped. Bicolor LED's could be used so that At the begining of the next loop cycle the LED could flash a different color.

Anyone got any other ideas how we could use this?

Rowan

[smashtv]

http://www.ableton.com/index/tutorials/tips1104

Cool!  ;)

Smash

[Rowan]

I've done some more test with this hack, and it seems to work with all controls that can be assigned to a MIDI note number. I'm yet to try CC's.

Rowan

[dengel]

Rowan - think there's a way to hack it to make a clip button blink when the track has a certain amount of time left? Now THAT would be useful!

[pappajackson]

Ok time for me to put on the moderator hat for a minute here.....

I know you are a college student, and people sometimes have to "try out" software before buying it, but please don't reduce this community to the level of handing over info to anyone who searches "Ableton [K]" on Google....We simply don't need that kind of attention else the signal/noise ratio here will lower to same as the rest of the net.

Not to mention that you just opened yourself up for email questions from every bedroom deeejay who wants an Ableton crack.

you're right, sorry. Everyone at my college are pretty militant open sourcers and I sometimes forget that it's not often appropriate to talk of such things. For the record I have a legitimate copy of live I got through my college for a very nice discounted price - I got too fed up of re-installing my OS every time Live went down.

BTW - Rowan: You are an absolute badboy (in the nicest sense of the word), good work on the LED thing, when it comes to building my box I might have to pick your brains some more on the subject.