Live 8 - MPK88 compatibility issues

[welltones]

The arm track buttons do not seem to be acting in a sane manor.
I have two choices for the MPK88 track arm button setup.
1) have the track arm button setup to toggle (press once the light goes on, press again the light goes off)
2) have the track arm button setup for momentary contact (press and hold to have the light stay on, release and the light goes off.

The problem is that Ableton 8 wants to see a momentary contact to arm the track and that won't keep the track light lit on the MPK88. If I setup the MPK88 for toggle, then Ableton 8 gets out of sync with the track lights on the MPK88 because it takes two press of the button to arm or dis arm the track and the the light changes on the MPK88 each time the button is pressed. Ableton wants a on/off momentary contact to arm or dis-arm a track.

This makes for quit a problem in knowing which tracks will play when preforming with this setup.

Does anyone have a work around for this problem.

P.S. I have set it up to have all tracks armed and configured for different midi channels and then just change the channel that the MPK88 is transmitting on to the change the track sounds. Unfortunately this is not a very good fix. The sustain pedal seems to only operate on a single channel, so only the sound that transmitting channel 1A is controlling will have the ability to use the pedal.

[welltones]

I guess no one has solved this rather bogus over site.

[welltones]

It is really blowing me away that no one has encountered this problem?

It is such an obvious feature that should work.. Press the track button, the track sounds, light comes on to reflect the proper status, release it and they both turns off.

Ableton's position is this is a third part product and they do not have the resources to fix it.
They also advertise that the their product is compatible with the MPK88....NOT

They also indicate that I may want to try the Editor. Unfortunately the editor can only change the function of the track buttons from Toggle to Momentary just like you can directly on the MPK88. According the Ableton you must send a 127 to both arm or dis arm a track. This would not be industry standard for a button. 127 on 0 off. There does not appear to be this level of control for this button in the editor.

So unless someone else has another suggestion it would appear I'm stuck with looking at the Laptop screen and not at the control surface where one would expect. I suppose I could dissect the MPK88 and get the light to latch on a momentary contact, but that would be adding one shot circuitry, a bit more than I was hoping for.

[welltones]

OK still no ideas here. What about intercepting the the CC 0 sent by the MPK88 on each track arm button channel 32-39 and translate it back to a 127, so now Ableton will now just get 127 for both arm and disarm, much the way Momentary Contact Mode works, but as far as the MPK88 is concerned the light will now stay on, because it is still configured for Toggle Mode.
As long as you start out with both being off..or on, it should work. Can anyone recommend a Midi translator that might work at this level of specificity? How about Bome's Midi Translator Pro?

[welltones]

I'm planing on trying Florian Bomers Midi Translator. Anyone using it?

This should be a control message transmission from controller 32-39. The data would need to translated from 0 to 127. Assuming it is using Midi channel 1 the data should look like for controller 32... B0 20 00 and then would translate to B0 20 127. I would do this for each controller from 32-39. This should arm the track so the sound will play and make the light stay on the MPK88 track buttons.

[jrs1]

hi,

i agree, this is really annoying. I am going to make a max for live patch to resolve this. of course this shouldn't be necessary (it should work out of the box, or there should be the necessary level of editing to be able to make it work).

anyway, let me know if you want a maxforlive solution and I can send it over.

[foxymethoxy]

Just use momentary toggle mode, save yourself the headache of trying to use a bunch of third party software.

[welltones]

hi,

i agree, this is really annoying. I am going to make a max for live patch to resolve this. of course this shouldn't be necessary (it should work out of the box, or there should be the necessary level of editing to be able to make it work).

anyway, let me know if you want a maxforlive solution and I can send it over.

Not sure what maxforlive is, but if you can figure out how to make it work let me know.
thollowell@designdata.com
Thanks,

[welltones]

Just use momentary toggle mode, save yourself the headache of trying to use a bunch of third party software.

There are two modes, Momentary Contact, and Toggle, not sure what "Momentary Toggle Mode"is,
as it does not show up as a choice in the editor.