MIDI MAP Global / Track selector

[enzymex]

IMO there are three (3) features needed for the next version of Live to kill or seriously maim Sonar, Cubase, etc.

Two of these have their own threads: PDC and Freeze.

The third feature is this: Better control surface support. This post suggests accomplishing this is a very elegant and flexible manner. But first, here is the current problem:

Sometimes, you may want a Live MIDI Mapping to be different on a per track basis, so that a MIDI continuous controller can be "reused" for the same plug used on different tracks.

Example: You have a three band parmetric eq and you want to control each band's gain, Q, and frequency, and a master on/off for the plug to save cpu when not in use. That's 10 MIDI cc's total.

Currently in Live 4, if you wanted to map an EQ as described above on 8 audio tracks, you would have to dedicate 80 cc's to that task, which is not practical.

Here's my suggestion: Create two MIDI Map modes - one for "global" use (Live 4 current implementation), and a second for "track" use. Mapping a cc in "Track" mode would allow the cc to be "reused" across multiple tracks (i.e. only the currently selected track would receive the cc).

The two MIDI Map modes could be mutually exclusive, so the user interface would remain simple. In other words, if a cc is used in "Global" MIDI Map mode, it would not be available for use in "Track" MIDI Map mode, and vice versa.

Context sensitive mapping is implemented for most motorized control surfaces. For example, I have a Roland SI-24 that I use with Sonar. To control track EQ, I select the track, then use the same eight knobs to control the active track. Simple.

Ableton, if you implement this, end users can do the same thing with Behringer control surfaces for dirt cheap! I bought a BCR2000 to use with Live and it is great, BUT it works much better currently with Hosts that support a "track context".

PDC, Freeze, and Track Sensitive remote control = LIVE 5, the COMPETITION KILLER!!!!! I can dream...

[yannxou]

Great idea!

Once an effect is mapped to midi ccs it could be copied easily to the other tracks keeping its 'track' mapping.

Also, I think there should be a place to map the 'track' settings (mute/solo/record arm/sends/volume...) for the current selected track and 'track' clip settings (transpose/volume/start/offset...) for the current selected clip on the active track.

this would rock! you have my vote!

[Former Pharaoh]

My God! This would save me from moving out of my house due to a hundred Midi controllers occupying a lot of space! For what i wish to use Live for in 'live' implementations, the current Midi mapping capabilities would have me lugging around loads of controllers which is inconvenient. I could record midi commands into the arranger but what fun is that in a live situation?
So yes....this would be nice.

[supster]

I have been thinking the same exact thing and agree that Live needs this.

I want to be able to assign one filter and use it on individual tracks as needed, use my UC-33 to control this one filter.

Using the filter as a send doesnt give the effect needed. Is there any way around this -- other than assigning a filter to every track and controlling each of them manually?

[enzymex]

One other suggestion that could be implemented as part of track context remote mapping:

It would be great if the on/off buttons for the VST plugs could be related to the SLOT NUMBER instead of the actual effect.

So, when we are doing our track remote assignments, we could set up on/off toggles for VST's in Slots 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. and use to turn off effects for that track even if the VST FX were replaced after the mapping was created.

[bigbadotis]

Until they add this (and I agree that they should), you can use my program controlAid to do almost exactly this if you're on a Mac.

Basically controlAid allows you to assign one CC message to select what track you are currently controlling. It comes with a custom midi map where the controls for each track are assigned to a different midi channel. When you select a track, subsequent incoming messages are converted to the the corresponding channel.

There is also a feature that tells controlAid to only change note/cc messages that are higher than a particular value. So if you set this value to be 20, now only CC messages higher than 20 get changed to the current track, whereas everything lower becomes, in effect, a "global" message like you were describing.

It does a lot of other stuff in terms of controller assignment and being able to create multiple messages from a single one, but the track selection feature is actually the main concept behind it.