Ableton Forum

I posted before that aftertouch seems too sensitive on my Push. Even playing very lightly, it sends aftertouch messages, and if a patch is setup for mapping, say, vibrato to aftertouch, it's very hard to play without a lot of vibrato.

Ableton support suggested that I use M4L Expression Control. This does not really do what I want. First of all, I don't want to map each VST target for each patch. Second, the Max and min values don't really do what I want.

I want to do something like set a sensitivity curve, similar to the Ableton Midi effect "Velocity". Basically a kind of compressor that would keep all incoming low values of Push aftertouch pressure to 0 and only start generating aftertouch messages above a settable threshold. Also scaling the remaining values (like changing the slope of the curve) would be important, so that the pressure just a tiny bit above the threshold would send a low value of aftertouch, and the higher values would scale up smoothly.

The "Velocity" midi effect has a drive function that does exactly that for velocity. I just want the same thing, but for aftertouch.

Any ideas?

The scaling of aftertouch can't really be done through anything but the midi remote script Push runs on unfortunately. They would have to translate the input values like they do to the pad sensitivity. If you're using a VST or something that supports aftertouch.. it's going use whatever values the hardware sends and that's all there is to it..

You can however use the Expression Max MIDI effect to act as an intermediary and do some minimal translation of aftertouch values. Try mapping aftertouch to whatever you want to modulate and then set the input modifier to aftertouch, shape to log, and play with smoothing to taste.

I still haven't found all that many cases where I've wanted to use aftertouch since Push's isn't per-note, but that is the best way I've found to use it thus far.

Why can't a midi effect change aftertouch values the same way it can change pitch or velocity values?

I thought that all midi effects take the midi messages from the midi channel stream and affect various midi values before they get to the plugin. That's all I want to do with the aftertouch messages coming from Push. M4L Expression Control does this somewhat. When you map aftertouch to a specific plugin parameter, you can set min, max and smoothing, like you suggested. This is changing the values that the plugin sees. If you look at the midi values going out using Midi Monitor, you can see the effects of max and min for example.

I'm confident M4L can do this. I just don't want to take the time to learn it just for this. I'd rather make music at this point.

Hadn't really thought of that. You're probably right. M4L is beyond me though =/

It would still be better if the controller had settings for aftertouch IMO though.

Absolutely agreed.

But until (or if) the Abes build this into Push, I'm just looking for an alternative.

This guy figured it out. Stray is the MAN. However, that's in user mode... I'd rather have a nify little device I can drop per track. :-/

page 6
http://www.nativekontrol.com/uploads/PX ... Manual.pdf