Momentary MIDI

willrjmarshall · Post by **willrjmarshall** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 9:55 pm

Hi,

Can someone explain to me how Live handles momentary and non-momentary MIDI messages?

I am setting up an effects rack that I want to trigger with an APC40 (which will need a Bome's patch or something). I want the rack to turn on while I hold the button down, and turn off when I release the button.

Additionally, I have two macro knobs inside the rack that I want to behave in the same way - press button for 127, release button for 0.

How can I most reliably achieve this in Ableton?

delicioso · Post by **delicioso** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 5:12 am

I would just get a Novation Nocturn. This will solve your problem. APC40 fails when it comes to doing things like that. Novation Automap is simply far superior to anything else when it comes to plugin and MIDI controls. APC40 is an epic FAIL in this area. Beyond the obvious clip controls/scene selection and Live devices, it's not anywhere close to being an ideal choice for plugin or MIDI control. Messy configuration, limited number of parameters that can be assigned, can't assign buttons to device parameters without overriding their default use...etc.

willrjmarshall · Post by **willrjmarshall** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 5:34 am

More hardware is rarely if ever the right solution to a software problem.

(It doesn't help that I live in New Zealand. Even basic hardware here costs a fortune).

delicioso · Post by **delicioso** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 9:36 pm

willrjmarshall wrote:More hardware is rarely if ever the right solution to a software problem.

I would agree with that statement. However, in this case, this is more of a problem with the implementation of APC40 (or lack thereof) rather than Ableton Live. Your other options seem to be to cook up some hack by doing research (this might help: http://tinyurl.com/m7avcw) or buy the nativekontrol software and hope that it does what you want.

But if I was in your situation, I would sell the APC40 which would still get you back the same amount of money for what you paid for it, due to the hype surrounding it causing much demand. Then I would buy the Nocturn and Launchpad which together will replace the functions of the APC40 and easily do what you want to accomplish while being more portable, and still have money left over.

fireballgames · Post by **fireballgames** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:05 am

How about leaving the rack on all the time and putting a utility effect before it with an infinitely negative gain
when you press a key (not sure about apc , try it first with a midi keyboard) the utility goes to 0 db
the rest of the time it's at a mute functionality

willrjmarshall · Post by **willrjmarshall** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:42 pm

I actually really like the APC40 as a piece of hardware - and to be honest I've not really been impressed by Novation automap or any other GUI tool for performing MIDI translation. Hardware isn't something I can do myself, but software is, so I'd much rather get a nice-but-dumb device and write all the complex functionality by hand. It wouldn't be much effort to write a Python MIDI server to perform any translation I want, although I'd rather not spend the time if I don't have to.

Luckily, however, Stray from NativeKontrol has made me a custom variant of his template which gives me a bunch of momentary switches. Lovely fellow

Momentary MIDI

Momentary MIDI

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