How to achieve a Mouseless (almost anyway) Ableton workflow?

[billpayer]

Hello to you all,

I have been using my ableton set up for a number of years and have got along OK with my workflow with bits of Automap (I own a Novation SL37MKI) and the mouse. But I have very recently bought a Launchpad and have been using this alongside a Behringer BCD3000 with Traktor & I have now achieved a complete mouseless workflow for my DJ set up with I absolutely love and I am happier with this set up than I ever was even with Technics SL's & a pioneer DJM.

This has now led me to have a really good long look at the way I am working with Live in the studio (I strangely enough actually started using Live as a DJ tool and have actually ended up using this almost exclusively for Production and now using Trakot for DJing!) and using the Launchpad in the studio has made me realise that my workflow is clunky at best. Don't get me wrong though, my use of Launchpad in Mixer and Sessions modes has made me realise how badly the workflow is with my Remote SL.

What I would like to achieve is for up down, left right & shift tab keyboard shortcuts (for instance) to be replaced with commands on a controller.
I did find a link to somebody who has set something up very similar to what I want to achieve but with the Nocturn http://nckn.de/2009/08/tutorial-automap ... t-20752900 & if I have to buy another controller to achieve this I will but it just seems that I really should have this covered between the Novation 37SL & Launchpad.

Am I missing something here in the Ableton template in the SL? Do I need to get Automap Pro so that I can assign the keyboard shortcuts? Do I need an APC or Nocturn (set up like the link above)?

Any help would be much appreciated.
Cheers,
Bill Payer.

[chapelier fou]

If you own max, have a look to the aka.keyboard external object. If it helps.

[selthym]

Do I need to get Automap Pro so that I can assign the keyboard shortcuts?

Forget about that idea. The clincher for me when purchasing the launchpad was the free upgrade to automap Pro. I already own a remote sl. I set this all up, received my free upgrade to Pro and............ The keyboard shortcuts do not work with the ableton template (template 40). They only with the Automap template on the sl, which is pretty useless for Live.

BTW, I too 1st purchased Ableton as a DJ Tool but know way prefer Traktor. Live is still my favourite DAW and my go to tool whenI have a few spare minutes to play around.

[delicioso]

I have a mouseless workflow setup with my Launchpad + Nocturn (w/ guille's script) + nanoKontrol (myralfur's script) + usb keypad. And it's still more capable/flexible/portable/all usb-powered compared to APC40. The only times I use the mouse is renaming clips, making waveform selections, adding warp markers, and saving projects, and of course, certain little tasks that are just better to use the mouse. But in general, I never have to use the mouse for most things.

The secret weapons in this setup are a keystroke to midi translation tool like QuicKeys (which is what I use and highly recommend), midistroke (mac only) or Bome's (far too complex and I don't really need most of its functions), and a keystroke remapper for usb devices like Controllermate. I have my nanokontrol set up to have the first 2 scenes automap to arm, volume, solo, trigger, pan for 1 - 16 tracks. The 8 knobs of the 3rd scene instant automaps to any selected device in Live. The 8 top buttons for the 3rd scene also selects tracks. That leaves the remaining controls in scene 3 and 4 to be mapped to any dedicated controls and labeled using 1/4" paper tape (usually used on mixing consoles). So I have 18 buttons between scenes 3 and 4 which essentially give me 27 buttons that are labeled (color coded between scenes 3 & 4). I have those buttons mapped and labeled for things like track left, track right, device left, device right, device on/off, add audio track, add midi track, hide/show in/out, freeze track, flatten, slice to midi, consolidate, select loop (I have this working in session view not just arrangement), scroll, zoom, different grid sizes...etc. with a little help from an awesome utility called QuicKeys that is always on and stays out of the way with negligible CPU usage.

I have my usb keypad customized with Controllermate and labeled as such: undo, redo, delete, duplicate, copy, cut, paste, shift tab, insert scene, insert captured scene, add midi clip, metronome, tap tempo...etc. And with Num Lock on, the arrows act as alt+arrow, and revert to regular arrows with Num Lock off.

Nocturn provides things like Quantize, pitch transpose (for both audio AND midi clips), loop start and loop length which work without having to select the loop, tempo, scrub, clip scrub...etc. It can also do a lot of the same stuff that nanoKontrol can like transport, triggering, selecting tracks, instant automapping to macros..etc.

[chris_in_london]

I'm almost mouse-free, but the current stumbling block is launching plug-in edit windows (i.e. clickon the 'spanner' icon in the header of a plug-in device box). Basically, you a cannot do this without the mouse. Support told me it is on the internal wishlist to fix, but that was almost a year ago...

The annoying thing is that the behaviour of the only existing plug-in window shortcut is to hide/show any plug-in windows that were already open. All that needs to happen is the behaviour changes to 'show/hide the edit-window of whichever plug-in is currently highlighted'.

I really wish teh devs would fix this. I have a Nocturn and a Faderport, and this plug-in edit issue is one of the only reasons i have to touch the mouse...

[billpayer]

I think that I have pretty much sussed it now. There is a template on the user uploaded files section on the Novation site that has a script that has been created that uses Remote scripting & Automap in one template. For me this was too fussy but I have taken the idea so that the first 8 controllers pick up the first 8 ableton controls (great if you use a lot of macro control) and the rest I can assign to keyboard shortcuts (now that i've bought Automap Pro).
This means that I now have to jump to mixer mode in automap and get use the things like left right Alt etc to navigate around the Live screen. This has been working for me pretty well and I've also got round the problem of not being able to open the plugin window by leaving the plugin open (i have to open it once with the mouse though!) and then when I jump to the different tracks the plugin window is brought up automatically.
I also really like the mixer stuff in Launchpad anmd I'm using this a lot more than I ever expected....
Nice work Novation!