A little vent on the elusive "mouseless operation".

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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sporkles
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A little vent on the elusive "mouseless operation".

Post by sporkles » Mon Apr 19, 2010 4:09 pm

I and others have suggested this before, but what Live needs is the possibility of mapping everything to keyboard shortcuts or to MIDI commands. Traktor already does
this brilliantly, and I never have to touch the computer keyboard (unless I need to do a search or drag a song from Itunes) and certainly not the mouse, during a set.

Just thought it would be worth repeating. So much for Live - now on to the controllers:

The concept of the "MIDI controller" is kind of dated, don't you think? I wish all my controllers would operate the way my AK1 does: you can set up its controls
to do just about anything that you can do with MIDI, computer keyboard shortcuts or mouse gestures. I can appreciate that some manufacturers also want their controllers
to work with hardware synths, but when the controller has a USB mode as well, the idea of having to program and configure the hardware itself is quite ridiculous. I have
to hand it to Native Instruments here: the way the AK1 works is so brilliant, yet so simple; the concept is more or less the same as Novation's Automap Server, but the
latter only supports key commands in its "Pro" incarnation (should be a default feature when you buy one of their controllers, FFS), and is severely crippled compared
to the AK1's software (the AK1 can, for instance, send a two different shortcuts on clockwise/counter clockwise rotation).

But, as long as the "previous generation" of MIDI controllers still work well with Live, Live also needs an internal MIDI translator (or a MIDI/key command "hub",
where all hardware commands (including computer keystrokes) can be tailored to the users' liking. This would allow us to set keyboard shortcuts or MIDI commands
to perform all sorts of tasks, like navigating the interface, browsing folders, loading samples, etc. Live would be able to take an incoming MIDI signal and convert
it to "ctrl+Z", for instance, and you would never have to re-program your dinosaur controllers, cause Live could convert their CC's to anything you'd want. Imagine
having the ability to zoom Live's interface or to scroll Live's various views with the turn of a knob, or flipping between views and jumping between devices by pressing
a button.

Rant over.


SubFunk
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Re: A little vent on the elusive "mouseless operation".

Post by SubFunk » Mon Apr 19, 2010 6:23 pm

+1

maschine is the benchmark, especially in that respect.
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davepermen
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Re: A little vent on the elusive "mouseless operation".

Post by davepermen » Mon Apr 19, 2010 6:28 pm

and it should be better than a mouse (and more easy to setup), too..

which would be my benchmark :)

(but yeah, i'm +1 for enhancing the midimapping in general, and that could be included)
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Z3NO
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Re: A little vent on the elusive "mouseless operation".

Post by Z3NO » Tue Apr 20, 2010 12:21 am

I already do all of that using Midistroke. Or is that cheating?

Ninja-Matic
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Re: A little vent on the elusive "mouseless operation".

Post by Ninja-Matic » Tue Apr 20, 2010 1:48 am

Agreed. I see no reason why I can't midi map a rewire instrument selector (instead of click-drop-down) on track display when using multiple instruments on stage.

I limit my external rewire tracks to 3 of them and have about 20+ synths and about 10 samplers in Reason ready to go. I rarely every have time to hit more than 3 different key tracks during a single song on stage so I'd love the ability to "scroll" through my reason rack in the midi out drop-down which shows my rewire instruments instead of having to click on them all the time.

I could just record the loops as audio and have my KB mapped to select Reason instruments easy enough, but I like to loop midi instead of audio - just in case i get to banging hardcore on stage and hit the wrong key - i don't have to re-record the loop over again - i just delete the note that I accidentally hit.

I've tried everything :(

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