[Old, see new thread] Ubermap: Push VST param remapping

[tom_d]

Please see this post for the new version of Ubermap: viewtopic.php?f=55&t=221501. This one will no longer work|

Hi all,

I was really impressed by the great work Stray, TomViolenz and others did on the community Push device mappings (viewtopic.php?f=55&t=198946&p=1562395#p1562395), and was intrigued by something that was mentioned regarding being able to map 3rd party plugins - I find mapping them by using the Configure button and selecting parameters pretty clunky and the end result isn't great as you can't rename banks or add blank spaces to pad out a single bank.

The process to do this isn't particularly straight-forward however, so I decided to get my hands dirty with the Push remote scripts and create something a bit easier to use, building upon their work.

My tool, which I've called Ubermap, makes some modifications to Devices.py which allow it to write and read custom device mappings for both Live devices and plugins, written in a simple .ini-style file format. You can choose to show or hide parameters, arrange them as you like within banks, rename the banks, rename the parameters and set up the "Best Of" bank as you wish. Even better, you can reload your modifications without restarting Live and you can (in theory!) share custom mappings.

Here's an example of how I've got it set up for FXpansion Strobe (some example mappings for a few devices are included, e.g. this is the Strobe one: https://raw.github.com/tomduncalf/uberm ... 9023ac.cfg)



A few disclaimers:
- This is only the initial version and is aimed at technically minded people. I've left the install instructions a bit vague to ensure people know what they are doing to some degree. There's probably loads of bugs, it might not even work for anyone else!
- I've only tested it on my computer with Live 9.1.1
- It's Mac-only at the minute, as that is what I use at home. There's no reason it can't be made PC-compatible, but I've not had time to look at this. Feel free to play around if you know what you are doing, it should just be case of doing the same as install.sh but with Windows commands, and you might need to change some paths in the Python files.
- If you lose work/your computer blows up/whatever as a result of using this, I can't be held responsible - make sure you have backups and don't install it on your main production machine if it's important to you.

I've written a detailed README, which you should read before trying to install. The project is available at https://github.com/tomduncalf/ubermap, the README is on the main page and you can download a ZIP from there if you want to install it.

Feel free to ask if you need any help and I'll do what I can, hopefully this is useful and works for other people as I've been really enjoying using it, makes programming synths and effects on Push so much more natural.

Cheers,
Tom

[TomViolenz]

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[tom_d]

Cheers (and thanks for your work that inspired me)! Got another much-requested feature nearly ready to go too

[TomViolenz]

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[tom_d]

I expected something like this to be possible. Stray had a java applet that did this for you that worked in Live 8. (I don't know what changed between 8 and 9 that made this not functional anymore)

Ah interesting, do you have a link? Must admit I am yet to try ClyphX or PXT!

[TomViolenz]

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[tom_d]

Nevermind. I dug it up: http://beatwise.proboards.com/thread/10 ... ime-live-8

Haha! Just found it myself and was about to post. Cool, thought I couldn't be the only one with that idea. I did think it'd be cool to add a GUI to mine for easier editing of the parameters, but definitely wasn't crucial as the ini file format makes things pretty easy... in fact, I might knock up a web app (as that's more my speciality ) for doing so at some point.

[TomViolenz]

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[tom_d]

I think the fact that all of this is done in accessible Phyton scripts is what make Push potentially so much stronger than Maschine, where every thing is proprietory. (I come originally from Maschine too, which is also great btw!)

Agreed, I hope Ableton continue at least to not prevent us from doing it, if not encouraging it officially. I actually sold my Maschine - as fun as it was for making loops, I couldn't really justify both, especially as I didn't have room for both! It had been in a box ever since I got Push and I didn't miss it.

And yeah, cheers for the pointer to Julien's scripts, I'd seen that before and he's done some great work. I've not actually verified if his decompiled scripts are the "definitive" version though - basically, none of the decompilers that I can find support the version of Python Ableton are using, so you get some weird errors (I think this was only apparent in one file, which I haven't released yet as it's still a bit buggy) and have to fix them by hand (which is where using Python at work comes in handy haha)... will definitely check his out again and see as I'd rather not have to faff around doing it myself really!

[TomViolenz]

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[tom_d]

I have it by word of mouth from an Ableton employee that they pride themselves as not interfering with any tinkering. I still think they should embrace it more openly. But who knows, there might be legal issues involved...

Yep, there could well be, or at the least support issues. That's good to hear at least!

[blakjesus]

OMG!!! Thank you for this! I was the one that originally asked if it could be done, haha. I will definitely be trying it out. It was cool seeing people creating mods to browse presets, but I've never been a presets kind of guy. I love digging into the controls of my synths. I think this mapped to Diva will give my Little Phatty a run for its money.

[tom_d]

OMG!!! Thank you for this! I was the one that originally asked if it could be done, haha. I will definitely be trying it out. It was cool seeing people creating mods to browse presets, but I've never been a presets kind of guy. I love digging into the controls of my synths. I think this mapped to Diva will give my Little Phatty a run for its money.

Sweet, yeah same here really! Push is actually a great interface for working with synths if you can set the labels and banks in a logical way, but by default I found it pretty useless as you have to hunt through the pages trying to find the parameter you're after - might as well just map to a generic MIDI controller. With a proper set up, I guess it's not really any different to using a synth like DSI Evolver (not that I've used one!) with paged controls - I've been having lots of fun with LuSH (although my Microbrute has temporarily taken over my focus )

Let me know if you are stuck with anything and I'll try to help.

[MTG105]

This is huge, thank you so much!

One suggestion: would it be possible to reorder the parameters via the plugin Device panel instead of using the text file? This would make life a lot easier creating mapping a for synths like Diva which have a huge number of parameters. I'm not sure how this would be achieved given your script, perhaps one could arrange the parameters in the desired order then dump them to the text file and add bank names? Is this possible now?

Also is it possible to have banks of fewer than 8 parameters?

Thanks again!

[tom_d]

This is huge, thank you so much!

One suggestion: would it be possible to reorder the parameters via the plugin Device panel instead of using the text file? This would make life a lot easier creating mapping a for synths like Diva which have a huge number of parameters. I'm not sure how this would be achieved given your script, perhaps one could arrange the parameters in the desired order then dump them to the text file and add bank names? Is this possible now?

Also is it possible to have banks of fewer than 8 parameters?

Thanks again!

That is actually possible at the minute by rearranging the parameters in the "Configure" bit for the plugin, but the issue will be that every time you change the order or list of parameters, it'll export a new config file. These configs are ignored by default so won't cause any trouble except you'll end up with hundreds of files that need to be deleted and you'll have to check the logs to find which file is the right one.

I'd been planning to add an option to disable the export temporarily so you can turn it off, rearrange parameters, then switch it back on to export the right ones, so I'll prioritise adding that if it'd be useful... should hopefully be able to do it this week.

I also might put together a visual editor application to make the process a bit easier, but that likely won't be so soon.

Yep, you can have less than 8 parameters, which was actually one of the main reasons I decided to make this script - sick of trying to pad out pages of controls with useless random parameters, just to group related ones together! You can also insert blank spaces so you can have e.g. three parameters on the left, 2 blank, then three on the right.