Best App to control ableton live

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F34TH3R
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Best App to control ableton live

Post by F34TH3R » Sat Apr 09, 2016 7:49 pm

I've looked into controlling ableton live from my iPad and it seems the best way to do this is with an osc enabled App. Which ones do y'all use and which work the best?
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yur2die4
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by yur2die4 » Sat Apr 09, 2016 7:52 pm

Touchable is a very popular choice. Works very well.

Do you have particular features you are looking for?

F34TH3R
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by F34TH3R » Sat Apr 09, 2016 8:35 pm

Yes I have heard touchable is great. I would like to have an editable layout and be able to control 3rd party devices as well. Anyone have any experience with lemur by liine
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xmonsta
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by xmonsta » Sat Apr 09, 2016 10:01 pm

Yes, we have developed software that does this called PULL, which allows you to control ableton native devices, max devices and vsts inside live on the Lemur.

When you select devices, the relevant template appears on the Lemur for controlling.

Here's a video of it working:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeKvW1wvRYI

http://www.xmonsta.com/new-releases/pull-updated-to-v3/

The ableton templates come free with the app, and you have the ability to build your own custom templates, buy them as addons (we have Diva, Sylenth1 and Monosequencer available now and lots more to come).
http://www.xmonsta.com Music devices and controllers for Ableton Live

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F34TH3R
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by F34TH3R » Sun Apr 10, 2016 6:27 pm

So to use your application I would need to buy lemur by liine
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yur2die4
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by yur2die4 » Sun Apr 10, 2016 7:04 pm

Touchable does have an editable section. I have little experience with it, but it seems pretty comprehensive still.

The only thing that bugs me on touchable is that it does So much it is hard to decide which screen you want up at any given moment.

For controlling 3rd party vsts it is a bit more complicated. You can either control parameters that you have show up in Live through the Configure setting in Live, or you can try controlling 3rd party vsts through cc controls, which is also kinda tricky.

Do you intend to do it 100% wirelessly? Or do you think you'll do wired sometimes? Wireless usually works quite well, but in my experience there are occasions where it is not working as expected. I might just have cheap hardware for networking though.

smutek
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by smutek » Mon Apr 11, 2016 2:32 am

Touchable is really great. I feel like I've had it forever, and I used to get annoyed by the interface, which I considered extremely unintuitive. Then, I took the time to watch the video tutorials and was like, oh, wow.

It's a really deep app and offers control over pretty much everything in Live. They did a fantastic job with it.

Lemur is also great, and I think it's worth while to own both. Lemur offers all sorts of neat tools so I'll often use it for sequencing a particular instrument, or something like that, and then use Touchable to control Lives mixer, recording, etc. Touchables split view is especially cool for me as I'll keep levels on the bottom then have the top row for controlling aux/sends.

Lemur is also pretty killer in that you can roll your own devices and whatnot. You can do custom stuff in Touchable, but Lemur is built around the idea of people building and sharing / selling the stuff they build.

Another cool thing about both of them is that they don't require a lot of horsepower. I have an iPad 2 and a first gen iPad mini, so I can run Touchable on one and Lemur on the other, and both handle the apps like champs. If you look around you can find old iPads for relatively cheap so, for not a lot of money (relatively speaking) you can get a pretty nice little controller setup.

I also have TouchOSC, which I never use. Not sure why that is, to be honest. I think I just kind of forgot that I owned it.

smutek
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by smutek » Mon Apr 11, 2016 2:41 am

yur2die4 wrote:The only thing that bugs me on touchable is that it does So much it is hard to decide which screen you want up at any given moment.
Yeah man, that's for sure, Basically anything you can access in Live, you can access in Touchable. I get along best with Touchable when I have a relatively narrow set of jobs for it to do - generally mixer control and transport in my case. My hardware stuff is all "out of the box" now, but for a while I had all my gear running into, and through Live. Touchable was great then, just to use for levels and sends.
yur2die4 wrote:For controlling 3rd party vsts it is a bit more complicated. You can either control parameters that you have show up in Live through the Configure setting in Live, or you can try controlling 3rd party vsts through cc controls, which is also kinda tricky.
Agree 100% - it does get pretty crazy trying to control even a relatively basic 3rd party VST, not to mention something like Modular V, or any other synth, really.
yur2die4 wrote:Do you intend to do it 100% wirelessly? Or do you think you'll do wired sometimes? Wireless usually works quite well, but in my experience there are occasions where it is not working as expected. I might just have cheap hardware for networking though.
I try to avoid going wireless when I can, though I haven't really had any problems either. I was able to scoop up an iConnect Midi 2 (the older one) and an iConnect Midi 4+ from Reverb for really cheap and I've been really happy with them.

xmonsta
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by xmonsta » Mon Apr 11, 2016 6:41 am

Osteja0713 wrote:So to use your application I would need to buy lemur by liine
Yes, it requires the Lemur app. The main differences between PULL and other softwares to control live are:

1) You can create your own intuitive layouts (VST, and Max Devices), rather than just having 8 banks of knobs/sliders etc. - Checkout the DIVA template, which maps the whole GUI - http://www.xmonsta.com/product/diva-vst ... e-xplugin/.
2) For Max devices you can control all available parameters. For VST's if there are less than 128 parameters (ableton's limit), then you can't control all parameters (most VSTs have less than 128). However, to map large VST's like DIVA, requires max developed software from us called xPlugin.
3) PULL doesnt attempt to control all of Live, just devices and the mixer (solo, volume etc) of the track you're on.
4) You can use PULL with other Lemur surfaces you have created, by copying it into the template.

NB: You can also use multiple iPad apps together pretty seemlessly, if you 3-finger swipe between them.
Last edited by xmonsta on Mon Apr 11, 2016 8:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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F34TH3R
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by F34TH3R » Mon Apr 11, 2016 5:10 pm

Yes, I would use it wirelessly most of the time but might plug it in occasionally... any other software that comes to mind? Right now I will probably go the lemur route.
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Ubik
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by Ubik » Mon Apr 11, 2016 5:29 pm

I recently bought Conductr. The user mode is great, especially the x-y pads that allows you to control up to 4 parameters, it is a cool performance tool.

F34TH3R
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by F34TH3R » Tue Apr 26, 2016 12:47 pm

Ubik wrote:I recently bought Conductr. The user mode is great, especially the x-y pads that allows you to control up to 4 parameters, it is a cool performance tool.
Ill have to check that one out too
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Zyko1
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by Zyko1 » Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:31 pm

xmonsta wrote:Yes, we have developed software that does this called PULL, which allows you to control ableton native devices, max devices and vsts inside live on the Lemur.

When you select devices, the relevant template appears on the Lemur for controlling.

Here's a video of it working:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeKvW1wvRYI

http://www.xmonsta.com/new-releases/pull-updated-to-v3/

The ableton templates come free with the app, and you have the ability to build your own custom templates, buy them as addons (we have Diva, Sylenth1 and Monosequencer available now and lots more to come).

PULL v3 really catched my interest when I stumbled over it today. But I don't know...
The website has VERY limited information about what you get with this product. They say that you can control VSTs, but in the video (which is almost 2 years old btw.) there's not one single VST control shown. That's what I would really want. A controller for NI Massive, Monark and the like. All I can see are a handful templates for softsynths I am not interested in, and the promise that you will release further templates. So what about the NI stuff in the near future? Generally speaking, alot of more information would be required for a beginner like me to really get interested in buying. Otherwise it's like "buying the cat in the bag", if you no what i mean ;-)

xmonsta
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Re: Best App to control ableton live

Post by xmonsta » Fri Apr 29, 2016 8:20 am

Zyko1 wrote:
xmonsta wrote:Yes, we have developed software that does this called PULL, which allows you to control ableton native devices, max devices and vsts inside live on the Lemur.

When you select devices, the relevant template appears on the Lemur for controlling.

Here's a video of it working:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeKvW1wvRYI

http://www.xmonsta.com/new-releases/pull-updated-to-v3/

The ableton templates come free with the app, and you have the ability to build your own custom templates, buy them as addons (we have Diva, Sylenth1 and Monosequencer available now and lots more to come).

PULL v3 really catched my interest when I stumbled over it today. But I don't know...
The website has VERY limited information about what you get with this product. They say that you can control VSTs, but in the video (which is almost 2 years old btw.) there's not one single VST control shown. That's what I would really want. A controller for NI Massive, Monark and the like. All I can see are a handful templates for softsynths I am not interested in, and the promise that you will release further templates. So what about the NI stuff in the near future? Generally speaking, alot of more information would be required for a beginner like me to really get interested in buying. Otherwise it's like "buying the cat in the bag", if you no what i mean ;-)

Hi Zyko1,

There are two example templates that come with PULL for CamelCrusher (a free VST) and XVAnalogFilter (a free max device).

To build templates for your VST's it is very easy in PULL. You simply find the name of the parameter you want to control (we give you a simple max device to help with this). Then, using the Lemur Editor, add a control with an OSC address using the same name in the template.

For instance, the address for Cutoff on CamelCrusher would be: "/XDevice/CamelCrusher/Cutoff/x"

There is a tutorial included, which provides examples of Knobs, Sliders, Buttons and Switches. There are also over 50 templates included with PULL, so if you want to do something more complex, like adding an ADSR control, there are examples of these available. A tutorial video should also follow soon.

The reason we haven't focussed on building smaller VST templates, is because it's so easy to make them. However, we will soon release a library of templates for popular VST's. It's the big templates that are difficult (such as Sylenth, or DIVA), which can have hundreds of parameters, so we decided to start with them first. You can also control nearly every parameter on the VST (with Sylenth, DIVA) and therefore can create a touchscreen version that stays true to the VST interface. Ableton only allows you to have a maximum of 128 parameters for a VST, so we designed a system called xPlugin which allows full control of larger VSTs such as Sylenth and DIVA.

It's worth keeping in mind that some VST's hide parameters also - if you can "configure" or map it in Ableton, you will be able to control it with a remote controller, like PULL.

Cheers

Si
http://www.xmonsta.com Music devices and controllers for Ableton Live

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