Live as guitar effects rig with FCB1010

[ceekghic]

I wasn’t able to find this anywhere on the ableton forums (or anywhere else) so I thought I’d post my solution for using Live for guitar effects in performance, controlled by the Behringer FCB1010 midi pedal. It enables you to do everything within a single effect rack using just the chain selector, so you don’t end up wasting CPU on muted channels. In terms of the FCB1010, it allows you to switch on an effect and only deselect it when you change to another effect, so you’ll never get confused as to which one is active when you’re performing (since you can’t toggle each pedal’s LED indicator, it only turns off when you press a different pedal). It’s also useful if, like me, you also use Live for triggering samples and drum loops and use other midi controllers, all within the same set.

First, open up an effect rack. For each effect chain you add, say a flanger, distortion, open the chain selector and set it to be active for a range of only one midi value. For example, set your first effect chain for 0 to 0, the second as 1 to 1, and so on.

Next you need to program your FCB1010 to send out only CC messages. If you don’t know how to program it, there are plenty of resources on the web to help you, e.g. http://www.mtnsys.com/faq-fcb/IdiotsGuide.htm

Basically, you need to set up the pedals you want to use to activate single values along the chain selector (0-127). To do this you use the same CC for each pedal, but with different values. For example, for your first effect (chain selector range 0-0), use CC#22 with a range value of 0 to 0. For next pedal, set it up so it again send out on CC#22 but with a value of 1 to 1. Then 2-2, 3-3, so on and so forth.

Once you’ve assigned all the pedals you want to use, open up Live’s midi mapping and simply assign any of the pedals you’ve programmed to the chain selector on your rack. You should now find that, when you select a pedal, the chain selector will ‘jump’ to that particular value and hence activate that chain of effects. If you want to select more than one at a time, you can even overlap them and stuff like that.

Hope this is useful, and not to confusing to read.

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http://www.telegramsband.com

[shalomattheworkplace]

Thank you so much! Took a bit but works like a charm. I will post what I have done with it once my band gets some more material.

[shalomattheworkplace]

I cannot seem to get Pedals A or B to work. I tried assigning it a different CC but midi learn does not pick up on it. Any suggestions?

[ceekghic]

cool i'm glad it works. With the expression pedals it's slightly more fussy. Basically the only way I've got it to work so far is by assigning a separate pedal to the expression pedal. So for example, I'll assign pedal 1 to activate the effect chain, and then pedal 2 to activate the expression pedal for whatever it is i want to control in that chain. pedal 2 would be programmed for only EXP1 or EXP2, no CC messages or anything.

So in the end i have to press pedal 1, then pedal 2, and then it will work. Slightly more fiddly than i'd like but it works well enough. I haven't managed to get it to do both with one pedal. You'd probably be able to do it with MidiTranslator or the other mac version, I forget what it's called. I'll post it up if and when i figure it out.

[dark_yel]

plz help me. i have only an fcb1010 and ah behringer gUitar and an amplifier. but my fcb1010 dO nOt work.. whats the r!ght connection of guitar,fcb1010,amplifier..to work?

[ceekghic]

the FCB1010 is a midi controller pedal - it has no effects in the pedal itself. With an amp you can only use it to change effect preset on your amplifier - unless you have some kind of MIDI input on your amplifier. I don't really know how it works, but I think you need to use the SWITCH 1 to connect to the amp's footpedal connection, and you plug your guitar in the normal way, into the amplifier input. If you have a second foot pedal input on the amp, connect it to SWITCH 2. You then use only the UP and DOWN pedals as amp channel switchers. I only use the FCB1010 with ableton live, so i can't help you any more than that, sorry.

[pbajzek]

This is a great tip. I've used a very similar setup with my old FCB1010 and now with my Roland FC-300, but I always assigned a different CC# to each switch; it never occurred to me to use the same CC with a different value. Yours is a much cleaner solution that leaves more CC's open for other functions. Thanks for sharing.

[ghostly]

cool i'm glad it works. With the expression pedals it's slightly more fussy. Basically the only way I've got it to work so far is by assigning a separate pedal to the expression pedal. So for example, I'll assign pedal 1 to activate the effect chain, and then pedal 2 to activate the expression pedal for whatever it is i want to control in that chain. pedal 2 would be programmed for only EXP1 or EXP2, no CC messages or anything.

So in the end i have to press pedal 1, then pedal 2, and then it will work. Slightly more fiddly than i'd like but it works well enough. I haven't managed to get it to do both with one pedal. You'd probably be able to do it with MidiTranslator or the other mac version, I forget what it's called. I'll post it up if and when i figure it out.

Just set pedal 1 to also work the expression pedal and then you only need one button press. You've got to remember that each foot switch can activate 5 program changes, 2 control changes, assign control changes to each pedal and transmit a midi note at the same time.

[PureWeen]

I know this is an old post

But just wanted to say thanks for posting this.. It was super helpful

[benjaesq]

I am using this setup too and it's super easy to get it working. However, I generated several instances of the GR plugin and my cpu usage started to get unmanageable. Right now I am trying to find the way, in GR4, to pass the midi control to the GR4 plugin and change presets there, having only 1 instance of it which will lower my cpu usage.

Any ideas on how to get the GR4 learning the midi control signals?

[lenartb]

great tutorial, i found it very helpful. had some problems at first, but after i found out where chain selector is, everything made sense. i'm about to try my luck with the expression pedals

[Solieri]

A quick thank you. I'm with pbajzek: I was assigning a different CC# to each chain, instead of a different value. Makes total sense now (faceslap).