Ableton Forum

I prefer using the darker skins in Ableton Live except the piano roll note font is always black. Is it possible to modify this font color? If I could change it to white I'd have the perfect skin for Live. I don't see this font in the skin editor and all of the black skins I've downloaded have this font has black so I don't think it's possible using the editor.

Thanks,
chisel316

Make your own:
http://www.sonictransfer.com/ableton-li ... help.shtml

Or download some to try out:
http://sonictransfer.com/ableton-live-skins/

It's fun!

I'm having the same problem. I made a nice dark skin in the editor, but I can't change the black font color, so it's unreadable. If you need to read the font, dark skins in Live are unusable. Would love to be able to use a white font.

The dark skins I made have white or bright coloured fonts.

Plus there are skins in the skin library with white or light coloured fonts on dark backgrounds. Do these not change the midi notes in the piano roll?

+1 ... pain in the arse also with clips. Sometimes I want black clips. You'd think in this case the system would be intelligent enough to default to a white font colour ... oh, no ..

Oh, well it is not a show stopper, just a very, very minor pain in the arse. But, white/light fonts on dark backgrounds would be cool as a default option

oblique strategies wrote:Do these not change the midi notes in the piano roll?

No, they don't. That's the whole point of my post. I'm wondering if someone figured out a way to modify the skin in a hex editor to change this font color. It's the same font that is used in the dialog boxes when adding livepacks. They are simply unreadable on a dark background. The people that use these skins must not need these fonts.

Peace \/
chisel316

Chisel wrote:

oblique strategies wrote:Do these not change the midi notes in the piano roll?

No, they don't. That's the whole point of my post. I'm wondering if someone figured out a way to modify the skin in a hex editor to change this font color. It's the same font that is used in the dialog boxes when adding livepacks. They are simply unreadable on a dark background. The people that use these skins must not need these fonts.

Peace \/
chisel316

OK, I don't do a lot of midi, but I just checked a session I have which does have midi notes & the notes are white in the clip view, & coloured in the Arrange view. I made these skins with the free skin editor I posted earlier.

I can't tell you which parameter I tweaked, becasue there are a lot of them & I worked pretty hard to create my skins. I do not recall which parameter I changed, but obviously it can be done.

I just downloaded the skin 'Black Grape' from the skin download site & it has coloured midi notes too.

Open up the skin editor again & click on every possible thing to change its colour. There are a lot that are not pictured in the Live GUI representation, & a lot that are really picky to select.

Bust a move.

oblique strategies wrote:OK, I don't do a lot of midi, but I just checked a session I have which does have midi notes & the notes are white in the clip view, & coloured in the Arrange view. I made these skins with the free skin editor I posted earlier.

Thanks for taking the time to check this. I don't think we're talking about the same thing, though. I mean the font that is used to display the note names (i.e. A3 A#3 B3 C4...) Look at the left of the piano roll. Every custom skin I've ever seen has this font set to black. On a black background, it's impossible to see. So in your custom skin, are these note names in white? If so, I need to go back to the editor and do more tweaking tonight!

Peace \/
chisel316

Chisel wrote:Thanks for taking the time to check this. I don't think we're talking about the same thing, though. I mean the font that is used to display the note names (i.e. A3 A#3 B3 C4...) Look at the left of the piano roll. Every custom skin I've ever seen has this font set to black. On a black background, it's impossible to see. So in your custom skin, are these note names in white? If so, I need to go back to the editor and do more tweaking tonight!

Peace \/
chisel316

Ah ha! You are correct Sir. We were talking about different things.

They only change colour when I move the cursor over the indicators (data) in the piano roll, otherwise the actual musical note names to the far left are black.

If I were you, I'd click on every single item in the skin editor, one just might do the trick. There are a number of them that don't seem to do anything, but that only means I wasn't looking in the right place when I made the change. You could get lucky. If you do decide to do this please post your results.

On the other hand, it just may be locked out.

You could try using a background dark enough to reduce brightness, but still light enough to reveal the black text.

Good luck!

Thanks for your quick responses. It's much appreciated. Meanwhile, I'll see if I can change this font color with the editor. I'm doubtful because I've never seen a skin that has a different color for this particular font. I was hoping someone here had already gone through this and figured out how to modify the color in a hex editor. I'll post my findings.

Peace \/
chisel316

Chisel wrote:Thanks for your quick responses. It's much appreciated. Meanwhile, I'll see if I can change this font color with the editor. I'm doubtful because I've never seen a skin that has a different color for this particular font. I was hoping someone here had already gone through this and figured out how to modify the color in a hex editor. I'll post my findings.

Peace \/
chisel316

I wonder if you'd get some info if you post your question on the sonic transfer (skin editor) forum:
http://sonictransfer.com/forum/ableton- ... or-f8.html

Worth a shot.

This is not fixed yet. Max for Live Skin editor can't change this. Please Ableton devs add piano roll font in as a different color to change. This skinning limitation makes dark skin worthless.