Ableton Forum

Hi all,
Been using the launchpad as a DJing tool. I have some simple transition effects mapped to rows of buttons on the User 2 mode of the Launchpad. First button in the row sets the effect to 0, last one sets it to 127. I want these buttons to light up so I know at a glance how wet the signal is at any point, but I can't seem to figure out how to do this. People have directed me to the guide on getting the drum rack in user 1 to do this, but it's not really an applicable method as these are effects on audio tracks. Or am I sorely mistaken? Help a novice out.

*cricket* There's gotta be a logical way to do this.

Bump.

I don't think you can, probably with max4Live I guess.

not really an answer but at least you don't have to feel ignored.

Really? I'm kinda shocked about that it seems like such a simple feature to include...

Thank you for your response

You can certainly use User mode 1 if you're not planning on also using it for drum racks or something.... Though I don't do it much (I prefer the drums), I've found that just using it as a simple CC controller using Live's MIDI mapping is pretty straightforward and provides the visual feedback.

Since it's MIDI mapping, it takes over the old meanings and you don't have to worry about the fact that it's not a MIDI track - you can map controllers to anything, and effects on audio tracks are a perfectly valid use case.

Though I agree, it seems like a fairly basic thing. I'd love to be able to program the behavior on the Launchpad. It feels like they left some good ideas out that I'd love to see.

after a bit of brain storming, i found a workaround. not the best i hoped, but for me it's working..
first the downturn: to make it viable you need to turn off the "select on launch" pref..which i always used but luckily having the launchpad to trigger clips it is no longer that crucial.
so this is it: i created a track group made of 8 midi tracks, each one with 8 clips on it, and made sure they are at the bottom of the set so they don't interfere with scene triggering. So there are these 64 empty midi clips: set their launch option to "quantization-none" and then map the first button row of the user2 mode to the 8 clips of the first track, the second row to the clips of the second track, and so on(obviously besides mapping them also to the effects). make sure in the preferences the LP is allowed to receive Remote signals. This way every clip represents the level of wetness of the related effect, and even when you jump to user2 mode from say session mode you have at a glance an idea of how the effects are set. i dont like the fact that after one loop the yellow light becomes red, but hey its the best i found so far.. hope it helps! cheers

To NPC, your solution works great! I never thought about setting up dummy midi clips and assigning them to the same buttons as the audio effects... freaking genius. Yeah, the color changing when the midi clips loop is kinda ugly, but better than no feedback at all (and you can always just change the loop length of the clips)... Again, thanks for posting this. That was bugging the hell out of me...

Thavius

Something I'm not getting about your method here...

Let's say I have the first button of user 2 mode (top left) mapped to launch one of these dummy clips...

I don't get any feedback unless I write a "C-2" note in the midi clip and have that note loop.

I've got mine setup now to control abletons looper... top left 4 buttons control deck A's looper length (dj setup) and the 4 buttons on the next row (so row 2 ) will conrol (Rec), (Overdub), (Reloop) and (stop) respectively.

I've got constant signals for the "loopers length" and I have the midi clip for the recording/play/overdub buttons of the looper set to "beat" with the music via writing a midi not on the first beat, a rest on the second beat and setting my loop-brace after the second beat.
Don't know, but this may help your "light turns red after 1 loop" problem?

Also - HOW is it that you are lighting up the buttons without writing a seperate midi note within each of the 64 midi clips? How does simply launching this clip give feedback to user 2 mode? I'm missing something here... ?

The "write a note" method does work fairly well though
Much more customisable as you can have the buttons flash to the beat if you want and simply change the color of the buttons (even have them flash red/green/red/green if you want!) but takes a bit longer to setup!

Cheers for this NPC

Bainesy wrote: Let's say I have the first button of user 2 mode (top left) mapped to launch one of these dummy clips...

I don't get any feedback unless I write a "C-2" note in the midi clip and have that note loop.

Also - HOW is it that you are lighting up the buttons without writing a seperate midi note within each of the 64 midi clips? How does simply launching this clip give feedback to user 2 mode? I'm missing something here... ?

this is puzzling.. the clips i use do not contain any note, they're empty-the only thing that comes to my mind is that the "remote" box in midi prefs for the launchpad output is not properly set, but since you're having feedback from looper i guess this is not the case. I don't know, as i just mapped those 64 clips to the 64 buttons, having the remote output lit, and as for every other remote mapping using the launchpad the buttons...well, they just light up. sadly, not a much useful answer!