Ableton Forum

Hello all, this is my first post and I wanted to share something that I posted over on the CM/FM forum which may be of interest:

Ableton Live and the new BCF 2000 are seemingly made for each other, although neither's website seems to cover their operation together, so I've put together my wee intro into how to get them singing together.

Firstly I'll deal with the settings for the BCF and then for Live - these two are so intuitive that there are actually lots of different ways of using them together, this is my method and it's not the only way, it may not even be the best way but it works for me so that I can DJ without ever needing to touch my lappie or the mouse...

This set-up is designed for firing and stopping clips in the clip view and is not necessarily my set up for sequencing in the Arrange view.

Ok plug in the USB cable and switch on the BCF.

Step ONE:

We need to set up the buttons for firing and stopping clips. On the BCF they are defaulted to TOGGLE on. Which means that the work like switches whereas for LIVE we need them to work like Triggers. otherwise you'll have to press them twice sometimes to fire a clip which can lead to mistakes.

Press and Hold Edit on the BCF and then press the first button now both the edit button and the first button are flashing. Now turn push encoder the first until it says CC on the dial. Then turn the 6th push encoder until it says off. Now the first button is set up. Now press hold the edit button and and select the next button... now repeat this process for every button on the BCF,

when all the button's are set to Trigger mode we can store these setting by pressing the store button and then selecting a preset position for this set up.



In live head to preferences and in the Midi section select BCF port one for Midi input. Unfortunately a bug in live means that you CANT use send updates to the BCF (a bug Ableton are fixing) so leave the midi out set to none.

On the main screen click the midi button in the top right of the screen, you'll notice that a extra line of controls are available when the midi setup button is pressed. Just above the sends on the midisetup screen there's an extra set of play buttons but also on the master channel strip you'll see a extra play button two arrows and a button with a number 1 in it. This number one button should be assigned to a rotary knob and is used to select rows in the clip view. This is the heart of the system. In order to assign the knobs and sliders on the controller to the buttons etc. in live you simply click the area on the screen and then move the control on the BCF. Here's my set up:



I use:
- the first group of rotary encoders to control SEND 1
- the second group of rotary encoders to control SEND2
- the third to control the channel pan.
- the fourth I have set up like this

[master volume] [master pan] [bass eq] [middle eq] [treble eq] [unassigned] [ unassigned][ROW SELECTOR]- as rotary and I use the push function of the row selector as a scene trigger. to play a whole row of clips at once.

The first row of buttons fires the selected clip then second row of buttons stops the clips.

the faders control the volume of each track (obviously )

I assign the bottom right four buttons to the play, stop and stop clips buttons.

Now we are all set up to play all our clips / loops and songs on the stage, in the bedroom, where-ever. Just turn the row selector and fire the clips then slide up the fader - and the crowd goes bananas.


(If there are any mistakes let me know so I can edit this, thanks).
EDit: reduced size and number of pics.

Cool.

What's your take on the noise of the fader motors? I've heard they are loud and have put off buying one until I can "hear" it in the store. I already have a bcr2000 and it's really quiet.

i've heard this mentioned and they are loud. but the above set up is all set with in 8 channels strips so that there is no need to switch between presets. which means that the faders never move by themselves avoiding the noise.

tbh, I can't honestly think of a time when I would need them to be silent. I'm not going to switch between presets while I'm recording a vocal or a guitar part, I think it's a very very minor complaint, like saying you don't like the font in the manual or something.

I've heard you can disable the motors as well. I'm now trying to think of when I would actually want them to move. Good point.

I am going to buy the BCR 2000. I'll let you know how i use it in mij set up...

Hi!

Have you solved (or heard of anyone that has) the midifeedback-problem in getting midi parameters back into the BCF (and motorized faders... )

I 'm eager to by a BCF myself, but hesitating because of this...

What software/update for BCF did you use to make the BCF-faders give midi into Live?
I tried a BCF last week, and the rotarys was OK, but the faders seemed to make no contakt with Live.

m.

mcran wrote:Hi!

Have you solved (or heard of anyone that has) the midifeedback-problem in getting midi parameters back into the BCF (and motorized faders... )

I 'm eager to by a BCF myself, but hesitating because of this...

What software/update for BCF did you use to make the BCF-faders give midi into Live?
I tried a BCF last week, and the rotarys was OK, but the faders seemed to make no contakt with Live.

m.

Solved in live 5.

The "Wow - check THAT out!" novelty of moving faders soon wears off. I found this with my Yamaha 01V.

You get MUCH more control with a BCR2000 at a lower cost. The LEDs basically provide the same functionality as moving faders without the cost, noise and potential unreliability of cheap Chinese motors. And you can fit 24 of them in the space occupied by 8 faders. And if you still need to impress your friends with the "blonde/deer trapped in the car headlights" effect of moving faders, you can make some pretty cool light show patterns sending CC curves to all 24 BCR knobs and 20 buttons...

It IS Behringer, after all, so I carry a spare...

Great job on the clear set up. I have a question about the firing buttons

I followed your advice:

Press and Hold Edit on the BCF and then press the first button now both the edit button and the first button are flashing. Now turn push encoder the first until it says CC on the dial. Then turn the 6th push encoder until it says off. Now the first button is set up. Now press hold the edit button and and select the next button... now repeat this process for every button on the BCF,

After doing this, when I press a fire button, all of the other fire buttons also activate. This is not allowing me to assign these buttons. Instead it assigns a MIDI code of 1/0. I feel that all the fire buttons may be linked somehow. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to fix this so each button works independantly? Thanks!

I think I may have solved my problem. In my excitement of getting a machine will lots of knobs I turned them, a lot. When completing the step in my last post I turned the PAR encoder. DO NOT DO THIS! This sets your MIDI numbers (1/23, 1/65, etc.) to numbers already preset. If you do this, Simply hit the edit key and the fire button of choice and turn the PAR encoder back to an unused number.

I hope that made sense.

personally i think you're better off using mackie emulation and getting used to the quirky layout, rather than a custom preset. at the very least you can use it to control any set you created before you got the bcf. also, moving fader banks, editing any plug-ins without making assignments...