Ableton Forum

Hey guys,

There are a LOT of threads on the BCR2000 and Ableton. I've read a lot of them, but I can't seem to get my head around the final answer, with older versions of Live, etc. I keep reading threads and then realizing they are from 2005, etc.

I've got Live 8 on a 2011 Mac.

This is my final goal:
I want to assign knobs to different instruments/parameters in a relative mode. I want to flip between virtual banks on the BCR, and have instant response in Live: as soon as I touch and encoder, I want to hear the results (without having to "catch up" to the value in absolute mode).

I'm murky about: mackie emulation mode, NRPN programming, and SysEx.


My questions are:
Can somebody walk me through, like a child, the various steps I would need to undergo to get the BCR2000 to work in this way? Does it have LED feedback which instantly maps to its assigned parameter, even after flipping through other pages/banks? How much programming/hacking/work-arounding will I have to do to get this to work? I've become a big fan of out-of-the-box functionality. People are paid to engineer things, and there is great value in scaled production, OEM, etc.

I'm sorry if this sounds lazy on my part, but between a job, my other musical pursuits, etc, I just have to be really careful in choosing what rabbit holes I want to fall down. I'm looking to buy controllers which I can use to make music, since I want to spend my weekends making music, not learning to code (which is a noble pursuit, but just not mine).

I bought a MPD32 for live, thinking it was a more 'balanced' controller before buying the launchpad and realizing its out-of-the-box feedback and integration was much more what I needed, despite not having: rotary, velo-sensitive, faders, etc. I'm a live instrumental performer, and I'm realizing that to use Live in a live setting, you really need instant feedback of parameters: look at a knob, see it's value, turn it, get a response. If you start adding a "look a the monitor, find the parameter, etc" to the equation, improvisation is killed!

Thank you all for your help.

On the midi sync tab in preferences, under Takeover mode, select None. The other modes are really intended for controllers without endless rotary knobs - or certainly that is where they are most useful.

There are many ways you can optimize the BCR2000 for your own performance needs. You can do a lot of this using the free editor for the BCR2000 (google "B-Control" and you should be able to find it). Then you can customise some control surfaces for it to make it meet your needs more (there are threads you can find on here for this). If you still cannot get what you want, you could use a piece of software in between the controller and Live and use internal midi ports as the Input/Output of the control surfaces. Really depends on your needs.

First option is to use the editor to create a few presets for the BCR2000 that you can flip between. Just create one and copy it a few times and change the midi channel for each controller on each preset. Painful, but probably the least painful way of doing it - and you only do it once. Problem is that when you load a new track, the values will only automatically change on the currently selected preset. You will need to go through each preset and click Command+M. This will update Live and the BCR2000 so they are in sync. I used to do this for a while, but it became pretty annoying.

Second option is to use "bluehanding" devices. In short, the first 8 parameters of any bluehanded device will be controlled by whatever midi cc's a control surface script says. You'll need to create a custom script or make sure your BCR2000 is sending out the correct midi cc's. I'd suggest a custom script to be honest as you have more control. Then you can assign buttons to select the device to be bluehanded. This is a pretty common way to set up any controller in Live, but it kinda limits you in that you can only really have one device bluehanded at a time. Again, there are really good threads on this that explain it step by step, so I won't repeat them!

I went a little further and created 4 scripts so I could theoretically have 4 devices bluehanded, and each row of knobs would control the 8 parameters of the 4 bluehanded devices. How to do this is also documented in a previous thread, though the problem was easily selecting a device that corresponds with only one row of knobs. To do this, you really have to lock devices to the specific control surface after selecting them which I found difficult to do automatically in Live itself. I just created a simple Max / MSP patch to do this, so in effect, Max / MSP acts as a proxy between the BCR2000 and Live.

The way I have mine set up, the 16 buttons act as device selectors. The first 4 will select a device that the top row of knobs controls. So basically you map the 4 buttons to whatever devices you wish to control (bluehand). In the same manner, buttons 5-8 choose pre-defined devices for the second row of knobs to control; buttons 9-12 the third row and buttons 13-16 the 4th row. What this gives you is control over up to 16 devices, 4 of which can be controlled simultaneously. Each time you hit a button to select a device to control, the value on the knobs changes automatically and you can instantly start modulating the newly selected device. You're best off using instrument/drum racks so the 8 macro buttons are controlled by the BCR2000 and in turn, assigning parameters to the macros.

While this may seem like a lot of work, it's not all that bad. And once it is set up and working, the hard work is over and it is very easy to configure in your Live sets. If my setup sounds like something you are looking for, I can post any of the control surface scripts, the BCR preset and the Max / MSP patch if you want it. You need a full version of Max / MSP to get it all working though.

Trevox,

Thanks for your long and thoughtful reply.

Alright, well it sounds like I just gotta get down and dirty with things. I was mostly concerned with having to program NRPN values and all this crap that is new to me. I was hoping to just flip a global setting to "relative values" and use Ableton's MIDI mapping to assign each knob to a parameter. Sounds like it's just more complicated than that; maybe that's why I wasn't able to find a tutorial showing JUST that.

I appreciate the offer for the MAX patches. I do have it, but I'm saving that for this summer when the schedule eases up a bit.

Just wondering if there is any reason why you want to use relative values other than to make sure the knobs is immediately effective? It really is not necessary if you have endless rotaries and "Remote" turned on for the controller in preferences. You can do any scaling you want in midi mapping too.

It's not really more complicated if you use option 1 - just slightly more of a pain when you load a track. You could assign the 32 knobs with normal midi mapping. And there's another 24 knobs in effect as the 4 encoder group buttons on the top right change what cc's the top row of knobs send.

In preferences, under the MIDI sync tab, make sure both the Track and Remote options are turned on for the input and output of the BCR. Then click Command+M to go into Midi Map mode, click on a parameter and twiddle the knob you want to assign. Having remote turned on ensures that the BCR updates to whatever the parameter in Live is set to. As I said, the only issue is if you want to have more controllers assignments and have to flick between presets on the BCR2000. If you do that, when you load a tune, you will need to Command+M (twice) with each preset selected on the BCR, so Live sends the values in the current set for all presets. It stores the last values of each preset, so this only needs to be done once per tune.

I wouldn't worry about NRPN's unless you have external equipment that utilises them. Standard midi works just fine for almost everything in Live.

I think you're right, I'm just looking to make sure the knobs respond immediately, and it appears I can do that with your method 1. I can definitely get by with syncing the midi values using CMD+M.

Do you have an MPD32, by chance? The reason I asked all the questions about the BCR is that I have an MPD32 which is not quite doing what you describe the BCR as being able to do -- hence all the questions, to make sure I could actually DO this with the BCR. As soon as I get into making the MPD32 a "relative value" controller, I'm swimming in NRPN junk. It doesn't respond to the CMD+M thing.

But it sounds like the BCR *will* respond.

Thanks, again, Trevox.

townsend2005 wrote:I think you're right, I'm just looking to make sure the knobs respond immediately, and it appears I can do that with your method 1. I can definitely get by with syncing the midi values using CMD+M.

Do you have an MPD32, by chance? The reason I asked all the questions about the BCR is that I have an MPD32 which is not quite doing what you describe the BCR as being able to do -- hence all the questions, to make sure I could actually DO this with the BCR. As soon as I get into making the MPD32 a "relative value" controller, I'm swimming in NRPN junk. It doesn't respond to the CMD+M thing.

But it sounds like the BCR *will* respond.

Thanks, again, Trevox.

Sorry, don't have an MPD32, so would only be guessing what your issue may be.

live filters out NRPNs and SYSEX

Just a follow up, to anyone else who has/had the same question.

I got the BCR2000, and right out of the box, it pretty much functions exactly how you would expect it to. You adjust a value in Ableton with the mouse, and the BCR2000's assigned pot will respond, with LED and everything, going right to the value changed in Ableton.

This might seem completely obvious to anyone who has done this, but the MPD32 does not do this whatsoever. (What a piece of F*in S*!!!) This is why I started asking all these questions about absolute vs relative values, NRPN, workarounds up to wazoo.

Anyway, so I thought you have to do all this acrobatic bullshit just to get MIDI feedback on endless rotaries, when it's actually a non-issue on controllers which actually WORK!

Doh!

And thanks for all the help.