Ableton Forum

I know it's an audio effect, but it'd be sweet if Resonators could be "played" be a MIDI keyboard using the keyboard to set the Note parameter.

Short answer, it can.

Long answer, if you tweak resonator 1 note control you'll see it has a range from C-1 to C5 centred round C2. Activate the MIDI mapping for the resonator and press and hold C2, then, while still holding it, press C-1 and C5 (you'll probably need to use the octave up and down buttons on your keyboard while holding C2 but it still works OK). This sets root note/low key/high key for that parameter similar to the way you would set up a key zone in a sampler. Now if you play a key within that range, it will set the resonator to that note.

The other resonators have pitch controllers with a 4 octave range stepping up in semitones so you can do the same thing for them, just ensure your root note is in the middle of a 4 octave range (e.g. if your tune is in F, say, and you want F2 as your root note, then set your low key to F0 and your high key to F4 so each semitone on the keyboard corresponds to a semitone on the resonator parameter).

The root note/high key/low key thing can be used on a lot of Ableton parameters to map them to notes or launchpad buttons etc. It's buried in the manual on p468 and a surprising number of people don't know about it (including me until an Ableton rep demo'd it to me, and I've been using Ableton for years). If you use it to trigger session view audio clips you can play them like they were in a sampler except unlike in a sampler they don't timestretch when you change pitch.

Nice! Got it working. Thanks for the tip Definitely a useful somewhat unknown feature.

is there a way to do this in live 9 as well? Doesn't seem to work. I'm using a keith McMillen Qunexus.

Sure it's still working.

@timday I had the same query about playing the resonator and this works great - thanks! Question: Is there a way to record the "performance" in arrangement view?

Does hitting record not do it? Making sure you are also recording automation (because that is effectively what you are doing for the resonator parametere)?

Or if you want to go straight to audio set up an audio track with the resonator track as input and use that to record to.