Ableton Forum

Hi!

Can I map a MIDI controller so it operates on the currently selected track? I want to make a generic setup so I can launch clip 1..x, control X/Y of fx1, X/Y of fx2, volume etc.

When you look at the Faderfox controller, it is obviously made to operate that way, so it should be possible?

The manual isn't very helpful in this regard, unfortunately.

click the midi button top right of screen select the device you want to control move the button or knob you want to use and thats it.repeat untill you have run out of buttons and knobs.basic way of doing it.

I know how to do that. But it wasn't what I asked about.

My idea was to set up my controller so it operates at the currently selected (session view) track in a generic way, i.e. I can use a knob to control fx1, another for fx2 etc. I can then just switch among the tracks and use the same knobs to control different fx and the same buttons to launch clips.

Is it even possible to do that in Live?

The Faderfox LV1 (http://www.faderfox.de/Faderfox-Homepag ... glish.html) looks like it is designed to work that way.

Edit: After reading through the Faderfox manual, It seems to me that the controller accomplishes this by switching CC numbers depending on which track is currently selected. Oh, well...

sorry .i misunderstood your question.

Hey, at leat you answered!

cant you just hold down shift and press input to put the faderfox into track
control?

Michael ~ yes totally possible. No need to change Midi CC's. Just rotate the Encoder (biggest knob ~ top right most). See the pot selector with 3 LEDs (top left)? Track means that the ABCD knobs will react to those particular track items...which can be changed within that track.

FX3 & FX4 mean that they are Track INDEPENDENT...so when you have that highlighted, no matter which Track you're on, the FX that you assigned to 3 & 4 (respectively) will react to it.

Hope that helps.

Well, I wanted to accomplish this WITHOUT an actual Faderfox! I must have problems expressing myself...

Lets use an example: My mini Evolution keyboard have 8 knobs. They each send out a different MIDI CC. I can map those to 8 different parameters in Live, no problem.

However, my hope was that it would be a way so I could map those 8 knobs to 8 parameters in the currently selected track. If I change the selected track, they could be mapped to 8 new parameters in the newly selected track, without affecting any parameters in the old track. I.e., my control routing would be affected by my current selection. That is how the Faderfox works, right?

I would then have very good control possibilites without having to buy a Behringer or a Faderfox. I could use the arrow keys to scroll between my tracks and the same 8 knobs to control a lot of different things.

To use Faderfox language, I would like my Evolution knobs to be track dependant. Just a guess: This is either very simple (and I'm a moron that can't read a manual) or it is totally impossible...
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well, the rule is
1 midi knob <-> 1 Live parameter
you can't have 1 knob act on more than 1 parameter, even if they are on different tracks. however, there are some workarounds using virtual midi ports (eg midi-ox).
or maybe if you discribed better your setup (number of tracks, effects, parameters to be assigned) somebody could come up with a better idea.

maybe routing all your tracks to a single one where you would have all the fx could do the trick.

peeddrroo wrote:well, the rule is
1 midi knob <-> 1 Live parameter
you can't have 1 knob act on more than 1 parameter, even if they are on different tracks.

That is my conclusion too unfortunately. However, the Faderfox seemingly accomplishes this - you have the same knob/joystick controling different parameters, depending what track you currently have selected. But I think it does this by silently switching CC numbers as you switch track.

Michael-SW,

I'm with you and I've been wondering about Faderfox's solution as well, thinking that it should be doable with any other midi controller. Maybe they have a special trick up their sleeve. The midi channel thing that you suggest seems reasonable... Hoping it would be a feature in Live that I've overlooked, though!

Cheers,
Mikael

I don't think it is MIDI channel, but rather which CC # it is using. There are after all 127 to pick from. So, on track 1 it uses CCs 1-10, track 2 CCs 11-20 etc (in principle).

If your controller has has easily recallable assignments, you could probably emulate this. Maybe even get Live to switch to the active track.

Someone intimately familiar with the Faderfox that cares to comment?

I wrote a max/msp program to do this with my BCR.

I basically have the BCR set out as 4 vertical physical channels (8 knobs 4 buttons a piece), with one knob at the top selecting the track and another selecting the slot. When I press any of the top two knobs the app sends a track select CC and the slot select CC which means I can zip around in the set quite nicely once the track and slot are selected for each channel.

+

Whenever another track is selected with the knob the app updates the eq / filter settings (led rings) to the BCR so I don`t have any parameter jumping etc.. I`ve used it live a couple of times and it`s well cool. I don`t need to touch the mouse at all (except when pulling in new tracks to the set, which I don`t do anyway).

Took a fair bit of work and max can be a bastard but it was well worth it.

Cheers.

Yeah, seems like quite a bit of work to code yourself. But it probably would be very easy for the developers to implement a "selected track only" type of control mapping...