Ableton Forum

I've only had my Push for a week and I'm already in love! I have been saving parameter banks for my most used plugins and I love being able to jam with them without touching the computer. It would really help out to be able to rename the banks of parameters to aid Push navigation.

Push is amazing. It lets me turn the monitor off (great for making beats on the couch) and just jam without touching my mouse/keyboard. The only things that force me to look back at my computer are setting side-chain input (this would also be amazing for my workflow) and navigating elaborate synth plugins with several banks.

Yes, this is an absolute must, and many of us are wanting it. Let's hope it's included in a future update.

TomViolenz made some great mappings for all of Live's devices, and they're a joy to use, if only we can map VSTs in a similar way - unlimited banks (with third party devices it's limited to 16 banks), renaming of banks, and renaming of parameters.

I've started my mapping of Zebra 2, and it's great to be able to even assign the input selector and amounts to the unassigned knobs, but fully mapping just one oscillator takes up 2 banks (sadly, Phase and Sync ON/OFF, and the oscillator FX selectors can't be mapped).

So just OSC1 - 4 would take up 50% of the banks, not even having started on the four FMOs, the 4 LFOs etc.

And not being able to rename the banks and parameters is a hinder to workflow. Eventually you remember which bank is which, but far from ideal.

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As long as the bank names can be changed at some point, I'll be very happy.

Also, not sure if it's even possible to have more than 128 parameters mapped for a VST. I guess it has to do with 0-127 MIDI messages or something. I'm pretty ignorant as to the technical workings of program changes and the deeper workings of MIDI etc.

It’s possible to define 3rd party devices in the Devices file just like Live’s own devices (with custom parameter ordering and bank names), but you’ll be limited to 16 banks (plus BOBs) due to the limitation that Live’s Configure function only allows for 128 parameters per 3rd party device AFAIK.

You need a slightly customized Devices file to do this (the default looks at all 3rd party devices in the same way). And it would be useful if you could get a list of all parameters that are accessible for the device.

This zip contains a customized Devices file that allows for 3rd party devices to be defined. It also includes a customized ClyphXUserActions file that allows for easily creating lists of parameters for devices. To use the latter file:

1. Install ClyphX if you haven’t already.
2. Copy the customized ClyphXUserAction file into the ClyphX folder in MIDI Remote Scripts.
3. Create a clip named [] GETDEV.
4. Place the 3rd party device on the same track as the clip and ensure that the device is selected.
5. Trigger the clip you created.

This will create a list of the device’s parameters in Live’s log file. The Troubleshooting section of ClyphX’s manual covers how to locate that.

metastatik wrote:It’s possible to define 3rd party devices in the Devices file just like Live’s own devices (with custom parameter ordering and bank names), but you’ll be limited to 16 banks (plus BOBs) due to the limitation that Live’s Configure function only allows for 128 parameters per 3rd party device AFAIK.

You need a slightly customized Devices file to do this (the default looks at all 3rd party devices in the same way). And it would be useful if you could get a list of all parameters that are accessible for the device.

This zip contains a customized Devices file that allows for 3rd party devices to be defined. It also includes a customized ClyphXUserActions file that allows for easily creating lists of parameters for devices. To use the latter file:

1. Install ClyphX if you haven’t already.
2. Copy the customized ClyphXUserAction file into the ClyphX folder in MIDI Remote Scripts.
3. Create a clip named [] GETDEV.
4. Place the 3rd party device on the same track as the clip and ensure that the device is selected.
5. Trigger the clip you created.

This will create a list of the device’s parameters in Live’s log file. The Troubleshooting section of ClyphX’s manual covers how to locate that.

Thanks meta, I will explore this as soon as wine is not involved.

metastatik wrote:This will create a list of the device’s parameters in Live’s log file. The Troubleshooting section of ClyphX’s manual covers how to locate that.

I've followed everything and it did log the parameters but now what? How can the parameters be renamed and how can I get them to show up in Push? There is no information anywhere about this. Thank you for your help.


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TomViolenz wrote:You may want to look into the ubermap thread, forum member tom_d is well on his way to alleveate all the mapping concerns you may have

Thank you very much TomViolenz but I tried it and I wanted to pull my hair out because there is no manual explaining how to use it after you "hand" install it and it didn't even work. I will admit I'm not a software coder. It seems like thats what you need to be to use this stuff. Or at least a good manual written for Ubermap. I couldn't guess how to make it work.



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Finally got Ubermap to work on Windows 8. Thank you very much tom_d for making this utility!!! Thank you TomViolenz for your suggestion!


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Heh yeah sorry, the current documentation is somewhat aimed at people who are comfortable with the technicalities of editing text files etc. - I did this slightly on purpose initially as I didn't want people installing the script and messing up their Ableton or whatever without an understanding of what was going on. I do plan to make it more user friendly and add an editor app as and when I get time to work on it, seems no one's machine has blown up yet so I guess it's safe for public consumption

Glad you got it working anyway, feel free to post up in the thread if you need any help and I'll do my best! Also if there's anything in particular that you feel could be explained more clearly let me know and I'll update the docs.

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Heh yeah - Ableton, if you want to fly me out to Berlin and pay me to integrate all this stuff, please feel free to give me a shout

But I was thinking about this the other day, from the point of view that none of what I've done was particularly complex, so Ableton could definitely do it themselves - I guess the reason why they haven't is that it wasn't seen as a priority for getting Push out of the door. If you've not worked in software or a similar industry, I guess it can be hard to appreciate the cost of adding a feature in terms of designing it, developing it, testing it etc. - even simple things can become really complex, particularly if you are adding multiple options for how something behaves (every option creates a whole new set of test cases and potential complexity and issues).

A lot of Ableton's decisions can be explained a bit better if you think about it from that point of view I guess... so to my mind, the best way to create a solid, well designed piece of software which can still meet the niche needs of "power users", is to focus on getting the core of it right, and then provide a simple, powerful way for developers to extend the core functionality. Ableton aren't perfect in this regard, but the fact that Max for Live is quite deeply integrated and that they don't seem to want to actively stop us from fiddling with the MIDI Remote Scripts at least means we can get some of the way to adding the features we dream of. But really, it would be so nice if they released the Python source files - the decompilation process is a bit error prone (although if they upgrade to Python 2.7 internally in future, this should get a bit easier - at the minute, the problem is that the decompiler decompiles the .pyc files into Python 2.7 source, but Live only support Python 2.5, so some of the lines of code it creates aren't valid).

Will be interesting to see what BitWig does/doesn't deliver in terms of third party extensibility - not that I'd leave Ableton, too much invested in it and generally it works very well for me, but it's always good to have a bit of friendly competition

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