Ableton Forum

It would be a cool visual tool to be able to color the pads in Drum Rack a la Maschine. Even better: could Live intelligently color drum rack cells based on name i.e.: a color associated with "kick" "kik" "KD" "BD" etc that live would automatically apply when those or other key words were in a pad name. And if these colors were also reflected in the folded midi editor with the pad names, all the better. I feel that having colors would speed up workflow as now you have a fast way of telling which pad is what type of instrument.

Currently you can color a chain, and that will be reflected in the mixer, but not on the drum rack pad or in the midi editor. Seems like it would be an easy thing to implement.

Interestingly enough, I just discovered that naming drum cells in the way that you described actually defines the colors of the pads on the Maschine hardware. For examples, anything with "clap" in the cell name colors the pads a light blue, while the letter "K" triggers a red color. My guess (and fear) is that this is Maschine specific, but I'm going to dig through the Maschine remote scripts to if there's any hope of applying this to the Push hardware.

Mr.415 wrote:Interestingly enough, I just discovered that naming drum cells in the way that you described actually defines the colors of the pads on the Maschine hardware. For examples, anything with "clap" in the cell name colors the pads a light blue, while the letter "K" triggers a red color. My guess (and fear) is that this is Maschine specific, but I'm going to dig through the Maschine remote scripts to if there's any hope of applying this to the Push hardware.

Just in case you are still alive, do you happen to have any good news to report a few years later? I like the direction of your thinking!

+1.

My MPD218 doesn't support pad colouring, but many AKAI devices do. Also Push 1 does, so why not?

Just reiterating again in 2018 that it would be great to be able to change the color of the individual drum pads on drum rack.

In large projects, specifically for live shows, being able to quickly tell which pads are drums and which pads are sample chops would be very useful.

Feverkin wrote:Just reiterating again in 2018 that it would be great to be able to change the color of the individual drum pads on drum rack.

In large projects, specifically for live shows, being able to quickly tell which pads are drums and which pads are sample chops would be very useful.

It is possible, for Push anyway.

If you are talking about having a VST mapped to your drum rack then you need to add a chain device to the pad to allow a colour to be set.

Video I created on this exact topic plus how to create multiple outputs for external mixing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74ty7w26jY&t=1s

+1

jestermgee wrote:
Video I created on this exact topic plus how to create multiple outputs for external mixing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74ty7w26jY&t=1s

Great work Jester! Here's the direct time to the coloring part in the excellent Ableton Live: VST in DrumRack with Multi-Outs & Push Colours by Jester Mgee.

About time to bump this topic again, It makes total sense, enabling ‘colour pads’ would add an essential ability in Ableton and breath new life into the rack system across the board.

It’s really overdue unless there is a reason it would be a bad idea.

Perhaps Ableton could chip in with a comment for Love 10.2.

Bump, I thought I would Bump this to highlight it’s importance esppecially to Push 2 owners and those with devices that show RGB colours on drum pads.

I feel it’s an easy thing to discuss for the team understanding that even the smallest tweets to Live of course have implications, I u derstand truly.

However I really feel this is an easily appreciable change to Lives GUI.

Regards.

I would also love this as a feature. Been waiting for it for a long while now.

Yeah, bump again, as I would love to get this noticed by the developers.

I’m thinking of all the third party controllers that would benefit from the change.

I assume NI Machine would be one, but that’s just skimming the surface.

I’m wondering if all the past Novation Launchpads and Akai products would be backwards compatible to some degree, which would be nice to see benefit in a world full of waste.

Why is this not a thing yet? The Push colours show up in the Chain List, the Pad view needs it.

Can you still not do this? Whyyyy?!

Push 3 in control mode still can not do this. It’s in the little push push window.

There absolutely has to be something easy that I have missed. Please help