Ableton Forum

I recently purchased a MidiBuddy and figured the easiest/best way to have it work with Ableton was was to use MidiStroke to convert the Program Changes to keystrokes.

The problem is for some reason, no matter what parameters I put into MidiStroke, it only sends a capital A.

Rights now, i have this setup on MidiStroke

num | Chn | Value \ keystroke | cmd | Shift | opt | ctrl
01____ 3___________\_____W______________X
02_____3___________\_____Q______________X

But, still, with these options clearly selected, the only keystroke it sends is 'A' ..which isn't in my MidiStroke table


So, i'm totally confused.

Before you ask, yes my MidiBuddy is set up on MidiChannel 3. Also, if i did add more parameters into MidiStroke such as

num | Chn | Value \ keystroke | cmd | Shift | opt | ctrl
01____3____________\____W________________X
02____3____________\____Q________________X
03____3____________\____D________________X
04____3____________\____B________________X

then, once I press the corresponding button on the MidiBuddy (such as 3 or 4) then it will still only press 'A'...if, i didn't have those parameters in the MidiStroke table (like in the first table i showed), then those buttons (3 or 4) won't send anything (as expected)

i just had a quick play and i think MIDIStroke is buggy (i'm running OS X 10.9.2)

all keystrokes that i enter as capitals come out as a's. and if you check the shift box they come out as capital A's...

i don't really understand how you can get it to distinguish between Notes and Program Changes either...

you might want to try MIDIPipe or Bomes MIDI Translator instead...

fishmonkey wrote:i just had a quick play and i think MIDIStroke is buggy (i'm running OS X 10.9.2)

all keystrokes that i enter as capitals come out as a's. and if you check the shift box they come out as capital A's...

i don't really understand how you can get it to distinguish between Notes and Program Changes either...

you might want to try MIDIPipe or Bomes MIDI Translator instead...

Dman it! Why does Bomes have to be so expensive for mac!

I hope i can get it to work with MidiPipe how i want. Or i hope midiStroke's maker fixes this bug (i have posted about it on the midistroke's Github)

btw, since the MIDIBuddy is designed specifically for sending program changes, and cannot be configured to send CCs or Note messages, it's not a good choice if you were wanting a general purpose MIDI controller device.

fishmonkey wrote:btw, since the MIDIBuddy is designed specifically for sending program changes, and cannot be configured to send CCs or Note messages, it's not a good choice if you were wanting a general purpose MIDI controller device.

Yea, sadly i realize that now after i made the purchase. However, i believe i will be able to make it work how i want it to after some time. Even if i must buy the full Bomes app to convert the Program Changes to keystroke commands

Make sure you use lower-case letters in the midiStroke GUI... the main bug here is that it shows a capital Z when you first launch midiStroke. But since there's a modifier for the shift key that doesn't really make sense.

Using lowercase it works fine for me in OS X 10.9.2, midiStroke 1.4. Hope this helps. - Charlie

Also, the MidiBuddy is great! Built like a lightweight tank and so simple to use... once you use lowercase letters in midiStroke

bigbadotis wrote:Make sure you use lower-case letters in the midiStroke GUI... the main bug here is that it shows a capital Z when you first launch midiStroke. But since there's a modifier for the shift key that doesn't really make sense.

Using lowercase it works fine for me in OS X 10.9.2, midiStroke 1.4. Hope this helps. - Charlie

hey there, am I missing something, or are MIDI Notes and Program Changes entered into MIDIStroke in exactly the same way (meaning that the same entry will respond to both a Program Change and the corresponding MIDI Note?)

bigbadotis wrote:Make sure you use lower-case letters in the midiStroke GUI... the main bug here is that it shows a capital Z when you first launch midiStroke. But since there's a modifier for the shift key that doesn't really make sense.

Using lowercase it works fine for me in OS X 10.9.2, midiStroke 1.4. Hope this helps. - Charlie

This is the answer to the problem!

Inside Midistroke's GUI table, you need to use lowercase letters.

If you use uppercase letters under the keystroke column, every output will be an 'A'.


Thank you so much!

fishmonkey wrote:hey there, am I missing something, or are MIDI Notes and Program Changes entered into MIDIStroke in exactly the same way (meaning that the same entry will respond to both a Program Change and the corresponding MIDI Note?)

Yep. It's a simple little program. My thinking was basically "If they have a pedal that doesn't support note messages, they'll use program change. Otherwise they'll use note messages". If you need more flexibility MidiPipe / AppleScript is the way to go.

@maylortaylor: you're welcome! Sorry that this bug now exists; I think it must be something that changed in how Mavericks reads the text input but I don't have time to look into it further at the moment...

bigbadotis wrote:

fishmonkey wrote:hey there, am I missing something, or are MIDI Notes and Program Changes entered into MIDIStroke in exactly the same way (meaning that the same entry will respond to both a Program Change and the corresponding MIDI Note?)

Yep. It's a simple little program. My thinking was basically "If they have a pedal that doesn't support note messages, they'll use program change. Otherwise they'll use note messages". If you need more flexibility MidiPipe / AppleScript is the way to go.

no worries, that's good to know.

bigbadotis wrote:

fishmonkey wrote:hey there, am I missing something, or are MIDI Notes and Program Changes entered into MIDIStroke in exactly the same way (meaning that the same entry will respond to both a Program Change and the corresponding MIDI Note?)

Yep. It's a simple little program. My thinking was basically "If they have a pedal that doesn't support note messages, they'll use program change. Otherwise they'll use note messages". If you need more flexibility MidiPipe / AppleScript is the way to go.

@maylortaylor: you're welcome! Sorry that this bug now exists; I think it must be something that changed in how Mavericks reads the text input but I don't have time to look into it further at the moment...

one last question from me:

is there a way to save your settings with midistroke? maybe a text file hidden somewhere?

I want to have a few templates saved (live looping, djing, production work,etc) and really would hate to have to program midistroke each time.

It just remembers the last used settings.

If you go to ~/Library/Application Support/midiStroke you'll see the file where the settings get saved. You could duplicate this file and then create additional settings and then rename the one you want to use each time. Not ideal, but that's the only way I can think of doing this.

It might not be that much work to add saving / loading, but I have no available time to put into this; it's been at least three years since I've used midiStroke on a gig (and almost as long for Live actually)...

If you're at all interested in working on this, the code for midiStroke is pretty darn minimal; my guess is it'd be an easy project to hack on. There's even links to the tutorials I used to figure out how to the file saving/loading; I just checked and they're still alive after almost a decade.