Ableton Forum

Hi there, I have a couple MIDI controllers but I've been a little annoyed that every time I open a new instrument or effect, whether it's Ableton or 3rd Party, I have to "teach" the variables I frequently wish to control from which knobs or buttons on my controller. For example, if I load a synth, I will most frequently wish to map common things like ADSR, Cutoff, Resonance, LFOs, etc. It works great when I right-click, and click "learn" or in the case of an Ableton instrument, I use the midi map function. Boom, I'm off and running!

But then, if I either start a new track with a different synth, or a new project, or close and re-open Ableton later, I have to teach each synth or new effect the same MIDI controls I'd like to use, all over again. It gets really tedious and slows down the creative process. Is there a way of saving or forcing Ableton and 3rd party effects/instruments to always remember these control settings?

Also, is it possible in Ableton to make MIDI control mapping track specific? So that only MIDI effects a certain channel when it's enabled/selected? I noticed that if I use the MIDI map in Ableton to map controls to macros on a drum rack, then when I go to a 3rd party synth and use those same knobs (I'm limited to 8 with my controller), even though the drum rack is no longer selected or enabled, when I'm trying to adjust cutoff on my synth it will instead still be controlling the macros on the drum rack. The only way to fix this is to right-click the macros in question and force them to "unlearn." So this process gets super tedious when I have to learn and unlearn MIDI mapping across tracks CONSTANTLY. This seems to make the idea of having a controller to be pretty pointless and unintuitive. Am I missing something here? A setting somewhere, perhaps? Thanks!

Depending on your keyboard/controller, the MIDI "Control Surface" funcction is designed for exactly what you are asking but it is designed to be "automatic" no matter what you add in...

You can create default parameter maps for VST instruments so they load with the same control mapping each time but if you are "hard-mapping" midi (as in doing MIDI Learn) then you will need to do that each time you load because MIDI Learn is "global" and does not care what you have selected, it happens all the time where using a Control Surface it has both global control capabilities and "whatever is selected" capabilities.

When I choose any MIDI controller I base my decisions on how it will work with Live or if there may be a 3rd party control script available to do what I want.

You will need to do some research into what is possible for you.

jestermgee wrote:Depending on your keyboard/controller, the MIDI "Control Surface" funcction is designed for exactly what you are asking but it is designed to be "automatic" no matter what you add in...

You can create default parameter maps for VST instruments so they load with the same control mapping each time but if you are "hard-mapping" midi (as in doing MIDI Learn) then you will need to do that each time you load because MIDI Learn is "global" and does not care what you have selected, it happens all the time where using a Control Surface it has both global control capabilities and "whatever is selected" capabilities.

When I choose any MIDI controller I base my decisions on how it will work with Live or if there may be a 3rd party control script available to do what I want.

You will need to do some research into what is possible for you.

Thanks jestermgee. That's helpful information which I had no idea about. I'll definitely do some further research!

jestermgee wrote:Depending on your keyboard/controller, the MIDI "Control Surface" funcction is designed for exactly what you are asking but it is designed to be "automatic" no matter what you add in...

You can create default parameter maps for VST instruments so they load with the same control mapping each time but if you are "hard-mapping" midi (as in doing MIDI Learn) then you will need to do that each time you load because MIDI Learn is "global" and does not care what you have selected, it happens all the time where using a Control Surface it has both global control capabilities and "whatever is selected" capabilities.

When I choose any MIDI controller I base my decisions on how it will work with Live or if there may be a 3rd party control script available to do what I want.

You will need to do some research into what is possible for you.

Omnisphere is a third party synth with MIDI Learn. Is this a bad fit for Ableton? I mean, obviously the software will work. But is it bad because I have to teach it using "MIDI learn"?

I guess my question should be "Are you saying I will be needing to MIDI learn each time I load an Omnisphere instrument?"

Lol. I've never used Omnisphere with a controller before. When I originally bought it I bought a Korg NanoKey. Eventually I discovered that the NanoKey wasn't very compatible with Ableton 7LE. There were times I could get it to work, but I didn't like it and couldn't get my other control surfaces to work at the same time as the NanoKey (I had Korg NanoKontrol as well). Anyway, now I'm using a Novation Launchkey 49 with mapping. Lol. Much different than a NanoKey! I hope Omnisphere won't be too much of a pain with Ableton.

It's probably better to instead use "Host Automation" which maps the control of Omnisphere into Live which you can then MIDI learn if you want, but for "intelligent controllers" like Push and other control surfaces they will auto map when you select a track. That is the beauty of using a DAW like Live and not living in 1996 anymore

Doing a hard midi-map with something like Omnisphere is painful and it's just much better to use Host Automation and save it within live by right-click of the title bar of the VST loader and setting the "save as default" option and it will now load with the controls mapped every time without having to MIDI map all the time.

jestermgee wrote:It's probably better to instead use "Host Automation" which maps the control of Omnisphere into Live which you can then MIDI learn if you want, but for "intelligent controllers" like Push and other control surfaces they will auto map when you select a track. That is the beauty of using a DAW like Live and not living in 1996 anymore

Doing a hard midi-map with something like Omnisphere is painful and it's just much better to use Host Automation and save it within live by right-click of the title bar of the VST loader and setting the "save as default" option and it will now load with the controls mapped every time without having to MIDI map all the time.

Thanks for the reply... that actually sounds much happier for me. I don't want to MIDI learn everything!

Looks like I'm going to have to get my copy of Omnisphere back. I don't have the original software, but I still have the license i.e. can upgrade at a discount. I will be coughing up blood though.. $249. Whatever. It will be cool to have "Spotlight EDM" which is new with Omnisphere 2.

You helped me decide!