Ableton Forum

Hey everyone!

I want to use my Roli Lightpad Block as an XYZ-Controller in Ableton Live 11 on Windows 10. Now my problem is that Live receives all the MIDI events that the Roli Lightpad Block generates, but I can't map them to anything.

My setup is that I have connected my Lightpad Block with USB and in Roli Dashboard selected the "XYZ Pad" Configuration. In Live's preferences, the Lightpad is selected as a Controller. In MIDI Ports In and Out "Track" is selected, although I feel I have tried any other combination there also. Now I can see the MIDI coming in from the MIDI lights on the top right and on all MIDI channels. If I insert a MIDI Monitor on the track I want to control, it shows something like
So obviously Live gets valid MIDI Control data on channel 1/113, 1/114 and 1/115 from the Lightpad and this is routed to the track. However if I try to map any of these values to let's say a device macro in midi map mode, it won't do anything at all. I can select any control and generate a signal on the Lightpad, but there's just nothing being assigned. What I have also tried:

• Lightpad with Live 10 - doesn't work.

• Lightpad only sending the X-Axis (1/113) - doesn't work.

• Lightpad sending on different MIDI channels (1/22, 1/23, 1/24) - doesn't work.

• Lightpad sending on different MIDI channels and only sending the X-Axis (1/22) - doesn't work.

• ...

I have tried for 3 hours now, ran out of options and am at the end of my patience Do you have any idea why this might happen?

Cheers and happy producing,
Alex

Check this topic.

[jur] wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:43 pm

Check this topic.

Hey jur, I've seen the topic - the last two comments are basically what I want to do, but I'm afraid I couldn't make sense of the answer by then.

However, it works now (yay!) although I don't know what actually led to making it work... I tried to trace down the difference to my description and obviously it was just setting the MIDI Ports for the Lightpad Block in the Live preferences to "Track" and "Remote" as well, although I feel like I have also tried this a few times before... don't know, but at some time it just started working surprisingly for me. Also, it works with the pre-configured MIDI-CC channels (113, 114, 115), so no need to frickle around there.

Another hint for somebody with the same setup as me - if you have a Seabord Block and a Lightpad Block, have connected them with the magnetic connection and have an USB cable going to your computer, it makes a difference if you plug that cable into the Seabord Block or Lightpad Block. For Live, these are considered separate devices, so go look in the MIDI settings again if everything is configured properly.

For me, the following setup works now:

• Seabord Block and Lightpad Block connected throught the built in magnetic connection

• Seabord Block connected with USB cable to my computer

• In Roli Dashboard for the Seabord Block the mode "MPE" is selected

• In Roli Dashboard for the Lightpad Block the mode "XYZ Controller" is selected

• In Live's preferences in the MIDI section deselect everything that might have been loaded related to "BLOCKS" or similar (select "None")

• In the MIDI Ports section where it says "In: Seabord Block" select "Track" and "Remote" and "MPE" (if you want to use the Seabord as MPE controller)

That did the trick for me. Then you can do the MIDI mapping. For setting up the mapping, I'll post a video from Roli that I found very helpful on how the mapping is done together with Roli Dashboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzzURTQTIt4&t=59s

Hope that's fine and see you around!