Ableton Forum

Greetings from a new Ableton Live 11 user. Although I'm a brand new user of Ableton, I'm not new to working with DAWs or with MIDI automation and I'm running into something that's just not making sense to me. Hopefully someone here can point me in the right direction.

What I'm trying to do is understand how I'm going to create different backing tracks, load them into a session view, launch them and stop them. At this point I'm just trying to get these basic functions working by sending MIDI commands from my Line 6 Helix floor unit which is connected via the USB and is acting as my audio interface.

I've define three different MIDI functions as stomps on my Helix. One is sending a MIDI command to select Scene 1, one is defined as a track launch, and one is defined as a stop transport. I know these are being sent and received by Ableton as they show up in the MIDI mapping, but when I exit the MIDI mapping Ableton doesn't react to them. I can manually operate them, and I can even define keyboard actions that work. Just the MIDI doesn't work.

In preferences I have the Helix defined as an Input source and MIDI In has both Track and Remote checked.

It seems like everything is in place for this to work, but it's just not reacting to any of my MIDI commands. What am I missing here?

Hi, could you post a couple of screenshots of your setup please eg Midimap mode, preferences (record/warp/launch), your session view? That usually makes its easier for us to understand the issues. I've used MIDI commands from controllers in the past to trigger backing tracks so it's definitely possible, hopefully we can troubleshoot it for you.

Cheers
D

Here you go...

Well, I figured out a solution that uses Key definitions rather than MIDI CC commands. I have no idea why Ableton seems to struggle with acting on MIDI commands for controlling the selection and playing of scenes as you would think that would be the most common approach. But using Keys works exactly as I was envisioning as I can send a CC command to activate a stomp button on the Helix that will send the appropriate Hotkeys through the USB to Ableton and still forward my MIDI commands to the Beat Buddy via the MIDI cable.

Really folks....it shouldn't be this complicated...but there it is. At least the people that build things for guitar players know how to make this kind of stuff work correctly.

your cc messages need to be a value of 0-63 (on). values above that won't trigger. have you checked that in helix control center?

Also, are the switches on your Helix set to momentary or toggle? And would it suit your set-up to use the Helix to launch a scene rather than an individual clip? If so you could then map a Helix button to scene launch, enabling you just to launch scenes sequentially (if you set Preferences to be Select Next Scene on Launch). I've used midi commands in the past to launch backing tracks/scenes, using a Roland SPD-SX and Yamaha DTX-M12, so it's definitely possible, but I recognise your frustration that it's not as quick and easy fix as it should be.

Cheers
D

These were all momentary switches and as I've said, they all map correctly through the Ableton mapper. Ableton just refuses to act on them. One switch to using Hotkeys and all works perfectly. I'm not particularly married to the idea of MIDI as the transport. In fact, doing it this way rather than my original plan of having a MIDI chain from the MC8->Helix->Beat Buddy->audio interface/Ableton, will allow me to still trigger the Ableton through the Helix and the Beat Buddy through the MIDI, but I won't need a separate audio interface for the Ableton and can route it's output from the Helix to it's own separate mixing board channel so that the guitar, the drums and the Ableton scene all have their own channels.

garyboozy wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 24, 2021 8:54 am

your cc messages need to be a value of 0-63 (on). values above that won't trigger. have you checked that in helix control center?

Yeah, I was doing everything through the control center and played with all sorts of CC numbers as well as values and nothing seemed to make any difference in the outcome. I'm sure I must have overlooked some limitation in the Ableton somewhere, but it all worked out for the best anyway using Hotkeys from the Command Center.