Ableton Forum

Hell-0,
I was reading the article on Kid Beyond as well as that guy from the John Scofield band and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions about what would be a good MIDI foot controller to use with Ableton. Ive looked at the Behringer model but was curious to know if it was worth it.

Also I do not have MIDI inputs on my soundcard. Can I use like a MIDISport MIDI to USB converter?

If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate hearing them.

Thanks!!!

The MIDIsport will work fine.

demonjester9 wrote: Ive looked at the Behringer model but was curious to know if it was worth it.

I recently got a FCB1010, mostly because it was considerably cheaper than anything else out there, and there is a great yahoo group based around it. It took a little bit of tweaking to work well for my needs (launching scenes), but I like the layout and it has plenty of options. Haven't used it long-term or live yet, but I know there are other users on this forum who can shed some light on those aspects. Also, check out the aformentioned yahoo group...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fcb1010/

-Kev

Thx man.
What kind of issues have you had with it? Is it easy to map clips to it? Also are you using MIDI directly or are you converting to USB?

Thx in advance.

demonjester9 wrote:Thx man.
What kind of issues have you had with it? Is it easy to map clips to it? Also are you using MIDI directly or are you converting to USB?

Thx in advance.

Well, out of the box, the pedals are set to transmit program changes, which live does not respond to (I'm using live 4, by the way). But, it is a simple matter to have the pedals transmit control changes, or midi notes (which is what I do). Once it is sending out the right kind of signal, pretty much anything in live can be assigned to the buttons (incredibly easy in live), including clip or scene launchers. For instance, one of my purposes for it is to play rhythmic loops while I play guitar. So, one button might be assigned to the tap tempo, several more might be assigned to scene launches (which will correspond to the verse section, chorus, bridge, etc.), a couple more to effects on/off. And then there are the two continous pedals, which could be for master volume, filter sweep, tempo adjuster, etc. It is nice to have access to almost all of live's fuctionality, hands free. And that is just using one of the 10 available banks of presets.

I have the FCB1010 plugged into an audio/midi interface (Lexicon omega) which sends signal to my PC via USB. I will use a similar setup with my laptop if I start using it live.

Behringer FCB1010 is the only midi foot controller worth thinking about. It has two expression pedals 10 buttons. It's cheap. Nothing else compares. FCB1010 is a little weird to program but you're only going to do it once and you'll figure it out. It does not have USB. Runs on midi.