Syncing the 8x8 clip matrix ("red/blue/green box") among all controllers

[xposed.inneria]

Hi everyone!

I am using multiple controllers to launch clips etc. - currently a Push3 and 2 x APC Mini.
As I progress through my set, I want to move the 8x8 clip matrix further down, typically by a bank of 8 scenes.
The first problem is that at the moment I have to do this manually for each controller!
What's worse, on the APC mini you can't simply move by bank of 8 scenes, but you rather have to do it scene by scene, i.e. push the button 8 times! (while holding the shift of course)
If you have more than 1 apc this quickly becomes infeasible in a performance situation... (you want to quickly go to the next scene bank, not clicking for half an hour..)

Is there any way to automate this? The way I see it: one controller (push3) is the "master", the rest are "listeners" and follow the scene focus of push 3. The track focus of course stays independent on all controllers. Kinda clip matrix vertical sync tool.

From what I gathered one could do this using a Max for Live device. Unfortunately I am on Ableton standard for now, but this would be a good reason to upgrade to suite or just get max for live separately.
A different approach would be to intercept midi messages, and remap somehow, but I dislike this approach... requires running 3rd party tools in parallel etc.
Any other approaches? Perhaps modifying the MIDI Remote scripts of the APCs to navigate by banks and not by scenes - but still not an ideal solution (not automatic).

Thanks for any ideas!

Cheers,
Slava

P.S. I can't believe APC Mini doesn't support the possibility to move by 8 scenes... I saw some old threads on this, apparently no changes since. I guess not enough buttons or something Or maybe an incentive to go for APC 64. The beauty of the mini is affordability - you can have several in one session and control a ridiculous number of tracks (think how big an analog console would have been!), but the lack of clip matrix sync is a bit of a deal breaker...

[S4racen]

Sorry to disappoint but the component for push 3 that needs to be exposed to the api to report its position is not available so there are no methods to sync the Push 3 currently.

Cheers
D

[xposed.inneria]

Sorry to disappoint but the component for push 3 that needs to be exposed to the api to report its position is not available so there are no methods to sync the Push 3 currently.

Cheers
D

Thanks a lot for your reply! and yeah, its somewhat disappointing
So there is no way to intercept midi messages in Max4Live or anything like that?
Like maybe not expecting Push to report the absolute position, only changes - and tracking those on other controllers.
I never worked with M4L so I am just wildly guessing.

Btw, what API are you talking about? Thanks!

Cheers
Slava

[S4racen]

Live's accessible API is listed in the Live Object Model for MaxforLive, it previously allowed for components of a control surface to be observed which would've given the value of the top left position of a ring focus box. This was removed however and none of the Control Surface elements have ever been documented.

If you wanted to observe the buttons and create your own pseudo tracking you could, however there's no way of telling if you're in Note or Session mode so you'd have to take that into account, from experience things get out of sync pretty quickly so it's not that useful.

Control Surfaces work at a level separately to MIDI Messages, you'll of course know that you can't MIDI Map the buttons of the Push when not in User Mode, as such there's nothing to intercept at that level so you have to use MaxforLive. There's a series of videos on Create Digital Music that maybe useful regarding the Push 3 if this is a path you're looking to go down.

Cheers
D

[xposed.inneria]

Thanks a lot! I'll have a look.

Would you suggest using a different control surface script for the apc mini to at least be able to move 8 scenes at a time? Wasn't there something from isotonic along these lines?

Cheers
Slava

[S4racen]

I had the APC MINI, it fell apart....

Don't think there's anything else in that form factor with a button matrix that I'd recommend that's still in production as a single unit.

My set up was generally a Push or a LaunchPad & LaunchControl XL, can't remember if that allowed for banks of 8 to be shifted across natively.

Cheers
D