Comments on: Sexy DIY Footswitch for Music, Using the Brain of a USB QWERTY Keyboard

By: skynoise » Ableton Live 8 Review

skynoise » Ableton Live 8 Review — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:00:33 +0000

[...] I like the simple addition of Looper, a new audio effect modelled on people you’ve seen in a pub pressing their foot on a pedal, while they’ve layered beatboxing, violins, weird noises, singing and the like into a buzzing swarm of sound ( and if you’re needing a foot pedal for this, try a $10 DIY one). [...]

By: clarity

clarity — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:41:07 +0000

@ Andrew Turley – Live also supports assigning commands to your computer’s keyboard. Handy if you’ve maxed out all available MIDI channels for various USB MIDI controllers.

It’s also handy to assign certain functions to the computer keyboard, e.g. numbers 1-8 for muting channels 1-8, and shift+1-8 for soloing channels 1-8.

By: Basement Hum

Basement Hum — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:38:25 +0000

“Give me a couple of days and Iâ€™ll create a more coherent build guide as a PDF if anyone is interested.”

Hi Alex, I’m certainly interested in a more comprehensive guide. Thanks for your work so far.

By: Alex McGregor

Alex McGregor — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:38:33 +0000

Give me a couple of days and I’ll create a more coherent build guide as a PDF if anyone is interested. I glossed over a couple of bits in the thread on the Ableton Forum which I could expand on.

AlexMC

By: Andrew Turley

Andrew Turley — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:40:40 +0000

That’s a good looking case. Just for comparison, Cycling ‘74 had a similar story a while back:
http://www.cycling74.com/story/2007/10/16/1252/3782

Chelfyn and gbsr, I’m not a Live user so this may be a dumb question, but why do you map MIDI to keystrokes? Doesn’t Live support MIDI mapping? I’ve encountered enough Live users who are hell bent on getting as many keyboard inputs as possible, so I assume I’m missing something.

By: Chelfyn Baxter

Chelfyn Baxter — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:00:57 +0000

I wrote a tutorial to do the kid beyond thing from a MIDI source using BOMES midi controller, with very smooth interface and resampling. This would be a perfect controller for the job. details here:

http://www.bome.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1583

By: gbsr

gbsr — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:31:26 +0000

@Mudo, youre missing the point. you can send any keystroke whatsoever to anyhting that you can map in live, not only use it as a looping station. this is just his personal preference. ill build one and use as a transport controller and a clip controller using this info. looper cant control global start/stop/record and/or arm tracks, can it? didnt think so. :p

this can.

By: Mudo

Mudo — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:47:45 +0000

…
For Live 8 it is cool but not necessary…

with 2 pedals you could go loopy.

…

By: gbsr

gbsr — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:56:15 +0000

im gonna build one. been doing some simpler ghetto versions for a while. also got myself an ugly piece of shit uc16 knobbox which im gonna put in the enclosure and fit 8 faders on it, route it through bomes miditranslator to a custom user remote script and use as a diy daw controller. never figured out the keyboard matrix thing though, glad this was posted. no wait.. very glad even. :D

By: j250xor

j250xor — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:50:32 +0000

I made a smaller one of these a while ago for switching software guitar effects on and off. I used a USB numpad and soldered 4 switches onto the controller board. I also included a true bypass switcher in the box so I could connect the controller in line with all my hardware effects boxes and turn the computer routing on and off. I stole the power for the indicator LED from the USB numpad power.