Ableton Live may have “Live” in the name, but just as with any musical equipment, getting it ready for a show often involves elaborate configuration to make reliable control a reality. Over its decade-long life, Live has been tweaked, adjusted, and cajoled into road-ready digital rigs. With Max for Live a kind of software developer kit for Live users, that has led some users to share their configurations. I’ve been watching Darren Cowley iterate his own Isotonik setup, a combination of hardware control, software template, and custom Max for Live devices, for some time now. That rig has finally matured to the point that he’s ready to share. Get ready for some hard-core Ableton geekery – though it might just be your next live Live setup.

Isotonik couples on-screen virtual devices with the physical controls of the APC40, but going beyond the default configuration from Akai and Ableton. Like a dashboard for your Live set, the software/hardware combo consolidates controls for cueing up and activating tracks, launching and looping scenes, slicing up beats, and adding audio effects. (Glitch, anyone?) Sure, you could do these things without Isotonik, but by bringing together rapid assignment of effects and navigation between tracks, the software becomes a kind of cheat – in a good way.

In fact, it’s compelling enough as a story that I think it’s worth reading even if you don’t use Live, the APC, or Max for Live.

A new release was just updated today with fewer objects and greater performance. And in addition to the template, the package includes some really fantastic effects, themselves worth the price of entry.

The price is a scant GBP £14.99, with an extraordinary amount of software included. Full details, documentation, and download link at Darren’s site:
http://thestudiosessions.co.uk/

For my own part, I’ve found myself getting a bit existential when thinking about this problem. Which makes more sense, musically: adding a layer atop something like Live to gain rapid access to features, or simply building from scratch (in environments like Max, Pd, SuperCollider, and the lot), in order to put together only those building blocks you need? The former is more complex and the latter potentially more reliable, though I always find that finding simpler solutions often involves more work, not less (especially if the words “from scratch” come into play). There’s no right answer to these questions, though; only an answer for you. So I think it’s well worth having a look at how Darren has approached this. You might just find the result is exactly what you need, and even if not, it provides some serious insight into the workflow of making Ableton Live, Max for Live, and the APC40 come together for real use.

Isontonik Template – Demonstration from Darren E Cowley on Vimeo.

I asked Darren to share his thoughts about the background of the project, how he put it together, and how he uses the result.

I managed to persuade [retailer] DV247 to let me buy their shop demo APC40 and by the end of the second I was frustrated with what I couldn’t do…. Having a DJ background I missed being able to tweak the bass’s across all the tracks at the same time but hardmapping these controls lost me the ability to use what the APC was designed for with it’s blue hand control of racks….

Pretty quickly I found myself using the excellent [MIDI software utility] bome’s midi translator to remap controls to solve this problem, one problem solved I found I enjoyed the challenge more than playing the music and so I set about creating a second mode of control based more on my playing style with CDJ’s. At the same time the nativeKONTROL series came out so I decided to share my template with anyone who already had a copy of Bomes….

With the announcement of Max4Live I started to get interested and when the invite to the beta landed on email I was made up, sadly after a month of testing I still didn’t have a stable version and so in release day I shelled out like many others for what appeared an unproven piece of software that had the promise of greatness…

I quickly set about creating a device that would give me control over the macros in the first rack giving back that DJ mixer style control, one of the first devices to be uploaded onto max4live.com I got some excellent feedback and made some new contacts who prompted me to keep developing. Many brick walls were hit and thanks to people like Mike Chenetz of max4live.info and Andrew Pask of Cycling I managed to get my head around some of the undocumented control_surfaces functions….

A two week break on a beach in Thailand with a pad and an ipod gave me the opportunity to sketch out how I saw the controls would work, deciding on the scene launch buttons as my scene choosers….

Pretty soon I had worked out how to make five different scenes of controls for the clip stop buttons, 8 others for the Activate/Cue Solo/Rec Arm Buttons…. Reset functionality for my macros and a slave version of the master device to reduce the overall size of the device.

I wanted a simple scene that enabled the standard functionality with a slight twist, the clip stop buttons should light up if a clip was playing in a track and I should be able to launch the highlighted clip, play it again or play the clip below whilst still having the red-box control….

Next came a scene that could give me some semblance of Traktor like looping control, and then I wanted to be able to activate a 2 bar loop on a clip even if it wasn’t in focus….

Inspired by the monome performance videos I spent ages trying to work out how to mimic the effect with the 8 clip stop buttons spending ages working with the playing_position function to not find a satisfactory result, then a fantastic how to video from Mike Chenetz led me to look into the chucker object and quickly I had a running metronome that could play back a slice of the last two bars of audio much like Clist’s beatlookup, that I could change the size of the slice with a twist of the Cue Volume knob…

The original Keymasher Tim Exile had just released the Finger and a guy called GBSR on the Controllerism forum had just posted a similar effect using an impressive routing system using Abletons sends, given Max4live control over the Live API I created the ability to punch audio to a return track and then send that return track to another chaining effects….

When playing I find I normally use the vanilla/standard scene but then jump into a different scene mid track to add some variation to what I’m playing, with the addition of the ability to control all 8 sends on each track with the track control, a smart knob per track that can handle 8 different effects and finally a Looper controlled from the APC40′s transport buttons

I’m probably at the point of Ableton not being able to cope much more, with each update from Ableton and Cycling 74 the whole setup has become more and more stable and I predict even bigger things when they’ve completed their “Quality” drive….

Thanks, Darren.

Trying this tool out? Got your own rig for Max for Live – or other software – that you’d like to share? I’d love to hear your feedback. You know where to find us.

Even before Max for Live was available, hackers had found a way of interacting with “secret” APIs inside Live for custom control, allowing them to customize Live’s behavior and make it work more seamlessly with hardware. That included providing something Ableton themselves had not: real, native control of Live via OSC, for more control than MIDI alone can provide. I was assured such hacks would continue to work, and sure enough, they have. Here’s how to get started.

You may wonder, of course, why even bother now that Max for Live is available? Max for Live is a powerful environment for creating instruments, effects, sequencers, and other devices within Ableton Live, and via its access to the Live API, it can even be a tool for customizing how Live works. But it adds an additional layer of abstraction, it is somewhat limited in how much it can manipulate interaction with hardware, and anyone wanting to use your creations will need to own Max for Live and not just Ableton Live. And not only that, but some people will simply prefer scripting in a language like Python to working with visual patching. (There’s still reason to consider M4L, too; see the full link to its “API” for Live, below. But we do have multiple options)

So, with that out of the way, here are the current solutions:

Make your own MIDI remote scripts.

Hanz Petrov has written an intensive introduction to creating your own MIDI remote scripts in Python, using the new Framework classes:

Introduction to the Framework Classes
http://remotescripts.blogspot.com/

Use OSC, via the Live OSC API Hack (or MIDI)

Ableton doesn’t have native support for OSC — unfortunate, given that’s now a feature of major visual applications (Resolume, VDMX, GrandVJ, Modul8, and others). But while we keep bugging Ableton for OSC to be on equal footing with MIDI, you can make use of a special Python hack that provides an OSC API to Live.

If the above scripting seems intimidating – and I can certainly see why it might be – the LiveOSC API is refreshingly simple. Because you can simply send OSC messages directly, controlling Live with tools like iPhone apps or Processing sketches or even hardware could become comparatively simple – and yes, simpler than working in Max for Live. If you only have MIDI, there’s even a MIDI API, too. Here’s where to start:

Complete documentation of the LiveAPI project [assembla]

http://monome.q3f.org/wiki/LiveOSC

Why it’s nice: you can send something as simple as /live/play/clip (track, clip) and trigger a clip. That’s even more direct than the usual MIDI interface.

Most importantly, this now works with Live 8.1. See the video below for an example of this in action:

mlrV4live tutorial (&casio madness) from StevieRaySean on Vimeo.

Check out his Arduinome build documentation, too. (Arduinome is an authorized clone of the monome using readily-available parts.)

The Max for Live way: Live Object Model

Complete LOM documentation at Cycling ’74

And yes, it makes my head spin a little, too. (Or perhaps the word is “oscillate.”)

Max4Live.info (Michael Chenetz) has done a great job of making this a bit more manageable. In the video below, he explains how to use the interaction between Max for Live and Live; there’s also a tutorial on sending messages to a control surface like the Launchpad. But note that some of this can actually more complex, and more hardware-specific (APC/Launchpad-only) than the hacks above. It’s a case in which the hacked version actually works a little better than (cough) the official version.

Max For Live Paths, Objects, and Observers from Michael Chenetz on Vimeo.

My own challenge for myself: just make the Launchpad intelligently control device parameters, something it currently doesn’t do. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Thoughts on the merits of these different approaches? Projects you’ve made using one or another? We’d love to see them.

Ableton Live-specific controllers just got another addition. You probably could have guessed this would come out, following the APC40 and Novation’s grid-only Launchpad last year, but the Akai APC20 is the new, smaller sibling to Akai’s APC40. The APC20 does basically everything the APC40 does on the latter’s left-hand side — it’s a grid of buttons, a set of mixers for your tracks, buttons for activating tracks (and solo/cue/record), and shortcuts for moving around and triggering the transport. Using the buttons, you can trigger clips or notes, with additional buttons for scenes and stopping clips around the outside of the 8×5 array.

The “Note Mode” is new, officially, but I believe hackers may have gotten the APC40 to do that. Hopefully it’ll be rolled out to the APC40 in an update.

What the APC20 doesn’t do is everything on the right-hand side of the APC40: you lose out on additional shortcuts, the crossfader, and most importantly, the controls for pan, sends, and Device Rack macros, though the controls seem to suggest you get some control back via control pages, as on Novation’s Launchpad. That makes the APC20 less appealing as a standalone to me. It gives you mixer faders missing from the Launchpad (which relies on buttons for the job), but it loses the ability to control devices and effects. And unlike the Launchpad, it seems the APC20 still requires external power rather than bus power.

Instead, it seems that Akai hopes you’ll buy the APC20 as a companion to your APC40, for, uh, 60 worth of APC. (I think we have a new unit of measure.) With what Akai calls “Combination mode,” you can add the 40 and 20 together for control of 80 buttons and 16 tracks. In Akai’s press release, it also seems that Akai thinks customers might add an APC20 to an existing rig with other gear — though that puts it in competition with the Novation Launchpad for the same job.

You can also buy six APC20s and use those together, and if you buy that many APCs, I recommend two things: one, seek professional help, and two, definitely send us photos.

This does still trigger the concerns I’ve been trying to raise since I reviewed the APC40 last year. Why should something as simple as chaining multiple devices together for control be a feature specific to a certain product? Haven’t we been chaining devices together as a standard feature all the way back to the invention of MIDI, now over a quarter century ago? (For the record, you can combine multiple control surfaces in Ableton Live. But the moment one set of controllers does that and another doesn’t, based on support in the software itself, that ceases to be a standard feature of Ableton.)

That said, for APC fans looking for some more control, the APC20 should appeal. But if I had to recommend a first APC, I’d still strongly recommend the APC40. Having a controller with built-in controls for everything Live does – clip triggers, mixing, cross-fading, effects, and device control, with all the shortcuts – really is a nice luxury.

http://www.akaipro.com/apc20

Pricing: Not yet announced Estimated US$199 street

Availability: Second quarter 2010

Now, it’ll be interesting to see if this is the last Ableton hardware controller news from this year’s NAMM or not; time will tell.

Software of the year: Propellerhead Record

For all the major releases and upgrades and gear, as well as the dominance of a certain Berlin-based developer, if you had to pick one application of 2009, it’d be Record. Record tops the list not because everyone dropped everything to go use it, but quite the contrary. Record bucked industry trends, and provided a love-it-or-hate-it view of what audio software could be. In other words, it was quite reminiscent of Reason.

Centered on a mixer, emphasizing “recording” (perish the thought), and omitting expected features like MIDI out and plug-in support, Record resists modern-day conventional wisdom. That was divisive enough, even before the debates began over Record’s new hardware key. In the long run, it may be the simple fact that Record brings audio signal to Reason that gives it staying power. But in 2009, Record was the application about which everyone had an opinion.

See our original preview, May, plus details on the "Ignition Key" authorization system

Developer of the year: Ableton

What a year it’s been for Ableton. The company kicked off the year with “Share,” “Extend,” and “Touch,” as well as the release of Live 8. It sounded simple. But Ableton’s tech dominated CDM headlines in ‘09 with the variety of user tips and tricks, rants and raves. How’d they do?

New gear: Hardware was in the spotlight – and ranked highest in CDM clicks – even above the software. Many users embraced Akai’s APC40, the first commercial hardware to really balance a variety of Live’s features, as well as Novation’s affordable, simple Launchpad grid controller. But even as Ableton emphasized the ability of this hardware to work out of the box, hackers set about customizing their own control. We saw the Launchpad used with Renoise (complete with a mocked-up Renoise logo decal), and the Korg nanoKONTROL hacked to integrate more seamlessly with Ableton – even when KORG and Ableton themselves hadn’t worked on support. Lesson learned? Make tools for musicians, and you may find some support and development gets crowd-sourced, whether you intended it or not.

See: Hands-on with the Launchpad, nanoKONTROL Myr for Ableton Live, APC40 Hacking Superguide

Live, meet Max: Max for Live has already led to some incredible work, most notably stretta’s fantastic compositional toolkit for the monome. It earned praise (for setting a new bar for sheer power) and criticism (most notably for lacking a free runtime). Some jumped on M4L, some swore they’d stick to the traditional Max, and others swore they’d seek alternative or free solutions. In the end, Max for Live has wound up becoming bigger than, well, Max for Live. It’s begun a discussion of how live performance should work, and how software should integrate and be extended. And that’s a story that should be with us for a long time.

And a few wrinkles: The third prong of Ableton’s initiative was barely visible in ‘09; while a beta is underway, we don’t know much more about how Share will work in December than we did at NAMM in January. Live 8 has been beloved by some, even as others users expressed frustration with stability issues. CEO Gerhard Behles surprised everyone this month on the Ableton forum by conceding the company could do better and promising developers would re-focus on squashing bugs, even putting new features on hold.

As the saying goes, any press is good press. Ableton and their fired-up user base stayed front-and-center on CDM in 2009, even as twists and turns complicated the narrative. The story isn’t quite as clean and tidy as it is was at the beginning of the year, and you can read the full spectrum of comments calling this year everything from a triumph to a failure (and, hopefully, a few more reasonable thoughts in between). But without a doubt, Ableton is the developer of 2009.

Story of the year: Switching from Mac to Ubuntu

After years of tired debates about the merits of operating systems, the potential of the philosophies of open source versus proprietary, and whether Linux is ready for the desktop, in 2009 we saw a new spin: what if you switched to Linux to make your life easier?

That was the question Kim Cascone asked with his switch to Linux. And he wasn’t alone. One of the most-asked questions this year was how to make Linux work for music, particularly as users sought out more-reliable, more-affordable solutions for audio. (Yes, I know – “Linux” isn’t necessarily more reliable out of the box, as “Linux” could mean any number of setups, which I suspect is part of why the question was asked so much.) The popularity of Kim’s story, along with the turnkey Indamixx laptop or the Linux Laptop Orchestra we saw last week, suggest a challenge to CDM as much as a story. It’s the story we’ll likely see more of in 2010.

Linux Music Workflow: Switching from Mac OS X to Ubuntu with Kim Cascone

Biggest opportunity: Rock Band Network

Want a glimpse into the future of the music business? Here’s one way it could look. Rock Band Network provides an extraordinary level of control and customization, allowing your music to work as well with the hit game as music adapted by the developers themselves. As a revenue stream, as a promotional opportunity, and as a new way to play with your music, it looks fantastic. And don’t miss the fact that what made it possible was close collaboration with the DAW Reaper – a big coup for that package. Now, if we could just have the Amplitude Network, too, for electronic artists.

See our inside look at RBN with the folks at Harmonix

Surprise vintage tech: The return of CV

MIDI? What’s that? The biggest surprise revelation in January was that MOTU was set to release a brilliant plug-in called Volta, which elegantly bridged the gap between computers and, through control voltage, analog synthesis. Matthew Davidson (who wowed us with OSC and digital tech in 2009, too, in his monome work) walked us through his creation:

Analog, Meet Digital: MOTU Volta Connects the Mac to CV Synths, Effects Graphically

We also saw other CV solutions, DIY and commercial, Control Voltage on Moog’s Theremin, and in perhaps the hardware product of the year, Moog Music’s exquisite double-band MuRF resonant filter. And yes, the Moog piece even has MIDI for pattern changes and sync, while still making use of CV.

Most annoying story of the year: Anything to do with T-Pain

Yes, the iPhone is well awesome mobile technology. Yes, 2009 was the year in which the music world went from talking exclusively about “albums” to talking about “apps,” too. Yes, it’s amazing how Smule has popularized music technology and alternative interfaces and all that good stuff. Unfortunately, it was tough to focus on some of the wonderful things going on when you had to deal with the sudden and inexplicable success of T-Pain, capitalizing on everyone’s least-favorite effect – AutoTune. Not getting enough overuse of pitch correction on FOX’s hit show, Glee, ruining talented voices of kids and Broadway stars? Now put it on your iPhone, and suck the joy out of the (otherwise fantastic) “I’m on a Boat” video. We all love you, Smule, but, I’m on a phone? I’m in a time machine, trying to escape to some year where AutoTune has finally died.

To cheer up, let’s just remind ourselves why Smule’s chief mind Ge Wang is still cool, while I try to work out how to get off T-Pain’s press mailing list:

Interview: Smule’s Ge Wang on iPhone Apps, Ocarinas, and Democratizing Music Tech

And the Rest

Most important OS release:

Windows 7, for finally making us feel good about leaving XP – and, with the help of tools like Cakewalk’s SONAR and its BitBridge 32-bit plug-in support, giving us a good reason to go 64-bit, too.

Most popular how-to’s:

Instructable: How to Build a Music Studio in an Apartment

Abusing and misusing groove extraction in Live 8

Best reason to attend NAMM 2010:

The hopes of catching Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 synth, in the flesh

Most popular feature, and a reminder of what matters more than the gear:

Take it to the Stage: Reflections on Live Laptop Music from Artists

This analysis piece from a variety of top artists started a discussion about what playing laptops is all about. There was certainly no consensus, but it was – rightfully – the most popular feature story of the year, and something we should cover as often as possible. It’s the reason we’re all here. (Thanks to Primus Luta for putting this together.)

More Top 2009 Lists

Beatportal

Francis Preve takes on the top ten releases of the year for Beatportal, and I can’t help but agree. Having made my list of what caused the most controversy, these are the tools that – big splash or not – deserve some technological recognition.

MetaSynth remains a fascinating and unique tool for sound design, finally in a more modern release, and one I hope to work with more soon.

Logic 9 was a huge DAW release, though to that list I’d add SONAR 8.5 – two radically different tools, each markedly more mature this year.

FXpansion DCAM Synth Squad looks like the most brilliant soft synth of ‘09, and I’m long overdue in spending some quality time with it.

Dave Smith’s Tetr4 synth might make the top of my list if it didn’t have to compete with other fine synths from … Dave Smith.

Then there’s Melodyne, which resulted in some unique and creative results this year.

A must-read: 2009 Studio Technology Top 10

MusicRadar

MusicRadar, the online site that accompanies Computer Music and Future Music (among others), reviews the year month by month. But the list you want is:

In pictures: the best hi-tech gear of 2009

Yours’

Of course, in the end, what all these stories have been about is the full spectrum of ideas from our readers. So have at it. And Happy New Year.

In the Pocket (Rhodes and Moog Light Paint) from Ethan Goldhammer on Vimeo.

Fantastic, hip, soulful keys couple with brilliant stop-motion editing, as a Moog and Rhodes keyboard are splashed with light painting, in this new music video from Ethan Goldhammer. (See his blog for more.) It’s the perfect example of how a much-seen technique can retain its novelty when used creatively, especially as the sound itself seems to dance in light-up oscilloscope patterns.

Background:

Original music by Ethan Goldhammer and S. Burke.
Time Lapse footage shot in August 2008 on Block Island, RI.
Stop motion and light paint September 2008 in Cambridge, MA.

The lesson here: gear pr0n and special effects work perfectly when they visualize the way we feel about our musical objects and sounds.

Okay, so how did he do it? Ethan responds:

Ableton all the way. Recorded as loops with an [Akai] apc, then arranged later. The secret is also, making the animations, rendering them in [Final Cut Pro] but then WARPING them in ableton to the proper timing and bouncing them back to FCP.

Nicely done. Of course, this is why some audiovisualists have turned to Sony Vegas for Windows – formerly developed by Sonic Foundry, Vegas is actually half audio, half visual software. On the other hand, Live is a comfortable and flexible tool that does many things Vegas can’t.

Ethan also has a beautiful rendering of “Air on a G String,” the second cut from the legendary Switched on Bach. Wendy Carlos, if you’re out there, please don’t stop Ethan; I’d love to see more collaboration instead.

Air on a G String (Oscilliscoped) from Ethan Goldhammer on Vimeo.

Ready for more dynamic control of Ableton Live, on the cheap? My how-to on MIDI Remote Scripting in Ableton Live was just last week, but it has already inspired new scripts for hardware, this time on the Novation Nocturn. (My examples for the tutorial were the Korg nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL.) The Nocturn is also very easy to slip into a backpack or carry-on, and very affordable at US$100-130 street. It just happens to become more valuable with a little user hacking.

Why the Novation Nocturn? After all, Novation touts their own Automap technology for just this purpose. But Novation assumed you only want to use the Nocturn Automap with your plug-ins and not to control Live. Here’s the non-dynamic hack from Novation:

How to control Ableton Live with the Nocturn?

Musician NCKN (“Nicken”) of Aachen, Germany has a better solution. He uses MIDI Remote Scripting to create a downloadable file that will map the Nocturn’s eight knobs to your device racks automatically. If you did pony up for Automap PRO, it’s useful, too, as it allows mapping buttons to Live keystrokes. (Bome MIDI Translator would be another option.)

Complete instructions and a free download at NCKN’s site. Be sure to check out his music, too; there’s some wonderful stuff.

DIY: Automap in Ableton Live with Novation Nocturn

Beautiful ambient-ish tracks with field recordings and acoustic noises blended elegantly into an electronic production:

Back to the controller that has an Ableton logo tattooed on it, we’ve got still more APC40 hacking going on, too. Darren Cowley sends along his Live rig and a video:

APC40 Customization from Darren E Cowley on Vimeo.

The “short” film clocks in at nearly eighteen minutes, but here’s the basic ingredients:

Korg padKONTROL + the free Farmpad customization tool for Mac + Akai APC40 + the mighty, powerful Bome MIDI Translator for more control over events + the now-discontinued Lucifer VST (which I believe has now been replaced with the audio-recording-manipulating Live Sync Recorder.)

There are some really tasty hacks here. Scene launch buttons glitch the sound or impact launch quantization. Controls provide quick access to recording and playing audio loops. Effects are on summed tracks for DJ-style effects manipulation. There are clever tricks for using lights for additional feedback. It’s all proof that no two people really approach Live or even this fairly clearly-mapped hardware in the same way.

Side note: I received a comment from a gentleman who is color blind and therefore can’t see the red/green light feedback on the APC40. Anyone with tips? I don’t think you want to rip out the APC’s lights, for sure. It does really prove that one size can’t possibly fit all in hardware.

CrudBox by Steven Litt at ITP from Core77 on Vimeo.

How much performance power can you pack in a briefcase? What if you could have a magic box that did whatever you wanted?

That’s the question asked, in various different ways, by the artists we’re showcasing at this month’s Handmade Music NYC, Thursday evening 7/16 in Brooklyn. It’s a free event if you’re in the New York area, and we’ll be bringing as much of the work to you online around the world. Full event details:

Brooklyn, July 16: Suitcase Sequencers, Handmade Loopers, APC Hacking, Shake That Egg

Facebook event/RSVP

Join the global Handmade Music group on noisepages

The projects:

Sequence everything: CRUDBOX / STEVEN LITT
The CrudBox is an original hardware step sequencer in a briefcase, which plugs into and sequences everything from cassette decks to power tools and turns them into musical patterns.

Looping hardware: LOOOP-R / RUI PEREIRA
Looop-R is a musical, visual, hardware, software instrument.

Shake the beats: EGGBEATER / TED HAYES
This wireless, egg-shaped controller lets you mash loops, control filters, and play music using live gestures.

Ableton hacking: AKAI APC40, HACKED / MICHAEL HATSIS
Live laptop fans, take note: the commercially-available Akai APC40 Ableton Live controller warped to make new musical performances possible.

Handmade Music is FREE and, as always, made possible by our hosts at Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward creative space, plus our friends at XLR8R Magazine, MAKE Magazine, and DIY marketplace Etsy.com.

Handmade Music’s Brooklyn home:
http://www.3rdward.com/handmade-music/

Handmade Music in NYC and (soon) around the world, @ CDM’s Noisepages:
http://handmademusic.noisepages.com

Out of the box, Akai’s APC40 has some lovely features for plug-and-play control of Ableton Live, with clip triggering, track control, device control, and dedicated buttons for command shortcuts. It also sends and receives standard MIDI messages for every last button and encoder. But what if you still want more? What if you need more controls to do multiple duties, or get bored with simple clip triggering and decide you want additional interaction? Enter the hackers. Already, using MIDI, clever APC40 users are squeezing more function out of this box. And while it isn’t solved yet, there are some clues to the infamous hardware handshake – a System Exclusive string exchanged between the APC and Live that locks certain Live software features to the APC and not to other hardware you might like to use.

Manual MIDI

Before we get too fancy, for power tricks, your first stop should be Akai’s own site:
Tips and Tricks June – APC40

Live allows you to manually override the APC’s dynamic control assignments using the standard MIDI Map. Let’s say you don’t use headphones for cueing. You can select the MIDI Map, pick a control to which you want the Cue Level encoder to be assigned, and you’ll manually assign just that control – the rest of the dynamic template remains in place. Akai has some tips for scrolling through scenes, selecting scenes with one of the two footswitch jacks on the back of the unit, scrubbing and nudging clips, fine-tuning tempo control, and more.

monome Emulation for APC40 and Korg padKONTROL

Our friend Michael Hatsis of trackteamaudio has been hard at work in Max/MSP patching an emulator for the creative patches for the open-source monome hardware. (Thanks on Twitter to ruaridhTVO, too.) By translating from the (and, cough, superior) OpenSoundControl messages the monome supports natively to MIDI, the emulator supports not only the APC but Korg’s padKONTROL, as well. This opens up the use of the APC for creative microsampling and other tasks.

Video demo at top (updated late Sunday night, so if you saw this over the weekend, here’s a tighter version).

Direct download:
http://www.warperparty.com/datter/Monomulator0.9.zip

Forum discussion:
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=117307&start=0

And be sure to check out the Java- and Python-powered open-source library for the monome on which Michael’s work is based:
net.loadbang.shado

You’ll find plenty of documentation in Michael’s download, and the hope is that this is just the beginning — you Max patchers out there (and Pd, if we can port this) can keep hacking on it and try out some new ideas. One reason you might want to keep hacking on the padKONTROL is that you could find uses for velocity – unlike the monome and APC, Korg’s 4×4 drum pads are velocity sensitive.

APC40 Customization, Performance Tweaks

This is the best video I’ve seen yet with the APC40. The APC itself is strikingly limited for a MIDI device, without even basic abilities like preset switching or the ability to change default MIDI assignments. But because it’s connected to a computer, if you’ve got some MIDI programming skills and time on your hands, you don’t have to stop there. Stray411, the creator of the brilliant nativeKONTROL software for the padKONTROL, Korg nano series, and Akai MPD32 has turned his MIDI hacking superpowers to the APC.

First, he demos the manual remapping technique. But from 1:38 onward, he remaps and reroutes messages via Bome’s MIDI Translator, commercial Windows (and now Mac) software for more sophisticated mapping of MIDI messages. This allows him to create his own dynamic template for control that applies more functionality to the onboard hardware controls on the APC.

I’m not even sure you’ll want to do this – it can make for a more complex control scheme – but it’s impressive just seeing the ideas out there.

Note that this sort of thing should also be possible via any software that does MIDI input and output, including the free Pure Data (Pd) patching environment and Max for Live when it ships in the fall. (I’m not entirely sure how intercepting MIDI with Max for Live will work, though, especially with the hardware handshake to contend with… more on that in a moment.)

Korg fans (and Akai MPD owners), be sure to check out:
http://www.nativekontrol.com/
And see the nativeKONTROL videos:
nativeKONTROL YouTube Playlist

…and really, that deserves a separate post.

MIDI for Lights

Akai left out the MIDI Implementation that’s traditionally included with MIDI hardware (cough), but it does use standard MIDI messages both for outgoing control data (when you move an encoder or press a button) and incoming messages (like Live switching a light from off to amber to green).

I’m going to publish the Missing MIDI Implementation later this week here on CDM, but to get you started, Danny P on the Cycling ’74 forum has deciphered the toughest part – the messages that light up the clips:

Midi confusion with APC40

And even better, CerebralNektar (of the nativeKONTROL) project has already built a full-blown Max/MSP template for the clip grid:

OK, let’s hack the APC

The Hardware Handshake: First Clues

Ableton has worked with Akai to add a specialized MIDI implementation to Ableton Live, using a set of System Exclusive messages to prevent the hacker community from emulating certain APC features in other hardware. Specifically, this includes several abilities:

• Using bank buttons to trigger different sets of clips in a larger set, without running out of MIDI messages to do so
• Providing a red rectangle overlay to show which 8×5 (40 clip) array is selected in Live
• Sending MIDI messages for clip status back to the hardware (thus lighting up the lights)

Now, granted, as implemented this functionality may be of limited to use to hardware that isn’t the APC40 – particularly because it’s hard coded for an 8×5 grid of buttons, which is a non-standard size. But having talked even to some passionate fans of the APC, I know it’s bothering a lot of people. I think there are several reasons why.

In short, it’s the first time I know of that standard MIDI messages were used not for the purpose of interoperability, but to actually prevent you from using your own hardware. The APC itself won’t work properly with Live if this string is interrupted (and you’ll see complaints on the user forum in which people are having related problems). Also, while the functionality here is hard-coded to the 8×5 array on the APC, that raises another question – why not make a generic implementation for other hardware? Why not a rectangle that shows a 4 x 4 grid for hardware like the Akai MPD series, Native Instruments’ Maschine controller, and the popular Korg padKONTROL and M-Audio Trigger Finger?

In the meantime, cracking the handshake could be useful for owners of the monome or upcoming Ohm64, even with their 8×8 grid – you can use the last three rows for shortcuts.

Michael Hatsis writes (consistent with what I saw running MIDI through MIDI-OX):

from what I can see both the APC’s 2nd string and Live’s 3rd string have 24 bytes, both with bytes 8-23 different each time
- There’s your handshake…

I have set up two max patches that parse and output the SYSEX sent by both the APC and Live. the one called handshake only outputs the unique bytes for both the APC and Live to the Max window. There are more details inside.

Have a download, folks – this gives you some of the MIDI to look at even if you don’t have an APC40:
http://warperparty.com/data/handshooken.zip

I couldn’t figure out what the algorithm was, but then, I’m not terribly good at that sort of thing. So we’ll be interested to see if anyone else can sort it out.

By the way, this is sent in the clear as MIDI messages. There’s no real reverse engineering here. It’d be like printing the secret password for your speakeasy on a billboard at a rush-hour bottleneck on the 101 highway. Nor is there any kind of theft involved. These are capabilities built into Ableton Live, which Ableton has effectively blocked from use with this System Exclusive communication.

In a matter of days since the hardware shipped, the APC40 user community has already done some incredible work. This to me makes a powerful argument for openness – and it says that the same community could do even more if hardware and software used more intelligent communication schemes like OpenSoundControl instead of being locked to the limitations of MIDI.

A Video to Close us Out

To close, here’s a reminder that part of why we expend this much energy on controllers is to make them personal instruments for ourselves. Here’s a YouTube demo that shows people can make the APC, well … shake.

I really have no words for this one, other than there’s a hilarious APC40 meme happening on the Ableton forums. Is it love? Disdain? The APC as the new “All Your Base” for the Live warping set? Does it really matter?

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=116396

It’s good to know that, even as Ableton Live use has spread, us computer music folk are really not normal.

Via Tara Busch on Twitter of AnalogSuicide.

Warp: Engage

The new Warp Mode in Live may actually be friendlier to new users; it’s existing users, accustomed to the previous way of working, who seem thrown for a loop. (Erm… excuse the pun.) I’m at a bit of a disadvantage myself in that I tend not to do a lot of warping/remixing. But Medway Studios has a set of tutorials specifically geared for people wanting some tips on how to assimilate the new working method:

Part 2:

Our friend Dennis DeSantis of Ableton offers his own take in a video shot at NYC-based music tech learning center dubSpot. This is a pretty good conceptual overview of what the whole thing is about.

Basically, what I’m hearing is that people used to previous versions of Warp Markers, while they find it confusing at first, do like the new system once they understand how it works.

Controllerism

Mark Mosher has been doing fantastic tutorials on his site Modulate This. For one thing, he’s got tips for getting Wacom tablets to work in Live 8 and finally getting text entry support, which means Kore works properly in Live at long last (among others).

Best of all, he has a tutorial that demonstrates how he’s putting together all his controllers – the Notation ReMOTE SL with Automap and the Akai APC40 – and making them function more effectively using some subtle controller changes in Live 8.

What’s interesting to me is that this isn’t so much about unique, proprietary stuff added to the APC integration, but basic feature improvements in Live itself, which could help you be more effective with other controllers, as well. That’s the kind of functionality I like to see, because it helps everyone.

All of this is great, but we are getting a little heavy on the Ableton-only video tutorials. It’s time to pick up the screencasting tools and demonstrate other tools, too. I’ve got some time blocked out this summer for the task. Requests?