Create Digital Music » multitrack

Get loopy with the DIY $10 Ableton Footcontroller (no soldering required)

Michael Una — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:38:38 +0000

By now you’ve all probably seen that excellent video of Kid Beyond illustrating his usage of Ableton Live. Pretty cool, right? If one had such a system, you could loop yourself playing guitar, beatboxing, etc., all perfectly in sync with programmed drum/MIDI tracks and other performers.

Here’s how to set up your own system in a similar hands-free operation style, for about US$10, without having to solder anything. It’ll take you about an hour once you gather the parts required, or less. No joke.

You will need:

A QWERTY keyboard, preferably with a USB connector. Otherwise, you’ll have to buy an adapter to fit your laptop, which costs extra. You can get one for $7.50 at AllElectronics.com, but you can find them even cheaper at your local thrift store’s “technology pile.” I got mine for $2.

A flathead screwdriver.
Ableton Live. Ed.: Live is a perfect choice here, but you may find this useful with other music apps, as well — or even in a VJ set. -PK

A free keyboard-mapping utility called Autohotkey (if you’re running Windows). If you’re running Mac, the program to use is calledIKey.

That’s it. Here’s how to make it go:

Above: Steps 1-2. Simple enough.

1. You’re going to remove a significant number of the QWERTY keyboard’s keys, leaving only those spaced far enough apart to operate with your foot. Identify which keys you want to keep with a magic marker BEFORE you go hog-wild with the screwdriver, otherwise you’ll lose track of which is which. I ended up with 12 remaining keys, in two rows. Your feet may be smaller or bigger, so experiment with it.

2. Glue some squares of larger, stiff material to the keys to give your foot a bigger target. I used some plastic lenses (20 cents apiece at American Science & Surplus) and hot glue. Epoxy or a plastic welding cement might work better in the long run.

3. Plug the keyboard into your computer and boot up Ableton Live.

4. Download and install either Autohotkey (WIN users) or IKey (Mac).

5. Here’s the almost-tricky part: In Ableton Live, you need to create a new project with six audio tracks. Arm recording on all tracks. Turn off monitoring for all tracks except one.

6. Use the keymappping function (click the “KEY” button in the upper right hand corner of Live’s screen) to assign a keystroke to each track’s “record/play” button. It doesn’t matter which keystrokes you assign, because we’re going to be remapping them anyways. For this example, the keys I used were !,@,d,h,k, l.

7. Create a new script with Autohotkey and enter something similar to what’s pictured below. The 12 keys left on your QWERTY should be put at the start of each line. The idea is that as each key is depressed, Autohotkey remaps those into a sequence of keystrokes.

I chose to have my top row of buttons select the track, delete whatever’s there, and begin recording. The bottom row of buttons hits “play” on the corresponding track, which stops recording and begins looping on the corresponding track. You can re-trigger loops this way also.

Here’s an image of my keymaps in Live and the AutoHotkey script I made. Pretty simple, all things considered. I would be happy to share my blank Ableton set and accompanying AutoHotkey script to any windows users who need a little help getting started.

If you’re running Mac, here’s an idea of what you’ll have to do using IKey. It’s very similar but slightly different. For instance, we permanently glued the shift key down, to skirt some of IKey’s trigger-key rules.

8. Save the script, activate it (you’ll see the AutoHotKey icon appear in your taskbar), and you’re good to go. It’s that easy.

The end result? Not too shabby:

You can hear a track recorded by myself and bandmate Cameron Moore using two MIDI-linked Ableton Live setups here.
Note: Cameron runs Mac and I run Windows, and we had no issues.

Check the forums for a more in-depth discussion, and feel free to ask questions. Also, if you decide to undertake this project, please post your results!

energyXT2: Low-Cost Plug-in, Sequencer, DAW, for Windows and Now Linux

Peter Kirn — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 02:17:31 +0000

The $75 app energyXT2 starts out sounding similar to other music apps — but after a long list of twists, seems anything but. It’s a DAW. It’s a sequencer. It’s an audio multitracker. (Okay, not so interesting so far …) It’s a synth. It’s a sampler. It’s a drum machine. It’s a looper. It runs as a host. It runs in a plug-in. Now it runs on Linux — making it perhaps the first significant music creation app to do a commercial, out-of-box release for the penguin. It’s got a modular engine underneath.

And now there’s a big release coming soon. Before we get a chance to spend some time on it, here’s a preview of why it’s on the radar screen.

Release date: June 15. (See the discussion thread on KVR.)

energyXT2 is in beta now, the first big release in three years. In features and interface design, it appears to borrow more than a little from Ableton Live — but, then again, since energyXT2 runs as a plug-in, I’m sure someone is working out some wild performance setup where they use both simultaneously. It also takes some design cues, as near as I can tell, from Cakewalk. But the combination of features here in unique, it’s affordable enough to be an impulse buy, and we’ve heard from several users that you’re very excited about it.

Is there room for yet another music production tool? EnergyXT already has a loyal following, and with music creation as personal and dynamic a process as it is, I think the answer can always be yes.

New in energyXT2:

Completely re-worked interface and structure

Higher-quality time- and pitch-shifting algorithms

Support for MIDI, audio, and dedicated “drum” loops, including a specialized “drum-machine track”

Clip-based automation

New mixer, phase modulation synthesizer, and multi-FX processor built in

Controller maps

Out-of-box Linux support — yep, that’s right, from a commercial application.

Linux support from a commercial music app should raise a few eyebrows. I’ve talked to a number of music developers who have said, basically, sure, they love Linux, can’t stand Windows, but they don’t see support any time soon. There are two answers: one, it’s two expensive to support, and two, Linux users don’t pay for software. If energyXT2 gets any traction on Linux — as a much smaller developer, no less — it’ll at the very least blow holes in those two excuses. (It may not convince anyone to make the jump, mind you — but as an experiment, it should be telling. And if you’re a happy energyXT2 Linux user, you may not care.)

Even as a secondary piece of software, this has interest. I’m especially intrigued by the “zero load time” claim. I could see syncing into an older PC — even with Linux replacing XP — to turn an unused laptop into a drum machine — or using this in conjunction with another app. And with increased interest in streamlined workflows, for many others this could be a primary solution. The real competition for people wanting a deep sequencer, though, may be trackers like Renoise.

An introductory price drops the total sticker to US$49. The interesting question to me isn’t will Linux users spend the small amount of cash, but whether the Linux audio community will embrace a closed-source project.

Linux or Windows, we’ll have to do a full review once the full version comes out.

REAPER App from Winamp Creator Now Less Fugly, Coming to Mac

Peter Kirn — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:04:47 +0000

Cockos’ REAPER, the lightweight audio and MIDI multitrack editor from the creator of Winamp, is coming to (Intel/PPC) Mac, too. There’s a full discussion of the update on the REAPER forum. It’s an “alpha” build, but comes as a surprise: REAPER may have a lot more appeal as the “standard” lightweight host as a cross-platform app. Finished version is due “Q4″ of this year.

REAPER has been getting endless updates of other kinds, as well, including this new “Stealth” color scheme which looks suspiciously like SONAR to me. (Sorry to be harsh, but it was fugly before. If it’s SONAR-y now, that’s a huge improvement.) If you want to try it, it’s downloadable as “uncrippled unexpiring shareware.” Remember when most shareware worked that way? That’s a retro trend I could get behind.

REAPER

Rather than praise or criticize REAPER, what I’d really like to know is, are any readers using it? What do you think so far?