Touchscreens? Good, old-fashioned faders, knobs, and pads? Why not just use what suits the job – especially when you can choose both on the cheap?

Nay-Seven shares some of his latest work with Usine, the brilliant, modular and touch-centric tool for Windows. It’s a futuristic rig that’s also down-to-earth. Touchscreen monitors can be had for around US$300 street, and the Akai LPD8 and Korg nanoKONTROL controllers each figure under a hundred bucks. Usine, the software, is a bargain for its depth at EUR120, and free and educational versions are available.

Cost aside, though, this also puts sound making directly under your fingertips. Even aside from live performance, that means making sound kinetic — essential in the studio, too.

I asked Nay-Seven to comment on how he’d thought through this particular set of controllers – coming just as we cover the work done on grid-based sample control with mlrv2 and fader-based control in Max for Live:

Yeah, was funny to see your article at the same time I was working on this video..

My actual reflection is about the best place of a touchscreen in a set. And I join you in the idea that software has added a layer to the hardware.

Here, I use the LPD8 and the nanoKONTROL as an instrument, because we all prefer to use real pads and push-buttons to play, but it’s so fantastic to customize those tools to our own needs. And it’s more and more easy and quick. I’m using here the next version of Usine (it will be public soon), which adds polyphony in sub-patches. You create a sampler with the switch, add the buttons you need, change the polyphony of this patch to 5 and it’s done — you have a 5-voice polyphonic sampler !

I suppose the future will be a balance of all this, some customizable tools for users, more and more easy-to-use, real pads, keys, and faders so we can feel our musical expression, and a touchscreen to provide new tools like graphics and physical models.

Heaven, in fact.

More from the video description:

Here’s a work where I use the sequencer of Usine not to sequence audio or midi but patches: patches appear only when I need them, an easy way to have only the controls you need on the screen. I also associate here works with faders and pads via personal patches for [Akai's] LPD8 and [Korg's] nanoKONTROL and the use of a touchscreen . Made with Usine ( sensomusic.com ) thanks also to Michael Ourednik for his great vst Argotlunar

Note: Argotluner is free and open source (GPL) and has both a Windows and Linux (32-bit + 64-bit) build. Someone could build it for Mac, too.

nay-seven also uploads some patch images, so I’ve included those here. The granular patch, top, controls Argotluner. LPD8 and nanoKONTROL patches, bottom, connect to hardware (see callouts on the Korg image).

All images courtesy Nay-Seven – be sure to check out his excellent Flickr account.

Bonus: here’s a nice video demonstrating the touch side of things, posted in September.

dromama from Altitude Sickness on Vimeo.

Wherever you are in the world, here’s some geeky inspiration to kick off this summer weekend. And if you’re in the Los Angeles area, you should absolutely, positively be on Venice Boulevard tonight at 8pm at hacker venue CRASH Space for Handmade Music, gone LA.

In the lineup: circuit bent toys, robotic guitars, MakerBots, monomes, and microcontroller synths, with Altitude Sickness, Ian Hattwick, The Sweaty Caps, Theron Trowbridge, and Vince Wong.

It’s free at 8 pm, but if you can donate the recommended $10, you can help CRASH Space become a not-for-profit.

Full details at handmademusic.noisepages

Here’s a look at what these crazy California kids are up to. At top, Altitude Sickness is known for his Tupperware-housed creations. Check the Vimeo page for that video to grab MIDI remote scripts for Ableton Live plus Max patches for nanoKONTROL, monome, and more. Inspired by a previous post here on CDM, he assembled a bunch of custom controls for live performance and then uploaded the results for anyone to enjoy. But Altitude Sickness isn’t the only guest star tonight…

The Makerbot, the homebrewed, open source, 3D fabrication / CNC product, has been making music for some time. Above: a stirring rendition of “Still Alive” by Jonathan Coulton. But Crash SPACE have not one, but three Makerbots, leading to the first (that I know of) Makerbot ensemble. And they’ve got some extra MIDI code running between them.

Result: extra polyphony.

Lastly, Ian Hattwick’s Guitamaton, inspired by African rhythmic modality, turns the guitar into a robotically-controlled percussion instrument. Ian describes it thusly:

Guitamaton is a computer controlled musical instrument which explores the percussive and resonant qualities of the acoustic guitar. It melds the precision of microprocessor control with the unpredictability of vibrating metal and wood, and brings an added level of embodiment to computer based music by placing the sound creation process firmly in the physical world.

Enjoy these videos and links, and anyone who is in LA and makes it, be sure to send us any documentation you capture. (I’ll be in NYC, perhaps watching your Dodgers play the Yankees.)

Updated: There’s also the Xylovan, which is exactly as awesome as it sounds. California, always innovating in the vehicle department.

Facebook event page/RSVP

Deru – Peanut Butter & Patience from Mush Records on Vimeo.

2010 is looking to be a terrific year for handmade computer music from Los Angeles. For one example of why, look to Deru, the composer and live electronic musician. His work continually grows more lush and more organic, drawing from musical strains as diverse as hip-hop and classical. And his upcoming album, “Say Goodbye to Useless,” takes all of that in. (Previously on Ghostly, Deru will release this disc on Mush.) I think it’s going to be a big year for warm, rich-sounding music.

Deru also has what looks like the CDM dream studio, neat, comfy, elegant, and packed with the best, most compact musical toys. If he doesn’t inspire me to work on my music, he may at least inspire me to clean my apartment.

Check out the exquisitely-animated video for Peanut Butter & Patience, top. Next, go into the studio to hear Deru talk about design, composition, and, perhaps inspired the California modernist institution of big glass windows, the picture-window frame as a metaphor for music making and sampling:

VISION NO. 3 :: DERU [Video by Mateo, at I am a Laser, which has loads of other goodies and free music downloads]

For more:
http://deru.la/ (too bad there is no such thing as a .ny domains…)
Deru press page, with a good summary of albums, shows, background, resume, etc.
TRASH_AUDIO interview + workspace tour

Side note: LA, you’re on notice. New York is going to bring it. Sure, our clubs don’t always have, erm, electricity, but – that only makes us stronger.

Getting handy with the $60 KORG Nano Series controllers and Ableton Live keeps getting more sophisticated. I did a "quick hack" using the text-based MIDI Remote Scripts with the nano as an example, and provided a download. Next, Raymond Weitekamp modified those scripts and added a monome for a full-blown Live performance. But now James Waterworth aka Myralfur takes the whole idea to the next level, with a fully custom set of scripts with control of additional channels, more control over tracks, and most importantly, interactive scene triggers.

I’ve built a custom python script for the nanoKontrol based on the hacked python scripts for the Axiom controller decompyled from live 7. It adds the ability to switch up to controlling channels 9-16 by changing midi channel (or changing up to scene 2 on the nanokontrol, which I had sending out on midi channel 2 instead of 1). It also has track on/off, solo/cue, panning, and also has the bottom row of buttons triggering clips on the relevant track, with forward and reverse skipping up and down scenes, and the loop button triggering the selected scene.

Best of all, you really don’t need to know – ahem – what you’re doing with scripting to make this work. Just follow the instructions below, and you’re ready to play – so you can get back to your set.

Now, James has polished off the script and fixed compatibility with Ableton Live 8, and this is ready for public testing. Give it a go and let us know what you think. I’ll work on a permanent home for all of this stuff, but for now, let’s just use comments for any issues. For some insane sounds, be sure to check out Myralfur’s music and DJ mixes on Soundcloud, too! He’s working on a rig that also incorporates a Sony PlayStation 3 controller.

nanoKONTROLMyr

A midi remote script for use with Ableton Live 8 and the Korg nanoKontrol.

Set-Up

1. Download and Unzip the file.

2. Move the nanoKONTROLMyr folder to the MidiRemoteScript folder within your Ableton Live application folder.

3. Open your Korg nano series editor and load the presets within the NanoKontrol Presets folder, over-writing your previous settings.

4. Select nanoKONTROLMyr as a control surface in the midi pane of the preferences window.

Mappings

Banks

Bank 1 controls tracks 1 – 8

Bank 2 controls tracks 9 – 16

Bank 3 maps the encoders to the selected device and provides functions for moving tracks and devices.

Bank 4 is free for mapping to whatever you like, sending on midi channel 4.

Global

The Ninth Slider is Always mapped to Master Volume, regardless of bank or midi channel.

The Ninth Encoder is Always mapped to Cue Volume, regardless of bank or midi channel.

Transport

Transport functions only work when receiving midi cc numbers on channel 16.

Different functions are called when in session view and arranger view for some of the buttons. The Loop button acts as a Shift to allow more functions to be called with the other transport buttons.

Loop = Shift

Play = Play (Scene Launch when Shift held)

Stop = Stop (Stop All Clips when Shift held)

Record = Record (Overdub On/Off when Shift held)

Session Specific

Rewind = Scene Up (Scene Up by 5 when Shift held)

Forward = Scene Down (Scene Down by 5 when Shift held)

Arranger Specific

Rewind = Cue Position Left

Forward = Cue Position Right

Encoders

The Encoders map to the Pans of the tracks. When sent on different midi channel numbers they map to different tracks. Channel 1 maps to tracks 1 – 8 and Channel 2 maps to 9 – 16 etc.

When sent on midi channel 16 they map to the selected device. This works in conjunction with the pads and buttons sending on channel 16 which provide functions for moving track and controlling devices.

Sliders

The Sliders map to the Volumes of the tracks. The tracks they are mapped to changes with the midi channel they are sent on. Channel 1 maps to tracks 1 – 8 and Channel 2 maps to 9 – 16 etc.

There is as yet no function for when they are sent on channel 16.

Top Row of Buttons

The buttons on the top row turn Tracks On/Off. The Ninth Button on the row acts as a Shift and when this is held the other buttons Record Arm the tracks. They function the same as the sliders and encoders in that they map to tracks depending on the midi channel.

However, when sent on midi channel 16 the buttons select and view tracks 1 – 8 mapping the encoders above to the first device in that track.

Bottom Row of Bottons/Pads

The buttons, or pads, on the bottom row Trigger Clips. The Ninth Button on the row acts as a Shift and when this is held the other buttons Stop the relevant clips. They function the same as the sliders, encoders and top row of buttons in that they map to tracks depending on the midi channel.

However, when sent on midi channel 16 the buttons provide various functions for controlling devices.

Button 10 = Track Left

Button 11 = Track Right

Button 12 = Device Left

Button 13 = Device Right

Button 14 = Bank 1

Button 15 = Bank 2

Button 16 = Device On/Off

Button 17 = Clip View/Device View

Download:

nanoKONTROLMyr.zip

dromama from Altitude Sickness on Vimeo.

Turning one knob and bouncing up and down may work for some, but virtuoso electronic performers want more live control out of music. Why? Because we have more fun. Raymond Weitekamp is a monome power user based at Princeton who has organized like-minded monomists. As with Edison’s performance work yesterday, Raymond is working to develop real performance technique.

He’s already got the monome doing more that button mashing, thanks to clever mapping of tilt controls. (Check out the custom housing, too.) But to provide additional timbral controls, Raymond makes use of the Korg nanoKONTROL and the humble MIDI Remote Scripts I made and documented here on CDM. The nano provides some compact, accessible controls for adjusting the active rack. Details below.

If you want to learn from this setup, Raymond is sharing everything he’s doing, so you can take this in a direction that works in your performance rig. Here’s the full setup:

Software:
-smack-a-duck: vimeo.com/4739761
-mlr_aes_mdb: princeton.edu/~rweiteka/mlr_raw_0.2.zip
-midi_bends: princeton.edu/~rweiteka/midi_bends_0.3G_RAW.zip
-midi_bends midi remote script: princeton.edu/~rweiteka/MIDI_Bends_LiveRemote.zip
-nanokontrol midi remote script: createdigitalmusic.com/files/media/files/korg/korgnano_live.zip
-ableton live

Discussion:
post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=5458

Samples:
Drums from the “droms” sample pack by ro: post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=5414
Beach Boys – Mama Says
Viktor Vaughn – Raedawn

Thanks:
ro, tehn, soundcyst, peter kirn

From that discussion thread (well worth checking the whole thing out), here’s the basics on how the bits fit together:

Since it may not be immediately obvious what’s going on, I’ll elaborate for the curious amongst you:

mlr_aes_mdb => soundflower => live
midi_bends => IAC midi bus + midi remote script => live
nanoKontrol => midi remote script => live
smack-a-duck => soundflower => live

I modified Peter Kirn’s midi remote script for the nanoKontrol, and wrote my own for midi_bends. The tilting of the monome on the left (Tuppernicus) is controlling the 8 encoders of whatever the active FX rack is. The knobs on the nanoKontrol control those same 8 encoders. This way, I can use either to control the same FX parameters. I like this a lot better than 1:1 midi mapping, because it allows multiple methods for controlling the same parameters. Tuppernicus also controls the FX toggles (4 FX x 6 channels), drum rack, and active channel/effect rack. The monome on the right (Tupperbot) is running my slightly tweaked (added rowfix) version of mlr_aes_mdb 0.4.

Ableton Live is just one choice, of course. I’m actually trying to get some similar tools together on the Linux side, where this sort of combination fits naturally with the JACK audio server. I hope to have something to share by mid-fall.

The KORG nanoSERIES has a rabid following among many Ableton Live users, and with good reason. The nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL street for about US$60, provide basic knobs + faders + transport (KONTROL) and pads and X/Y control (PAD), plus a fully-featured, cross-platform editor, but still fit in a backpack. They’re small enough to use in coach on an airplane.

Having to open Live templates, however, just to get the mappings you want is a big pain. So, instead I’ve created a basic set of MIDI Remote Scripts and Kontrol Editor templates for Mac and Windows, Live 6.x and later, and wanted to share them with you.

If you’re Windows-based and a big fan of the nano, I will say that I recommend you use something else altogether – the brilliant nativeKontrol. It’s a hell of a lot more sophisticated, gives you more control, and still requires no template:
nanoLive

Of course, there are some advantages to my (otherwise inferior) humble solution. It’s free, it works on Mac, it’s completely editable, and much of the idea was to provide an easy way of learning about MIDI Remote Scripting. (Check out the tutorial below.) Now, knowing CDM readers, I imagine someone out there can improve what I’ve done, so feel free to modify it and please send us a copy of what you’ve created!

korgnano_live.zip [Cross-platform archive; will update with a fancier release later on once I've gotten some feedback]

Ableton Live MIDI Remote Scripting How To: Custom Korg nanoSERIES Control

And, of course, read all the instructions…

Install instructions:

1. For full control, upload the templates to your Korg nanoSeries using the Kontrol Editor, via the Communication menu. (See your manual for more.)

2. Place the proper folder(s) in your User Remote Scripts folder, inside your user preferences folder (NOT the Live program folder). That’s something like (Windows Vista/7):

[Windows boot drive] > Users > [username[ > AppData > Roaming > Ableton > Live [version] > Preferences > User Remote Scripts

or (Mac OS)

[boot drive] > [Library folder] > Preferences > Ableton > Live [version] > User Remote Scripts

3. Start Ableton Live 6.x or later (restart if it was already running)

4. Select the device. Choose Preferences > MIDI/Sync, select Control Surface in the first column (nanoPAD or nanoKONTROL), and then its Input and Output ports. Finally, enable the Control Surface Input for Track and Remote. Note that you can have more than one control surface, so if you’ve got both nano’s plugged into a hub, set them both up!

Usage instructions

nanoKONTROL Scene 1 is for device control. The buttons act as triggers for pads in drum devices, and the faders control the eight Macro encoders in any selected Rack. You’re free to assign the scene 1 knobs to whatever you like.

Scenes 2-3 control tracks: the top button record arms tracks, leaving the button button free for whatever you like (mute, enable/disable). The faders control level on tracks 1-8, and knobs control the first send for each track.

Scene 4 is basically unassigned and ready for custom assignments.

Across all scenes, fader 9 is the master level. Transport buttons are automatically mapped and will work as expected.

Because there are so many controls free, I’ve created a sample template that pre-maps some parameters. In case you prefer to work that way, that template can get you started.

nanoPAD: The nano is much simpler, but I’ve set up the X/Y pad to dynamically trigger the first two parameters in a rack, making this much more fun to use with a Drum Rack. I like having access to all 8 Macros, so I’ve spread them across the four scenes. The pads will dynamically map to the first 16 pads, with 1-12 on scene 1 and 13-16 on the top of scene 2. There was some trickery to allow you to map these pads more or less as you see them in the software, beyond those first 16. I’ve provided alternative versions that allow easier continuous melodic control or keep CC 1 + 2 consistent across all four scenes.

(I didn’t say that very well, so if anyone’s feeling really motivated and wants to do a quick post or video of this or even modify them and make them better, feel free!)

To avoid accidentally triggering parameters with the X/Y pad, you can either turn flam/roll mode on all the time, or make sure instruments you want to play are added to racks first.

For more detailed instructions on Live setup and how MIDI Remote Scripts work, please see the separate tutorial!

Scripts for KORG nanoSERIES and Ableton Live by Create Digital Music is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Want to help motivate me to do more stuff like this? (I and others on Planet CDM really will — open to non-KORG, non-Ableton requests!)

When software has “Live” as its name, you know control will be everything. So it’s great that many control surfaces will behave intelligently out of the box with Ableton Live, including devices like the Akai APC40 and Novation ReMOTE SL. If you’ve used one of these products, you’ve no doubt been able to click a device rack in Live and have a blue hand icon appear in the title bar, automatically assigning, say, the first eight macro knobs in a drum rack to your eight hardware encoders.

But what if you have hardware that isn’t covered by this functionality that you want to use? The easiest solution is something called MIDI Remote Scripting. It’s been available since Live 6, but it seems not many people know that it’s there or how to use it. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s such an easy hack that it’s worth at least exploring.

For this tutorial, I’ll take the example of the Korg nanoKONTROL and nanoPAD. They’re a likely candidate, at about US$60 street each and with some handy controls (kontrols?) for mixer channels and drum racks. But you could take any hardware and apply the same technique — even something you’ve built yourself — so long as it sends simple MIDI messages.

The upshot: you get simple “automap” functionality without something specific like Automap (or drivers, in general).

Required for this tutorial: Ableton Live 6.x or later. I’ve tested only the full version of Live on Mac and Windows, though I think at least some of the “lighter” versions should work, as well.

This is a long article but a relatively short and easy process. I’m just giving you everything you could possibly want to know about the nanoSERIES and MIDI Remote Scripting!

Introducing MIDI Remote Scripts

Ableton Live uses compiled Python scripts to provide custom support for controllers, as I understand it. I’ve never looked into this specific functionality, and generally you wouldn’t unless you’re a hardware vendor working with Ableton.

As of Live 6, though, there’s a hack provided for everything else, called MIDI Remote Scripts. They’re simple text files that let you specify mappings of MIDI note, Control Change, and channel messages to common parameters in Live. This text file is compiled into a Python script for the hardware when Live launches. Basically, the Remote Script covers:

• The 16 visible pads in Drum Racks
• Device Rack encoders (the 8 Macros for each Device Rack)
• Bank parameters for switching between banks of encoders in devices that aren’t in racks
• Volume faders 1-8, plus the master volume setting
• Sends for tracks 1-8 (just the first two sends)
• Track arm buttons for recording into tracks 1-8
• Transport controls

Now, if you’re not familiar with Device Racks and Drum Racks, and how to use them for instruments and effects, you should absolutely go brush up now. Really, go ahead – I’ll wait. The rack functionality introduced in Live 6 is essential, because it allows you to take complex sets of effects and instruments and map them intelligently to just eight controls.

You’ll notice there’s plenty of stuff that’s not on here. There’s nothing to do with clips. There’s no way of banking up to track counts higher than 8. There’s no way to easily bank between sets of pads in Drum Racks with more slots. There’s no headphone level. There’s record arm, but not track enable/disable. I could go on…

But you do get a pretty decent base set of functionality if the list above looks appealing. Since you’re just using MIDI, you can manually assign any additional remaining hardware MIDI controls to your favorite parameters.

And the most important thing about all of this is that parameters for the Device Rack are dynamic. So while there are eight of them, that covers any selected device anywhere in your set. Click on the device, and the blue hand lets you know the device is under your control. Whichever controls you’ve chosen — say, eight huge mechanical knobs on a DIY hardware controllers — will map automatically.

Finding and Editing the MIDI Remote Scripts

I do mean finding. Your first job is to find the MIDI Remote Script location on your drive.

First, here’s where it’s not: it’s not in the Ableton program folder itself. There is, in fact, a User Remote Scripts folder in there, but it’s not the one you want to use. (I bring this up only because I tried to put my customized text file in that folder, had my script show up in Live’s preferences, but then couldn’t understand why nothing was working. Learn from my mistake, and be wiser.)

Instead, you’ll want to navigate to your user preferences folder.

On Windows Vista/Windows 7, my Live preferences live in:

[Windows boot drive] > Users > Peter > AppData > Roaming > Ableton > Live 8.04 [or your version] > Preferences > User Remote Scripts

(Yours may be in Local rather than Roaming, depending on whether you installed Live for all users. On XP, the path is similar, but in your boot drive’s Documents and Settings.)

On Mac:

[Library folder] > Preferences > Ableton > Live 8.04 [or your version] > User Remote Scripts

Note that on the Mac, in similar fashion to the Remote/Roaming difference on Windows, you may need either the Library folder at the root level of your boot drive or the Library folder inside your user folder (the one you see when you click Home, Documents, etc.).

You’ll find two files in that folder. One is a how-to text file, as pictured above, though it doesn’t tell you that much. The other is a sample file.

To create your custom script, you’ll want to duplicate the UserConfiguration.txt script and place it in a folder with the name you want to appear in Live. So, for my custom nanoKONTROL script, I have:

User Remote Scripts > nanoKONTROL > UserConfiguration.txt

Note that the new file will still be called UserConfiguration.txt.

Customizing in the nanoSERIES Editor

Let’s take a quick side trip to set up our KORG nanoSERIES controllers the way we want.

Out of the box, the KORG nanos don’t come with any software disc, because you don’t need them – just plug them in, and they work. And, in fact, if you’re happy with the default MIDI assignments, you never need to go beyond this. In this case, though, I was interested in remapping some stuff, particularly on the nanoKONTROL buttons, so I went ahead and started editing.

You can head to the Korg Nano site and navigate through support, or even easier is to head to this direct link:

Support Results for nanoSERIES

(If you’re outside the Americas, there may be a different link.)

Click Downloads and choose Kontrol Editor for Mac or PC. (You may also want to grab KORG’s own USB MIDI Driver.)

The Kontrol Editor is really quite nice to use and surprisingly powerful for a $60 piece of hardware. At the top, you’ll see buttons for the scenes on the nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL. There’s a visual representation of the controller which, by default, displays MIDI Control Change and note number assignments. (To change what this preview displays, select the dropdown just below the picture of your nano.) The Browse tab allows you to navigate your file structure, but keep Control selected to change assignments.

You can safely ignore the boxes above the controller for now, which control scene settings and channels. Instead, focus on everything on top of and below the controller. On the nanoKONTROL, the faders’ CC assignments are just below the faders. (Look carefully; that can be a bit confusing at first.)

I’m providing my download of my template, so you don’t have to muck with this, necessarily. But here was my strategy:

nanoKONTROL I was most interested in reassigning the buttons next to the faders. Selecting “Momentary” lights up the button only as you’re pressing it; “Toggle” has it turn on and off. Note that this doesn’t actually impact the messages it sends; just the lights. For Scene 1, I wanted these buttons to double as triggers for my drum pads, so I changed all of them to Assign Type: Notes and adjusted Button Behavior to Momentary. For the remaining scenes, they’re record arm buttons, so those I left as Control Change assignments and Toggle behavior.

The tricky part of this is that KORG has nine faders and encoders instead of eight, and everything in Live is grouped in eight. I made the ninth fader a master. You might manually assign the knob above that ninth fader to headphone out.

nanoPAD All the fun in the nanoPAD editor is to be had on the X/Y controller. The two boxes that are pre-assigned represent X control and Y control on the pad. The third box allows you to define an additional controller for touch across the whole pad. On the pads themselves, note that you can assign up to eight(!) control change or note messages, not just one.

For this project, I just wanted to adjust the note settings to map more intelligently across my Drum Racks, which I’ll explain with the download. That means, unfortunately, going through one by one and changing pitch assignments. For the pad, I’m of two minds. You can keep those CC assignments consistent across all four scenes, or use each scene to control different parameters for a total of eight (conveniently, the number of macros on a Live Device Rack) Note that the scene descriptions at top are just text you add, so the “Drum Kit” or “Chromatic” labels are really just suggestions; they have no functional purpose. You can change them if you want, but the editor is the only place you’ll see them.

User Configuration Settings

Lastly, let’s walk through the changes to make to UserConfiguration.

[Globals]:

For InputName and OutputName, it’s essential that you match exactly the text listed by a MIDI device when it’s connected to your computer. For the nanos, that’s “nanoPAD” and “nanoSERIES.” You can verify this by opening your Live preferences and checking under MIDI.

You also need to double-check your GlobalChannel. Numbering starts at zero, so channel 1 is channel 0, and 10 is 9. You can plug multiple nanoSERIES devices into a USB hub — even an unpowered hub, the power draw is so low — so I like to assign different channels to different devices to avoid confusion.

In the rest of the document, any channel that references “-1″ is equivalent to the default. For that reason, I recommend leaving channel assignments along and just changing the default global channel.

Pads and Device Controls

Here’s the fun part: you can set up pads and Device Controls (Macro) encoders to dynamically control the active device. Choose note messages for the pads, and Control Change messages (with the associated numbers) for the encoders.

Here’s the trick: you need to have everything assigned, or it won’t work. In other words, you can’t assign just the first few encoders or just the first few pads, or, oddly, Live will refuse to recognize this as a mappable device.

Banks and Locking

I didn’t find Banks as useful. Banks allow you to choose banks of unassigned controllers. That can get confusing, though, so I still recommend using Device Racks to manually pick and choose which macros you want assigned.

There is, however, an assignment for LockButton. This allows you to pick a button that will “lock” your dynamic controls to one device. So, for instance, let’s say you have a rack of effects you want to control with your nanoKONTROL. When you’re at home in the studio, you might want to mouse around and click different devices for tangible control. But live onstage, you want just one live performance effects rack. Lock the device, and you won’t accidentally click something else and lose control.

I didn’t assign this on the nanoKONTROL because there wasn’t a convenient parameter to assign, but you can still lock a Device from within Live.

[MixerControls]

This gives you limited automatic control of mixer levels (for channels 1-8), sends (1-2 for each of those channels), record enable (for arming tracks), and the master mixer level. I like having a master to control, so having that ninth fader on the nanoKONTROL wound up being very nice.

Now, it is a little annoying to be limited to eight tracks, but there are two important factors here. Firstly, this is a dynamic assignment, meaning you don’t need to manually assign anything or make a special Live session template. That means you can mix and match MIDI and audio tracks arbitrarily, which you can’t do with a template. Secondly, sometimes having the arbitrary limit of eight channels is ideal in live performance — and it means you don’t have to bank around.

Transport

This winds up working perfectly: you get play, stop, record, forward scrub, reverse scrub, and even a loop on/off switch. Of course, you don’t get some of the other parameters you get from an Akai APC40, like turning on and off MIDI overdub. But, hey, you spent sixty bucks on the Korg and you really can’t balance an APC40 and your laptop on Greyhound.

Setting Up Live

Once your MIDI Remote Script is in the proper folder, your device will show up automatically in Live. That’s especially cool if you’re a DIYer; you could have Maria’s Arcade Button Mashapalooza show up if you want.

Select a configured device just as you would any other control surface. Choose Preferences > MIDI/Sync, select Control Surface in the first column (nanoPAD, for instance), and then its Input and Output ports. Finally, enable the Control Surface Input for Track and Remote. This will allow you to manually override assignments if you want, and to assign controls on your hardware you didn’t assign in the MIDI Remote Script, both via the usual MIDI Map method.

Because I want to be able to easily record-toggle multiple tracks — and because anything else will mean the “toggle” lights on the nanoKONTROL are wrong — I also like to turn off “exclusive” arming in preferences. This way, you can record-enable multiple tracks at once, so that when you want to feed MIDI into your soft synth on track 7, your vocoded vocal track on track 2 doesn’t immediately switch off. Go to Preferences > Record/Warp/Launch > Record > Exclusive and make sure Arm is unlit. (Pictured above.)

One last tip, as suggested by Mike Hatsis of Trackteam Audio: use the Drum Rack’s Auto Select feature, and you’ll automatically toggle the interface to whatever part of the rack’s various pads you happen to trigger. (This works in Live 7 and later only.) This way, you can easily toggle more than the 16 visible pads. On my nanoPAD template, for instance, I’ve already gone to the trouble of mapping the remaining scenes, so the first 16 pads map automatically, and then scenes 2-4 can access other pad slots.

To enable Auto Select, make sure the Chain is visible in the rack, then click the small A button as pictured above.

Alternatives, Future

Now, go forth and have fun!

Granted, this isn’t a perfect control mechanism. If you need to bank more easily between tracks, control a whole lot of mechanisms that aren’t here, focus on clips, or … well, do anything other than the stuff described above … it’s not ideal.

On the other hand, I find this resolves about half of the situations that would otherwise require manual MIDI assignments and, worse, templates rather than dynamic assignment. For basic MIDI tasks, it’s a hack, but a useful hack.

What about the future? HyperControl from M-Audio and Automap from Novation both have more sophisticated integration. The Akai APC40 goes further than previous devices as far as dynamic clip triggering and shortcuts. And other integration is possible with Ableton’s own scripts than what you can do here, although you don’t necessarily get support for all the hardware you’d like to use.

MIDI Remote Scripting is frozen in time in Live 6, so as its own documentation says, there’s some stuff missing. I don’t expect it to be updated, however — too bad, as it is a nice hack.

The Ableton Live API is likely where future action is at. While it’s not an official or supported feature, I have no reason to suspect that it’s going away. On the contrary, you should be able to use API functions controlling clips and most functions of the user interface in Live dynamically. This functionality will be baked into Max for Live if you’re a Max user, but should also be accessible via the hacker-spported, community-based Python API wrapper. Most promisingly, hackers have already wrapped this Python API into both MIDI and OSC implementations, meaning you should have a choice between using Max for Live and supporting this functionality directly from hardware, even without M4L.

I’ll be documenting what’s coming very soon, both on the Max and Python/OSC sides. In the meantime, here’s a preview of what the API will do from our friend Andrew Benson at Cycling ’74. Andrew is himself a visualist, so I expect we’ll see some nifty visual applications.

Max-for-Live: A Sneak Peak at the Live API features

And looking beyond even Live, I think we’re now in a world in which we’re finally moving beyond simple MIDI learn. That’s a big relief. Next stop: OSC.

KORG owners: Downloads coming in a separate article later today!

Corrections/tips: More to add? Let me know and I’ll update the story. -Ed.