nckn.music.

I just stumbled upon a new way to perform in Ableton. This is just a proof of concept, but given a prepared MIDI-Clip you could find some interesting results… Think of Instrument-Racks. Kind of remxing your MIDI via Mouse.

Ok. It’s actually just for fun, but picture the potential. So please send me your compositions for cursor & select boxes!

I just stumbled upon a new way to perform in Ableton. This is just a proof of concept, but given a prepared MIDI-Clip you could find some interesting results... Think of Instrument-Racks. Kind of remxing your MIDI via Mouse. Ok. It's actually just for fun, but picture the potential. So please send me your compositions ...

There are many people out there using the Novation Nocturn (me included), since it was one of the first controllers that did a lot for little money. The tight integration between hardware and software does the trick. Having read about the Automap-feature made me really looking forward to get this device into my hands, since it’s always such a hassle to manually assign each and every control you have.

However, the Automap-feature turned out to be useless for me. It works only with AU/VST-Plugins. Not right in Ableton itself. You can control Live with it, though: Turn on a Midichannel in the Automap server software and manually map Midi-controls within Live (see Novation FAQ for this). But this technique clearly has not the same ease-of-use and awesomeness as the Automapping feature.

I want to easily control Rack-Macros on the fly. Without assigning the knobs individually! And guess what? There is a way! There is a small hidden feature inside Live called Midi Remote Scripting. I recently read about it on CDM, did a custom script for my Nocturn, and – tadaa – Automapping inside of Live. Peter shared his Config-files for both Korg’s nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL. So I will share mine for the Nocturn, so you will not have to read the whole article on how to do it yourself. Just follow the steps!

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There are many people out there using the Novation Nocturn (me included), since it was one of the first controllers that did a lot for little money. The tight integration between hardware and software does the trick. Having read about the Automap-feature made me really looking forward to get this device into my hands, ...

Recently I read Peter Kirn’s (CreateDigitalMusic) good tutorial on User Remote Scripting in Ableton Live. It’s a tiny text-file that you put into a folder inside of Ableton’s Preferences-directory. This way you have the possibility to store Midi-Mapping Defaults and to gain some automapping-niceness.

I don’t want to go into detail, because the article is pretty much everything you should read to get started. However, if you’re like me you read some introducing paragraphs, then thinking: “Oh, I don’t need to read all of this, guess i can get started right by fiddling myself”. And then it does not work. Argh! I lost 2 hours of my life trying to get to the mistake. After finding the solution I thought I share it, for you to not get into the same trouble…

My mistake: I overlooked, that in the Config-file Midi-channels are counted from 0-15 (as in Arrays). My desired Channel was 9, so I typed 9. Program translated this to Channel 10, so in Live there was no signal on Channel 10. Rule: always type in your channel minus one.

Another possible mistake Peter hinted: Putting the files into the wrong directory.
On the mac the config-file goes into ~/Library/Preferences/Ableton/[your version]/User Remote Scripts/[your Presetname]/UserConfiguration.txt
Windows: [Windows boot drive]/Users/ [your Username]/AppData/Roaming/Ableton/[your version]/Preferences/User Remote Scripts/[your Presetname]/UserConfiguration.txt

Now, that you have everything working, enjoy your newly gained control. For example control all your Instrument- and Drum-racks with only 8 Midi-mappings. Just select the rack’s title bar and the knobs are automatically assigned, as long as you see the blue hand. Nice.

Recently I read Peter Kirn's (CreateDigitalMusic) good tutorial on User Remote Scripting in Ableton Live. It's a tiny text-file that you put into a folder inside of Ableton's Preferences-directory. This way you have the possibility to store Midi-Mapping Defaults and to gain some automapping-niceness. I don't want to go into detail, because the article is ...