Okay. I’ll start off with no stranger. Actually I already made music with this guy. I don’t know exactly, if Sundur is to be his Artist-name… for now it is. (He is also spinning minimal records. Check his MySpace)

The deal: Considering his level of skill, it’s absolutely inappropriate, that this track is his only audible fragment available anywhere. The first time we met to mess around with Ableton, I was totally surprised both by his sound and his way of working in Ableton. In a very positive way. His approach to Ableton looked like an ever ongoing flow. He constantly builds up his loops, drags sounds around, sends them through effects, adds new ones. All of that in a speed, you won’t recognize this beat was never around before / done on the fly.

“The Detroit Sun” completely represents his sound, as I experienced it. The whole beat feels like a big wheel, that just rolls really slowly on uneven ground. The sometimes odd clicks really add to an overall warm feeling.
He put the phrase Trip-Hop in the genre-tag. In my head, the term TripHop usually triggers really different sounds. But still, this track feels like the succesful translation of Massive Attack-influenced Triphop  into todays’ sound. More Flying Lotus than Kruder&Dorfmeister.

I can’t wait for him to put out more stuff. He should. And (as I remember it correctly), he will.

Disclaimer:
the idea of this series is to have a conversation. On single pieces of music and through them on musical aspects in general. Imagine the time you were putting up vinyl, drinking red wine, discussing with your friend about things you hear at this very moment. When was the last time you listened to music and did nothing else? Really concentrated?
So if the track above triggers anything, just share it. A picture, a small thought, a general impression you have, please share it in the comments. If not, maybe next time.  It’s an experiment, I know. Thanks!

But why? Why didn’t I manage to put my musical ideas (which I guess are still there and vital) into actual pieces you can listen to?

Last weekend it became clear, that it was form. In the days of playing in bands everything was quite fixed. The band setup consisted of drums, bass, two guitars and vocals. I was one guitarist with some songwriting-responsibilities. Time I spent for the band was either practicing guitar, writing songs or riffs and attending rehearsals. Note: 100% of that time is directly connected to music. 100% of my ideas were direct musical ideas.

Now switching to music done with the computer. Just adding this device into your music makes everything a lot more complicated. You have to question everything that was kind of pre-set in your band. What kind of music do you want to do? What is your sound? How do you perform this music? Adding to that, computer is technology. And technology needs to be adapted to your needs. So you have to learn about programs, underlying principles and interaction-patterns.  These topics are all barriers in your way of developing musical ideas.
And this is the reason I look back on not too much output. I did not find answers that satisfied me. So I looked further. More energy and time was consumed dealing with stuff surrounding music than focussing on actual music.

Hopefully this will change now. I finally found a setup that fits my needs. A first version of a setup, that is Ableton-centered but not screen-centric. Actually I can turn off the screen and put the laptop aside.
It makes use of  all of the MIDI-equipment I have now (M-Audio Keyboard, NanoKontrol, PadKontrol, Nocturn and FCB1010) and is all about looping both external input and sounds I collected. It uses multiple instances of Ableton Looper, a self-hacked Step-Sequencer for the PadKontrol and some instrument racks. One for key-sounds, the other for collected sounds.
I guess I will do some sort of video tutorial round-trip of the setup when time is right.

The most important thing, though: I finally found answers to all conceptual question and solutions to all technical problems. I now know, that I can spend my time again thinking about music, not about technology. And when I have enough pieces done, I can now easily perform them.

So stay tuned…

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!

1. Turn on MIDI

Make sure, that you have your Input- and Output-Ports activated. Decide which Channel you want the Map to send on.

You should see something like this now:

2. Download the Config-File

Find it here or here.

3. Move it to the correct directory

Unzip the file and move the complete folder (including the UserConfiguration.txt) to the following directory:

Mac: [Your home folder]/Library/Preferences/Ableton/[your version]/User Remote Scripts/

Windows: [Windows boot drive]/Users/ [your Username]/AppData/Roaming/Ableton/[your version]/Preferences/User Remote Scripts/

The foldername (in our case “Nocturn“) is the name that will appear in Ableton’s list of Control Surfaces. Rename it if you like.

4. Check if MIDI-Channels match

The Config-file I gave you is set up for MIDI-Channel 1. If you also activated Ch1 one, go on.
If not, change the GlobalChannel in line 11 of  UserConfiguration.txt.
Caution: if your desired Channel is 9, type 8 (as the 16 Channels are counted from 0 to 15).

5. Activate Control Surface inside of Live

In Live’s preferences go to the MIDI-Settings.

Make your selection like in the picture above.”Nocturn” (or the name you chose for your folder) will now appear in the list of available Control surfaces. Select it along with Input and Output on “Automap MIDI”.  It’s important to choose the Nocturn as Input and Output, so the Nocturn always reflects changes you do with your mouse.

6. Enjoy!

Now, if everything went right, you can control every device, that is in focus. The blue hand in the title-bar is the indicator for which device you’re controlling. Nice!

I know, for rack-macros it feels a bit strange to have Nocturn-Knobs 1-4 control the upper row and 5-8 the bottom row, instead of seperating the controls as it’s layed out on the Nocturn (feels a bit counter-intuitive). But this setting is the most flexible. Think of controlling EQ Eight with 4 bands, for example. Each 2 knobs control frequency and gain.

7. Niceness-Addon for the advanced ones…

If you have AutomapServer 3.0 as a PRO-Version, it is possible to assign Keystrokes to Nocturn-buttons. This comes very handy. Look at my example:

Shift+Tab brings you to your device-chain if you are in clip-view. If the focus is somewhere in the clip-grid, hit Alt+Down to bring focus to your device chain. If you have the focus once down there, you can navigate with the Left and Right buttons to switch between the different devices and effects you have.
With all of these Keystrokes layed down on the Nocturn you can tweak all of your effects without ever touching the mouse. Really nice…

If you have questions or problems, just let me know. There is always a way…

[UPDATE] I made this for Ableton Live 8.0.4. Can’t test it on other versions, sorry…
(Consider flattering if you took anything out of that tutorial. Much appreciated, thanks!)

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.