Anymore now with an extremely active family life (read: 6 year old daughter), it’s difficult to pull together time to think through large arrangements. I’ve found it easier to give myself some boundaries and try to help focus what time I do have towards music. After experimenting a bit, I’ve kind of settled on a 5 track method of coming up with musical sketches. By sticking to this “Fundamental 5″ structure of a melody, counter melody, pad or string layer, bass and drums, I can build sketches relatively quickly.
The second piece of it is turning the sketch into something performable. I used to like to just sit back and watch all of my automation and parts fly by on the sequencer, but these days it’s so much more fun to get in it and work with it on the fly. After much, much buying and selling and playing around with different control surfaces, I’ve settled on primarily a 128 grid system that I’ve customized to control both the arrangement and live effects, with the addition of small, flexible controllers that focus on mixing, percussion, and note entry. Using a customized Ableton Live template, I have a setup that gives me a static set of intuitive controls while allowing me to fly compositions and parts in and out at will, and for the most part, disconnect from the computer screen and just focus on manipulating the music through the control surfaces.
This is a sketch that I came up with in the winter of ’09 while at a beach house with the family. I have played through this song a bunch of times with a sort of loose idea of dynamic direction and arrangement that allows me to experiment and self-correct as I play the song, but for the most part, this is a one take.
Chris this is beautiful!
Thanks, Katie!
Hey There, This is really awesome. Am I correct in assuming you’ve used Automap for your right controller?
It would be really useful to see what you have done with yours as I am considering getting a second launchpad.
Perhaps a video explaining your mapping and what your controls do? That would be really useful. Hope to hear back from you.
Jacob
Hi Jacob! Thanks! You CAN use automap, but I actually find it not as flexible as i’d like. I actually use a program called http://midikatapult.com/ which lets you very flexibly reconfigure the LP to do all kinds of things from momentaries, toggles, drum matrixes, step sequencing, faders, and X/Y controllers, and you can do pages of controllers, some things that you can’t even do in Automap. The only disappointment is that the MIDI feedback to update the LED’s is quite wonky, and often will crash the MIDI routing software. Using the LP in Native mode does a fine job of updating clips and whatnot, so I just use that for the left and for the right one, I just use it for triggering effects, stops, and scene launches. You can definitely do alot more with it though. At some point I might make a video regarding my mapping, but i’ve actually been using an iPad app that pretty much replicates the functionality of both LP’s and the nanoKontrol. I will say what’s going on with the right LP:
the 5 vertical clips to the right are basically individual clip stops, and next to that is an all clip stop. At the top are scene launch buttons (because of the way I have my quantizing set up, the Native ones on the left board do a wierd repeat that I can’t get to stop). Aside from that, the other buttons are basically just momentary track sends to a delay. Off is dry, and on is something like 75%, and lastly I have a bit of glitch going on with the drums which i’m triggering on and off with my thumb.
Thanks for that Chris, That’s really interesting. I’ll look into midikatapult.
I sort of follow what you have done, but I’m not sure you’ve got your left and right the correct way round
did you mean there are five vertical clip stop triggers on the left not the right?
There are five of the six pads lit up in the bottom right corner of the LP that you didn’t use on the video, what are they?
Jacob
Jacob, sorry I answered from my phone, and I wasn’t looking at the video. Here’s a little breakdown I threw together, maybe this helps?
http://db.tt/C3mTYHS
No worries I do stuff like that too sometimes. Thanks for the picture, it was really helpful. I had a look at Midikatapult and unfortunately I didn’t get on with it well at all.
I could not figure out how to map your own pages without using the ones with LEDs lit provided.
Hey there, Sorry to be an annoyance but how did you get Katapult to work?! It’s really bugging me, I tried Automap but the cc value pads on my right LP interfere with my session view on my left LP. If you could point me in the right direction for tutorials for ableton and katapult that would be awesome.
Sorry again.
Jacob
Yeah, that’s part of why Automap is problematic. What you’re essentially trying to do is hide the fact that you’ve got a second Launchpad set up. All LP’s have the same default mapping for User 2, so unless you change those in Automap or Katapult, it’s going to mess with settings on any LP that you have plugged into the system, unless they’re in Native Mode.
To get Katapult working, first you need to install a MIDI Loopback device, so all that Ableton sees is a generic MIDI port. I recommend LoopBe: http://nerds.de/en/download.html
Once you have that up and running, make sure you have Java installed, as it’s required by MIDIKatapult. http://java.com
After all that, plug in your LP’s. Katapult is a bit goofy about what LP is plugged in first, so when it fires up, it’ll grab one or the other. Future versions will support multiples, but for now, just look for the one that lights up with Katapult’s startup lights. You might even mark which one is which, and be aware of what USB port you’re using too. Once up, it’ll ask you what Input and Output port you want to use them on; use the arrows and choose LoopBe for both input and output port.
Once that’s up, Katapult will be up and running. At first you’ll only see the default setup pages in Katapult, but you can simply make your own using a text editor. More on that later.
Open up Ableton, get the other LP running in Native mode. disable Track and Remote on both MIDI In and Out for both LP’s. Native mode uses Serial i/o, so no MIDI needed unless you want to use usermode 2 on the non-Katapult LP. Then, enable Track and Remote IN on the device labelled LoopBe. Do no enable anything for LoopBe out, this will cause MIDI feedback and crash LoopBe.
If you have MIDIKatapult running, you should be able to fire off some buttons and see in the MIDI monitor in Ableton that it’s recieving. At this point, you’re all set and you can actually map stuff to the existing control pages in Katapult.
Now to making your own layouts: There’s a file in that Katapult folder called layout.txt. Make a copy of that file, because you’ll need to use that and the manual for reference as you build your own layouts. You’ll want to read the manual, but the basic premise is that you’re mapping everything on an X/Y basis. You’ll see the basic pages, and then advanced controls for faders, etc. But essentially you’re just defining a button, or an area of buttons, and telling it what kind of control you want it to be. For instance a line like this is broken down as follows
“button 0 0 hold”
Button tells the program that you want the control to be a button.
0 0, is the button coodinates. Instead of 1-8, but buttons are numbered 0-7. So on an X/Y grid, 0,0 would be the first button in the upper left hand corner. 1,0 would be the button next to it, 2,0 would be the third, and so on. I found it helpful to actually draw an 8×8 grid and write out the values on paper.
Hold, tells the control that you want it to be a momentary control, as opposed to a toggle.
There are lots of other things you can do, from mapping specific MIDI channel, note values, LED colors, CC controls, even keystrokes. You’ll need to look at the manual for those, but start experimenting. Once you’ve made a change to your layout.txt, save it (leave it open) and hit the refresh button on the LP (I think it’s user 1) and your control should be updated. Continue to do that, making changes, save, refresh, and you’ll find that once you can grasp the scripting concept, you can rapidly prototype your controller pages.
Thanks man, this is really good. I’m getting on with katapult a little better now.
but…
after downloading LoopBe and booting up katapult I am only confronted with:
’1. CTRL
2. MIDI
3. Port 1
4. Realtime Sequencer
5. Java Sound Sequencer’
I can’t find LoopBe on my hard drive anywhere, so I’m not sure if it’s installed properly.
I’m wondering if the problems I am having are because I’m using a Macbook Pro? where as from what I’ve seen you’re a Windows user, maybe it’s more compatible.
OH! Hahaha. Oops! That’s kind of funny actually. Yes, you would be having problems because of that, and me assuming you’re on Windows. Haha. OK, so all of what I typed up is still valid, just ignore the parts about LoopBe, because it’s a Windows only app. Luckily, on a Mac you can do the same thing with the built in software.
So, instead of LoopBe, you’re going to set up your own loopback device. On your Mac, go to Applications, then Utilities, and open up Audio MIDI Setup. From there you want to see the MIDI window. If you don’t see that, go to Window -> Show MIDI Window. Once that’s up, double click on the icon labelled IAC driver. Make sure there’s a check in Device is Online, and click More Information if it’s not shown already. In the bottom left where it says ports, you’ll want to add a new one with the + at the bottom, and name it whatever you like – Katapult even would be a good name. Once done here, close IAC, MIDI and the Audio MIDI setup. Go back and fire up Ableton, and one of your MIDI devices should now say Katapult, or whatever you’ve named it. Treat it the same way as I’ve described above as LoopBe. Also, when you fire up Katapult, it should now show that new IAC driver as an In/Out option.
Thanks for that man, I take it that the katapult LP has to be in user mode 2 so it doesn’t interfere with the Native LP’s session view?
For future reference, and to say thank you for you help I’ve written out the coordinates for the LP for programming in katapult. If you haven’t already done it I’m sure this will be useful.
http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/cc414/J4mcob/Screenshot2011-03-08at144434.png
Thanks for that! Really, you shouldn’t have to have it in user 2 because it shouldn’t be set up in Ableton. Ableton doesn’t see the second LP, it sees the generic MIDI input (IAC) that it’s talking to, so it’ll never interfere with it if it’s not set up in Ableton as a native controller.
Thank you Chris. After a little reading I realise that I am a moron, and that everything I needed to know was in the manual. I have it working now. I really appreciate your time.
Have you found any problems with Katapult that I should be aware of?
Jacob
beautiful one take you got here! i really like the song! keep up the good work! cheers