Into Generative Music - Workaround for saving BLOB type Parameters in M4L

André Mendes's icon

Hello!

I'm trying to do something on a particular M4L device but I'm pretty new to Max for Live so if anyone could help me with this I would be forever grateful :)

I have this device and I'm trying to make all it's parameters visible on Live so I can automate everything.
For reference the device is AUTOBEAT from K-DEVICES: https://k-devices.com/products/autobeat/

So let's start from what I've achieved so far.

In regards to the "out of the box" device unfortunately most of it's parameters (ex. Lenght, Rate, Res, Steps, etc..) aren't accessible in Ableton Live. I managed to change this behaviour by going inside the Max for Live device and changing each parameter from "STORE ONLY" to "AUTOMATED AND STORE". After doing it so I've manage to get most of the parameters accessible for automation within Ableton Live. So this was the easy part.

Now the difficult one:

After trying to do the same logic on the Graphical Display (i'll call it "Bars" from now on), things started to get messy.

From what I've read so far, It seams that the parameters that have a "Bars" layout need to mandatorily be set to "BLOB" for it to work, meaning that trying to change from "Store" to "Automated and Store" won't work in this case.

After contacting K-Devices about this they replied that due to the nature of this device that it wasn't possible to achieve this without having to dig deep into the device... meaning probably rebuilding the device from scratch, which as they stated unfortunately isn't possible now.

So why am I coming here right?

Well, I'm an IDM producer and I'm currently building a Live setup which has a big focus on Generative Music.
So far I've managed to get my Midi Synth tracks to work like a charm using a couple of devices.

The only thing missing now is a way to achieve the same results in my Beats track.

During these past months I've tried and experiment with a lot of devices, and from all the devices that I've found either on M4L forum, Ableton Live site, etc., etc., without a reasonable doubt Autobeat seems to be the best device for doing this, mostly because it has "Polyrhythm" options as well as "Controlled Probability" which is essential for what I'm trying to do.

So without further do, if changing parameter type from "Blob" to "Float" or "Int" isn't a possibility, what options are left for trying to achieve this?

Thanks!

Gregory Taylor's icon

Not a lot of time to spend doing this, but it would appear that the folks at K-Devices gave you very accurate information, from what I can tell. I found myself wondering, too, whether the modifications they mentioned might well affect the efficiency of the module even if they were added.

André Mendes's icon

One solution, thou I don't know how to do it, was to create 16*8 Faders(or knobs) that mimic the Bars value. This way Ableton would be able to recognise the parameters taking this device to a whole new level.

The difference in terms of production and specially in live performance would be groundbreaking since launching any clip could have different pre-defined random parameters that fit precisely within the clip that is playing, allowing for the fills to be tight to each specific clip in session view.

Taking it further we could use Clyphx Pro to either snap the whole device of capture all it's envelopes. The options would be practically endless and only limited to our own creativity instead of having to be restricted like it is now.

André Mendes's icon

M4L ninjas anyone?