Extending MIDI map capabilities in Live - how difficult?

dblfrskn's icon

Hi, everyone! First off, I'm completely worthless when it comes to programming - never coded a line (except some html in middle-school, wouldn't call it programming).

Now I came across something that Live lacks and I so greatly desire and asked in several forums, they said either make a remote script for it or do it with M4L - the latter seems to be more configurable and personally beneficial.

The problem is: I've a MIDI controller which has 32 knobs, 8 faders and, of course, 16 MIDI channels (CME Bitstream 3x, to be exact). Now what I want to achieve is complete control of every parameter of any software instrument or effect, in-built or VST, in a project, regardless of track count. Live offers MIDI mapping, but it basically hard-wires a CC message to a specific parameter of a specific device, regardless of which track I have armed. So I may map CC49/1 to attack envelope of Sampler instrument on track 2, and the CC49/1 will always change that exact parameter, regardless of which track I have armed. Great for live use, experimentation in the studio - not so much.

I want to be able to map the said CC49/1 (or any other CC, for that matter) to the same parameter of any instrument I have and control only the armed track this way - so if I have Sampler on track 2 and, let's say, Diva on track 3, I could arm track 2 and change the attack env of the Sampler and then arm track 2 and use the same knob to change attack env of Diva. This way I'd have a uniform way of controlling the parameters throughout the project and exploit what the controller has to offer fully.

first of all - is it possible to achieve through M4L? And if it is - how difficult (for a complete newbie)?

Thanks in advance :)

Kyle Turgeon's icon

hey DBLFRSKN,

did you figure this out in the last few years? i'm trying to figure out how to do the same thing.

thanks in advance!

kyle

S4racen's icon

2 Options....

1, Maxforlive - Create a Device that has the relevant number of live.dials to match your controller and MIDI map to those. Within the device create it so that it follows the BlueHand (device in focus) and then creates the paths to the parameters of the controlled VST etc. You'd have little control over what maps to what apart from how the VST is organised

2, Python - write a Control Surface Script for the controller that does the blue hand mapping directly, we do this for the likes of the BCR to give 32 parameter control over the device in focus which you can then bank through, with our PrEditor utility you can then define which parameter maps to which knob....

Cheers
D