How To Use MIDI Controllers With Ableton Live

what is going on everybody this is pedro and welcome back to the lo-fi loft today we will be continuing our ableton live for beginners series i want to build you up from knowing nothing about the daw ableton live not being able to make your own music to finally being able to make your own music with a computer in ableton live we have done a few episodes previous to this and we're going to build on all that knowledge that came before so if this is the first one you're finding make sure you go back and watch from the beginning all the links will be in the description but today specifically we are going to be talking about one of my favorite subjects midi controllers it's not going to be a comprehensive overview of all different midi controllers and again it is specific to ableton live today but we are going to be talking about how to set up a basic midi controller in ableton live how to properly use it and also how to do some customizing of our midi controllers i'm not just talking about stickers i'm talking about how to customize it so we can turn the knobs that we want to turn trigger the effects we want to trigger all that different stuff this series is of course sponsored by distrokid i'll tell you more about them in a little bit and just before we get started if this series is helping you if you've worked your way through these videos let me know in the comments down below i would love to hear if it's helping you and also like tag me on social media if you start making stuff after watching some of these videos i love to hear how the videos are helping people uh to make their own music that's enough preamble let's get started and talk midi controllers so the akai mpk mini here i have a bunch of different midi controllers by the way i'm not going to show all of them but i like to start with the mpk mini because it's very basic it's pretty affordable and it's kind of like the standard right it's got pads it's got knobs and it's got keys but how can we use this properly in ableton live and how we set this up is actually going to follow us through with all the other midi controllers as well so usb connection most controllers are usb powered they don't need external power some do though the bigger they get the more likely it is that they require to be plugged into the wall as well but once we're plugged in via usb it might just work you might go ahead and start playing notes we don't have any instruments loaded but if you're playing notes on your keyboard and you see a little flashing light in the top right hand corner every time you press a no that means live is receiving midi information and heck we might even go into our instruments load up a simpler instrument like we've learned how to do in the past and if that track is armed and we press a note we should ultimately hear a note but if you haven't set it up properly we're not going to be able to do some of the things that we want to do with this controller so let's take a look at what i'm talking about if we go to live preferences we want to go to the link tempo and midi tab the main section you want to check out here will be the midi section now you'll see three columns control surface input and output really now we are going to worry about the control surface column for the moment because if i open up this column where my mpk is actually already selected you're going to see a list of midi controllers why is this important even if we don't own these midi controllers because if you're an ableton live user it may influence your purchasing decision when buying a certain controller because any controller that's listed here it means that there is a script for ableton live to interact with this controller or vice versa however you should say it what that means is there's going to be some specific features for ableton live or a specific way you can work with ableton live with that controller if a controller for instance is not listed here like a very common one are the korg controllers i don't see any korg instruments listed i believe that was the case in the past but i could be wrong but if you don't see it listed it actually might not have any special compatibility with live which i'll talk about later how the mpk and other controllers do so nonetheless plug in your controller and find it in this list here if it's not in the list i'm sorry but most of the major ones are so i go ahead and find mbk mini mark iii don't make a mistake and choose the wrong controller same thing can happen with the novation launch keys and let's go ahead and just select it as an input and select it as an output then we're going to check a couple different boxes we can go ahead and check track for each of our in and or out for the mpk and we're going to go ahead and check remote we don't need to check sync because we'll talk about that in the future that's more advanced but this controller we don't need it remote keep that checked but remember that for later okay now we've told live this is the controller i'm using how can we make it work in cool special ways because obviously just playing notes ain't that special so for now i've got this basic electric piano sound here but let's go to instrument rack and find another electric piano sound specifically an instrument rack because this is what i'm looking for the eight macros that we see on so many different ableton live devices now since i've got this device selected the electric piano instrument we see a blue hand i can make that blue hand go away if there was something else here so let's go into audio effects and let's just add a reverb and as we learned in a previous installment i'm just going to dial back the dry wet what you'll notice is that blue hand moved to the reverb depending on which device i select the blue hand will move that blue hand means that our controller is going to take over some control for that device so you see eight knobs here you also see eight knobs here in the exact same configuration so what you might expect to happen would be to turn the knob and it would turn the reverb knob however we can see that that's not working at the moment and this is something that changes from controller to controller but we've done our part in the computer telling live hey we're using the mpk mini but now we need to tell the mpk mini hey we're using ableton live and we can do that by going to program select and selecting that second pad which essentially puts it into its ableton live mode now if i turn this knob you will see that that knob turns that reverb knob turns and actually as i continue to turn knobs you can see that it aligns perfectly with this device [Music] and we can change the sound so now you have tactile control over devices rather than just clicking around with a mouse remember we had to tell live in preferences that were using the mpk and we had to tell the mpk that we're using live for that to work properly and that blue hand signifies that we are controlling that device if i click the reverb device now here's where it gets a little tricky but it's still useful it's gonna have some automatic controls mapped like you see this knob down here automatically went and changed the dry wet these other knobs you'll have to learn what they're assigned to use usually it's pretty useful parameters because they wrote the script specifically to be compatible with ableton live right so that's so basic right but some controllers have special things like this one has an arpeggiator built in we learned about arpeggiators last installment i would never use the arpeggiator on this controller with ableton live because i'd rather have the control of the mid-effect arpeggiator that's just me but enough about the mpk let's move on because that's the basics right we just learned about setting it in preferences selecting the right program etc other keyboards and controllers like for instance the launch key mini by novation is actually a controller designed with ableton live in mind i'm going to unplug the mpk and plug in the launch key mini and before we go any further we are going to double check our preferences are already you might see something in live changing but i'm going to go to the preferences i already have it set up because i've used this controller before launch key mini mark iii input and output the boxes are checked the remote is checked what has happened well the launch key has a little bit better compatibility with ableton live than mpk mini we're not talking about just being able to use the knobs with our macros here we're talking about being able to record in loops [Music] and launch clips bad clips at that and launch them after we re we record them [Music] we'll just call it jazz all right i'm going to delete those clips but as you can see there i'm not going to do a whole launchkey demo because i've got that on the channel already this is literally built to control ableton live's session view which we've already talked about how to navigate but this obviously gives us a little bit more tactile control it's even got a record button so i can hit the record button [Music] and hit it again to relaunch that clip that i just recorded i can even hit the play button stop the project from playing now i've got stickers on my controller i apologize but there's little text on this controller that actually allows us to change some functionality as well for instance we were in session mode controlling session view we can also be in a note mode which we can set to a specific scale and then we can change the function of these knobs so if i hold shift and go to device and let's go back over here and look at our instrument we will see now we're controlling our device i want you to notice something because there's a midi setting we have to change here and this will affect other controllers that you use as well if i touch this knob pay attention to what happens to the force knob notice the position of this knob as well it jumped right notice the position of this knob if i just barely touch it it jumps to that position right i don't like that because and let me demonstrate this if i hold shift this button now we're going to control the volumes of our tracks our track mixer now the second knob is the volume of our second track the reason i don't like this is because if you want to make a change and you want to maybe bounce from device to device or from device to the mixer control if you want to say fade something in but the knob was left at 100 it's not going to fade in it's going to jump to a hundred percent so let's go back to live preferences and go to takeover mode i prefer it to be in pickup mode which means in order for it to change a parameter on screen like for instance i'm going to crank this knob to 100 and i'm going to shift us back to device now this knob doesn't control this volume anymore in device mode it controls this force knob now watch this it will not change at all until i get to this point on the physical knob it picks up from where we left off that's at least how i like to think of the pickup term i don't know if that's exactly how that's supposed to be but regardless and you'll notice a couple other adjustments that you can make too right like i can adjust the panning go to panning mode shift go to sends and i can adjust sends a and sends b for each track so i'm not going to spend all the time going over completely the launch key mini's integration but as you can see it's highly more integrated than the mpk and you can look for that when you look at product marketing how do they market it are they specifically showing ableton live are they specifically showing ableton live functionality etc and conversely like for instance novation built a controller for fl studio specifically if you're using ableton live you definitely don't want to get that fl key but if you're using fl you definitely don't want to get the normal launch key so it's always something to consider how it's integrated and if that matters to you because you can get a lot done with the mpk as well even though as we saw its integration isn't that fancy but i want to talk about another type of controller i'll also show you that they don't all have keys pads and knobs some controllers they're midi controllers right remember we talked about that last time they control the information going into the computer some of them are just knobs and some of them we can just use as buttons and some of them we can customize to do fancy things within the daw which is what i often do with the mpk since it has such bad ableton live integration so i'm going to show you how to customize these controllers and map them specifically to ableton live as you wish right after i tell you about distrokid the sponsor for today's video alright so to be honest if you're watching this you probably already know that distrokid is the easiest way for artists to get their music on all the platforms that they need to be on like spotify apple music even tick tock aside from that and aside from getting a hundred percent of your earnings and getting paid monthly from your music in each one of these i'm trying to bring you a different feature that distrokid offers because they've got lots of good stuff for artists besides just the distribution thing which is why i've been using distrokid since way before they were a sponsor of this channel and one feature that's really important to me is the fact that distrokid makes it easy to claim your official artist channel on youtube under goodies under special access and find youtube official artist channel now this is important for me because i obviously have both a youtube channel and i release music as an artist but what would happen is i would release music and would go on this kind of like awkward low follower low subscriber count youtube thing where the music gets distributed on youtube music so instead i was able to actually link my 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supports the channel so anyway thank you so much distrokid for sponsoring this series now let's get back into it okay so we learned like kind of basics of midi controllers right we learned that some work better that with live than others we learned how to set them up in preferences we learned that some have their own programs built in that we have to you know set up and tell the mpk yes we're using live to live yes we're using the mpk but let me kick it back over to the mpk for a minute because we can actually map this controller and custom map it and i just want to touch on one thing that came up before we talked about distrokid which was the fact that these knobs if i turn them they would jump so we changed the takeover mode right to pick up the reason i didn't have to do that for this one is because these knobs don't end these are called endless encoders they just spin and spin and spin so no matter what device you select they are going to take over from the point where the knob is so that's just a little fine detail but there's drawbacks and pros and cons for either situation anyway custom mapping i do this often with the mpk i also pretty much do it exclusively with the launch control i don't think i use any of the launch controls actual built-in ableton live functionality let's say you are planning a big performance and you don't want to have to worry about selecting a certain device or actually you know let's let's do this let's go to audio effects we had a whole chapter on audio effects so you all know how to do this and follow along let's go to audio effects and let's add an auto filter to the top of this sound let's also add a delay to this sound basic delay now let's say we're playing our keyboard we don't want it to necessarily sound like that all the time but we want to be able to dial in those different effects well we can custom map some of these controls any control that we see on screen here in these devices we can pretty much map to our controller so i'm going to go to midi so that the whole screen turns blue and anything that's highlighted in blue is something that can be mapped so now let's do some mapping and the way we do that is by selecting a knob or whatever we want to control selecting it and then turning the part of our device that we want to control it so that that little number pops up and if we pop up our little side menu here we'll start to get a list of mappings let's do the same for auto filter let's map the frequency of the auto filter twist the knob and let's go ahead and map the delay dry wet now if you're trying to follow along and do this but it did not work no numbers popped up you're turning the knob your controller's on and working go out of midi mode go back to live preferences go back to the beginning of this video when i told you to check the remote box if remote is not checked you will not be able to do these custom mappings okay but aside from that we did and you did you did pay attention at the beginning of the video and you did check remote so those mappings that we just did worked and that means that no matter where that blue hand is remember the blue hand no matter where it is this first knob is going to change reverb dry wet just like we mapped it this next knob is going to change the filter frequency because that's where we mapped it same for delays dry wet so now in a performance [Music] [Music] we can create cool effects that we can use with our hands [Music] and that's just a lot of fun and that was just a quick fast example of some audio effects that we've looked at previously in this series as well as like a quick mapping but that's a lot of fun and that's where the fun comes in with midi controllers and it's not just about mapping knobs to devices we can get more creative which i've done in the past like remember on the launch key how i showed off that record button but the akai mpk mini doesn't have one or maybe whatever controller you have doesn't have that cool functionality so go to midi and real quick let's talk about the mpk before we map this because this is important we've got pad controls up here and cc is an option i'm going to turn cc on because there's a difference between using the pads to play notes and using the pads to control things like a button so cc basically signifies that we want to control something like a button and remember like i said we're in midi map mode we're in cc mode on the mpk anything in blue on screen can be mapped let's map this session record button let's also go ahead and map the midi capture button we haven't really talked about that yet but we will in a bit and now i'm going to delete that original clip that we had if i press this button it triggers recording [Music] i accidentally hit tab during that but as you can see we were able to use our pad to overdub [Music] and now you can get into looping and stuff with a controller i i also map the capture midi which is kind of live's way of being the fbi and always listening so that if you just let the time roll and you play something without recording [Music] i thought that was so great let me capture it now i've got that map to that pad and look what happened without even having to hit record live remembered when i wanted to play you can do that with your mouse too i'm just showing how you can map that that's that capture midi button up there and it goes further folks it goes further it's got a sustained port on it and i've got several videos talking about how i've mapped this sustain pedal plugged into the mpk to create a looping pedal situation this launch control here i use in a lot of my performances and you can see the tape over it because basically i've created a custom mapping that i like where i can do stutters and filtering and effects turn the kick on and off which i always use this button for and suddenly i've transformed this instrument to be customized for my needs and my performance now the final mention and maybe we'll do a part two of this or maybe we'll do a dedicated video to this is i talked about you know ableton live integration from a hardware perspective mpk doesn't seem like they care much about ableton live novation launchkey seems like they care a lot about ableton live but what if ableton made their own controller for ableton live well they did of course and it's called push we're on push 2 by now but that controller which is why i'm thinking we need a dedicated video on push 2 if you do want that comment down below is the most integrated with ableton live made by the people who make the daw of course but in terms of functionality and being integrated specifically for the daw you're not going to be pushed to because ableton made it themselves but there are other really cool controllers like the abc40 that do a great job for session launching and mixer control and you know running more of like a dj style set i guess you could say nonetheless i hope by now after this video you have a good understanding about how to set up the preferences in your daw for different midi controllers remember just because i only showed a couple examples does not mean these are the only midi controllers that all these principles work for going to live preferences making sure you have the correct control surface making sure you have the right boxes checked is important no matter what controller you're using understanding that that blue hand will tell you what device your controller is controlling at the moment and then understanding that we can hit midi and custom map these controllers to control whatever parameters we want them to so we can create dynamic performances or just better workflows for ourselves and that is the overview of midi controllers for ableton live if you did enjoy this video please let me know in a comment down below if you want to know more about midi controllers in general i have a ton of videos on this channel about them so please scour the 600 plus videos here if you need more information or want to hear about more of them don't forget to check out the sponsor link in the description thank you district for sponsoring today's video when you support the sponsor it does support the channel and if you would like to support the channel even more consider becoming a member it's a great community there's a lot of perks involved for you so check that out but anyway that's gonna be it for now thank you all so much for watching this has been tatro have a good one

Channel: TAETRO

Views: 124,067

Keywords: ableton, ableton live, ableton push, novation, launchkey, launchkey mini, akai, beat making, drum pads, drum rack, tutorial, home studio, electronic music, recording studio, producer, home studio producer, beat maker, akai mpk, mpk mini, akai mpk mini

Id: YE6QVzrLNz0

Length: 25min 53sec (1553 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 25 2022