Ableton Live and Ground Control Pro

[vidarakse]

I just got my Ground Control Pro, and are exited to use it with ableton live to control loops, and especially the looper-function in ableton 8. Anyone having experience with this: please give me som tips and tricks...!

I havent figured out how to even connect it to ableton live yet... But I know it's possible!

Any help is really appreciated. Probably the wrong forum though...

[Showkiller]

I just got my Ground Control Pro, and are exited to use it with ableton live to control loops, and especially the looper-function in ableton 8. Anyone having experience with this: please give me som tips and tricks...!

I havent figured out how to even connect it to ableton live yet... But I know it's possible!

Check out Kid Beyond, who uses a Ground Control Pro as his controller, and Ableton Live. There is even a link at the bottom of the page, to a video of the man doing his thing:

http://www.ableton.com/kid-beyond

He uses Bome's MIDI translator to interface the GC Pro with Ableton Live. That's about all the info I have on this application, but hopefully it's a good start.

SK

[James Santiago]

I just got my Ground Control Pro, and are exited to use it with ableton live to control loops, and especially the looper-function in ableton 8. Anyone having experience with this: please give me som tips and tricks...!

I havent figured out how to even connect it to ableton live yet... But I know it's possible!

Any help is really appreciated. Probably the wrong forum though...

I'm behind in the recent changes to Ableton live. They may have solved the problem with mapping multiple keystrokes to a single footswitch, which is what kid does.

JS

[vidarakse]

Thanks for tips! I am having trouble though, I did download the bome-software, but havent put myself into it yet, as I at last got midi-signals through to live.

But, when I assign the record-button of looper to one of the buttons on the ground-control pro (GCP), it lists in the midi-mapping-list that it is pitchbend, and nothing happenes when I push the button on the GCP.

Do I really need to use the bome-program to be able to control looper with GCP??

[thuggyBear]

bump

The only thing people seem to be using with Ableton Live is that terrible Behringer MFC1010. I'd like to find something that doesn't feel like it's going to break the first time I try and use it live.

[JohnClark]

In every instance I have come across, users have had a much better experience using MIDI Translator to send the rather complex information instead of trying to directly control Live via MIDI.
This allows you much better control over Live to simply set the Ground Control Pro up in 10 Presets per bank mode and send only Program Change messages to MIDI Translator.

@ vidarakse
My first guess is that you have one of the Ground Control Pro expression pedal ports enabled and have it set to control Pitch Bend within your presets.

[thuggyBear]

I broke down and bought Bome's Midi Translator, and have been having some success with mapping the ground control buttons to keystrokes. If you haven't used anything like his before, it's a little daunting, but if you follow the instructions here:

http://www.bome.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=509

They are much easier to follow than the Bome's Manual, who, like so many of these manuals, doesn't seem to make any sense until you've figured out most of it on your own.

Ahem. I'm looking at you, JohnClark, and your Laboratory of Voodoo. Fortunately a couple hours of perusing YouTube, 50 excited teenagers on video later, and I was able to understand some of it.

ANYHOW-

Now that I have finally understood what the difference is between "10 presets/bank" and "4 presets/Bank"*

Since I am remapping all of the commands to keystrokes in any case, I would like to change the [-/No] and [+/Yes] buttons to static assignments, so that I can assign them functions. There way that they scroll through the presets in 10Preset/bank mode isn't very useful to me.

Likewise, having only 4 buttons change function in 4Presets/bank means the easy buttons become useful, but the 8 static assignments are going to require me to jump between a million patches.

Hey, If I could just flip the board around 180°, so that the bank buttons were on the top left, and the scroll buttons were out of my way, I'd be pretty psyched.

I'm a big, clumsy fellah, and after some single malt and two hours playing, it becomes harder and harder to balance on one foot and daintily press a button on the third row from the back in my size 13EE shoes.

So: is there a way to assign something to the [-/No] and [+/Yes] buttons so they have their own values? I guess what I'd love is not 10 Presets/bank, but 12 Presets/bank.




*And for those still confused by this, let me pay a little karma forward by explaining them.

10 Presets/Bank:

Each one of the buttons, labeled in small numbers 1, 2, 3... up to 9, 0 gets its own unique code. The -/No and +/Yes buttons can be used to scoll up and down these presets numerically. Each time you change banks, each button, 1 through 0, gets a completely different assignment.

4 Presets/Bank:

The four buttons along the bottom, labeled 1 through 4 in large numbers, each get a unique code. HOWEVER, the buttons labeled 1 through 8 in small numbers, get fixed codes- so no matter which bank you are in, though 8 buttons always send the same commands.


Since I'm using this for controlling Ableton Live, I can guess (but not verify) why these modes exist. So, I'll leave it to you to troll YouTube- i think you can find some answers there.

[JohnClark]

They are much easier to follow than the Bome's Manual, who, like so many of these manuals, doesn't seem to make any sense until you've figured out most of it on your own.

Ahem. I'm looking at you, JohnClark, and your Laboratory of Voodoo. Fortunately a couple hours of perusing YouTube, 50 excited teenagers on video later, and I was able to understand some of it.

...but I didn't write the Bome's Manual!

Currently the only two button modes are 10 Presets per Bank or 4 Presets per Bank.

In 10 Presets per Bank mode the Data +/- buttons cannot be re-programmed.

For the most part, you would not really want to use the 4 Presets per Bank mode to ultimately control Ableton due to the Instant Access buttons being on/off toggles.

[sleepwalker]

They are much easier to follow than the Bome's Manual, who, like so many of these manuals, doesn't seem to make any sense until you've figured out most of it on your own.

Ahem. I'm looking at you, JohnClark, and your Laboratory of Voodoo. Fortunately a couple hours of perusing YouTube, 50 excited teenagers on video later, and I was able to understand some of it.

...but I didn't write the Bome's Manual!

Currently the only two button modes are 10 Presets per Bank or 4 Presets per Bank.

In 10 Presets per Bank mode the Data +/- buttons cannot be re-programmed.

For the most part, you would not really want to use the 4 Presets per Bank mode to ultimately control Ableton due to the Instant Access buttons being on/off toggles.

Just bought the GCP and this is bumming me out bigtime. The stepping through presets buttons(3/4) are harmful to me since they could do something like launch a different song or start a looper. I wish I could just disable them if I can't map them to something useful. I tried to switch to the 8instant 4 per bank mode, but the FC200 I replaced might be a better option. Bummer. On a positive note, I wrote a PGM Change to Midi Note converter using Max for Live(included in L9) to use the GCP, so that work will extend to any other PGM change device.

[lesjones22]

Sleepwalker,

Is there any chance that I could get that program change to MIDI note converter? My software is looking for MIDI notes and doesn't respond to program changes. Thanks!