Comments on: Ableton Live Clip Triggering With a Keyboard

By: yan prawda

yan prawda — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:48:03 +0000

hi! it is very nice to see another ideas of mapping for ordinary keyboards-clip triggering. my m-audio trigger finger is just too ‘valuable’ only for simple triggering clips and different simple ‘on/off’ functions. so i plugged external usb-keyb.to my laptop, mapped it in columns and painted them with different colours, with the stickers for the prices (you know,small-ones from the shops or markets,stores… with a price on it ). they even glare in the dark(not too much like neon-lights but enough) what is important for live gigs. an what is more important you can write on them and change very quickly,they are cheap,come in preety big packaging(cca 100 pieces/pulley).
now,another story is HOW will you map your keyb. my opinion is that main thing is to be consist in mapping and some things allways map identically and leave a part of keyb. for variations. HOW,it’s your decision and how best fit for you! very usefull is to know that there are combinations with SHIFT/CAPSLOCK and CTRL keys, so you have even more keys.
my ex:
red 123 green 45 yellow 678 orange 9 white 0′
qwe r tzu io p÷
asd f ghj kl ć
on red i always put drumloops (if i need more, i use with CAPSLOCK etc)
on first green-basslines or perc-variations
on yellow ‘lead-things’ (synths,strings…it dependes)
on orange fx,drones,occasionally sound,etc
on white usualy vocal samples and variations but it is left for diferent needs, not only clip triggering
keys yxcvbnm,. i mapped for scene triggering
that’s it for now and you have to figure out what’s best for you.

By: Kent Sandvik

Kent Sandvik — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:49:30 +0000

I’m not sure you could change Live’s default keyboard mappings — unlike in Logic where everything is configurable.

Personally I try to avoid remapping keys, main reason is that then I could jump from one system to another, even others’ setups, and remember how the default configurations are. But sometimes there’s indeed a need to remap keys. You could always ask Ableton to put in a feature to remap their default keys.

By: Freddie

Freddie — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 20:11:56 +0000

I’m actually having a hard time re-mapping the keys. I want to change F9 from master record to unmute track 9. i’m a little confused about how to do that. What steps did you take, if you don’t mind?

By: Kent Sandvik

Kent Sandvik — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 02:36:10 +0000

Yes, it’s worth exploring. Some might like it, others not. I’m still testing this out. An external keyboard is nothing bad to have on a gig — it does not look like DJ gear, but it might function fine.

Now, high resolution touch screens, that’s the way to go, but we don’t have commercial solutions available yet…

By: Steven Jones

Steven Jones — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 09:32:11 +0000

Hi Kent

Thanks for the post. I am also looking for how to trigger clips in a 4 channel arrangement. I have recently bought a kenton killamix and have been using that, it works quite well. on midi channel one i have the row of buttons controlling clips 1-8 on ableton channel 1, and so on. However, this can be a problem as i have tempo and volumes on channel one and do need to swap between.

From what you have posted though I could use the three functions with the numbers, and dedicate one to my killamix. Not sure how well this will work, but as you say, maybe a combination could be the answer. The KMX is so small i couldnt see a time when i dont have it around.

Ste