MP-201 and Ableton Live?

[Reggie T]

What are some good applications for using a Multi-Pedal with Ableton 7? Ableton sees the pedal, but I'm not effecting anything by sweeping the pedal and dialing through the presets. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Amos]

Wow, there are no end of good uses for the MP-201 and Ableton Live
It just requires a little bit of mapping on your part.

First go into Live's Preferences and on the Midi/Sync tab, select/turn on the Remote button in the row for the MP-201 midi input (if on a PC, this might be called "USB Audio Device" - on a Mac it will say MP-201).

Now, open any Live project of yours that has an audio track to listen to.
On the MP-201, go to preset 00 and make sure that only Channel 1 is turned on (turn off the other channels). Now, pick an audio track in your Live session and drop an Auto Filter onto it.

Select the auto filter, now press Control (or Command, on a Mac) M to go into Midi Mapping mode. This is where you can map any MIDI CC number to any knob or parameter within Live.

So, click on the Filter Cutoff in the Auto Filter (a small box with a number marked "Hz" in it).
Now move the MP-201 pedal. MP-201 channel 1, if it is active, should send a Midi CC message to Live, and Live should map this to the Auto Filter Cutoff parameter. Press Escape to get out of Midi Mapping mode. Now move the MP-201 pedal back and forth. You should see the filter cutoff sweep up and down.

Play your track and live-tweak the filter... fun! But this is only the beginning. Scroll through some MP-201 presets and you'll get LFOs to the filter, where you can sweep the rate from the pedal... also fun.

Now extend this basic idea to all the different kinds of control the MP-201 gives you, and think about absolutely any parameter at all within Live... you can use Midi CC data to control almost anything you want.

I still haven't worked out a good way to use the MP-201 to navigate from clip to clip and launch different ones, but using the MP201 in Gate mode it is very easy to launch a specific clip or scene.

One of my favorite simple tricks is to set up multiple Audio tracks in live for live multitrack recording... map all the Record buttons on all the audio tracks to the same Gate channel on the MP-201. Then with one stomp on an MP-201 footswitch I can start 8 audio tracks recording in Live on the same beat. Very handy...

-Amos

[Reggie T]

Thanks Amos! I've been watching the videos. Would be awesome to see some MP-201/Live videos.

Just got the MP-201 yesterday, so I've barely explored it. I did discover that I needed to enable MIDI out and in for USB and that is why I wasn't getting anything before.

[Klopfgeist]

So, click on the Filter Cutoff in the Auto Filter (a small box with a number marked "Hz" in it).
Now move the MP-201 pedal. MP-201 channel 1, if it is active, should send a Midi CC message to Live, and Live should map this to the Auto Filter Cutoff parameter. Press Escape to get out of Midi Mapping mode. Now move the MP-201 pedal back and forth. You should see the filter cutoff sweep up and down.

I wanted to point out that while in MIDI Mapping Mode, you can scale the range of the parameter in Live that you are sending the MIDI message to, so if you wanted a full sweep of the pedal to sweep only half the frequency of the filter in Live, you can set the min/max values for it. Useful for guitar wahs and such.

[Reggie T]

Thanks Klopfgeist. Very good to know! Looking forward to the weekend so that I can try out all of these suggestions.

[bichuelo]

I've been trying to use the MP201 in Ableton Live, and it shows up fine on Mac, but not in Windows. It actually recognizes the hardware, and it shows up on the device manager as USB Audio Device, but there are no new MIDI ports in the system.

I haven't changed anything in the Utilities menu, anyone else can reproduce this issue?

thanks!

[the mink]

I'm using the MP-201 with Live's 'Loopr' feature and it Doth Rock.

[Reggie T]

I'm using the MP-201 with Live's 'Loopr' feature and it Doth Rock.

I've played with Looper in Ableton. What a party! How are you using the Multi-Pedal with it? Curious. I have a sustain pedal that I set up as a play/record toggle. That's effective, too.

[the mink]

I set up three tracks with a looper each, connecting one switch on the MP-201(Quad mode) to the multi-function button of each looper. Then I recorded a loop on each one, trying to use the mouse as little as humanly possible. (You do have to arm each track for recording.) When the loops were done, I used the 'drag' function inside the Loopers to put them on a new audio track as finished 'clips.'

THEN, going to a new preset on the MP that I had routed to trigger those clip slots, I was eventually able to switch between listening to each loop using only the buttons on the MP, while playing guitar. It was tricky though, because you have to hit 'play' on the next clip in the bar before it starts (like anything in Live)... and hit 'stop' on the clip that's currently playing, right when the new one triggers. I have a feeling I could get really good at it, but if you know a slicker way to get three Loopers doing 'verse, chorus, bridge,' let me know...

[Reggie T]

...trying to use the mouse as little as humanly possible. (You do have to arm each track for recording.)

Thanks for the details. Sounds fun. I have a Novation LaunchPad and it works great for keeping my hand off the mouse.

[the mink]

Akai APC40 here. Still in the early learning stages though.