Let's explore some MIDI mapping and key mapping options in Live.
Over here, I've got one of my favorite controllers, the MPK Mini made by Akai,
and I just love how it has a range of controls available.
You've got your key bed, you've got some drum pads, you've got the control knobs over here,
and I think it would be really great if we could use a couple of these knobs to control
some effects — maybe some filters or reverb or delay. And I could do that with MIDI mapping,
so I can assign a parameter in Live to be controlled by any one of these knobs. Let's head
into our preferences by pressing command comma or control comma and here we are in the link, tempo,
and MIDI tab. Before I start mapping, I do want to make sure that I have the remote box checked for
the input of my MIDI controller. Without that box checked I won't be able to remotely control Live
from the Akai MPK Mini. So now that we've got that checked, let's close out of preferences
to begin mapping my controller. Let's enter MIDI mapping mode which we can do by clicking on the
MIDI box at the top right of Live. Once we click on the MIDI box, a number of things will turn
a shade of blue and anything that is shaded can be MIDI mapped. Let's start off fairly simple,
I'd like to map this topmost knob to the master volume of my Ableton Live set. So first,
I'll click on the master volume control of Live. If something has been selected while you're in
MIDI mapping mode, you'll see four black corners show up. So now that I've got that selected,
let's move this knob. Now, on the left side of Live, I can see that a MIDI mapping has
been created. I've got CC 104 which is the control message that this knob is sending out connected to
the master volume. Let's exit MIDI mapping mode by clicking on the MIDI button again. Now I can use
this knob to control the volume of my master track without having to touch my computer. Let's see how
this works in action, so I'm going to launch one of my scenes and we'll try using the knob.
And bring the volume back up.
Great, so that's working awesome. Let's map something else. And I already do
have a filter on the master track from a previous video, so let's go ahead and
map the filter frequency to one of these knobs. We'll re-enter MIDI mapping mode.
Let's click on the filter frequency knob and map it to this knob, instead. Now one more
thing before I exit MIDI mapping mode, I'd like to set a minimum value for my filter frequency. So,
for example, when I bring the knob all the way down, I still want to hear a hint of something. So
let's head over to the list of MIDI mappings and over here we have the ability to set a minimum.
We can also set a maximum. Let me just pull this out a little bit. So in this case,
we'll leave the maximum value all the way up, but let's set the minimum to maybe 500 hertz.
Now, let's exit MIDI mapping mode and see how the filter is gonna work…
and opening it up…
Great, so that's a really quick way to start MIDI mapping.
What if we don't have a controller though? Well, to a degree, we can still use our
computer keyboards for some mapping functionality and that's through key mapping. Since computer
keys aren't like knobs and they don't have continuous values, I find them really useful
for one-off commands like launching a scene. So that's what I think I'd like to do. I want to map
a couple of my computer keys to launch certain scenes in Live. Let's enter key mapping mode
this time by clicking on the key button at the top right of Live. And now certain things will
turn a shade of orange, instead. Let's click on each of the scenes. And I like to map them,
maybe, to the numbers on my computer keyboard. So we've got one, two, three, four, five,
six, and let's also map seven because that's an empty scene, so that way we can stop
all of the clips. Now, we'll exit key mapping mode and let's test a few of these scene launches out.
We've got one. Here's two.
Three
Four
Five
Six for our outro, and seven to launch an empty scene and stop all clips. So things are working
great, and that's how you can get started with adapting your productions into performances.
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