in this video I'm gonna show you the four step process to MIDI map any
controller in Ableton as well as the three different types of MIDI mappings
that are available to you and for those of you who stick around to the end I'm
gonna show you my 3 power mappings that you need to be using to operate Ableton
efficiently without touching your mouse Brett Pontecorvo here at live
keyboardist comm where I help keyboard players just like you when the ins and
outs of Ableton with sound design and with live performance techniques now if
you're new here please consider hitting that subscribe button
please consider liking this video but without any further ado let's jump in so
in order to MIDI map in Ableton you're gonna need a couple of things the first
thing you're gonna need is a controller so today I'm using the key lab 88 but
any controller will do even if you're using like a Novation launch control
excel or whatever controller you have will definitely work you're also going
to need a copy of Ableton a USB or a MIDI cable and a way to connect that to
your computer either directly or with a USB hub alright so now that we've got
the hardware out of the way let's check out the four step process for MIDI
mapping in Ableton the first step is to open up your settings so we can do that
in two ways we can either go here and click live preferences or if we want to
be super fast we can hit command common now under the link MIDI tab down here at
the bottom you're gonna see this MIDI ports option and we have inputs and
outputs and this tells Ableton how we are gonna handle incoming information so
you're gonna want to find your controller and mine is the key lab 88
and you're gonna want to make sure that remote is turned on now if you're using
a keyboard you probably also want track turned on and I have a full video
explaining the ins and outs of this now if you're using a controller that has
light feedback something like a launch control or a launch pad rather you're
gonna want to make sure that the output is turned on for remote as well because
that's how those lights end up working okay cool so our preferences are now
completely out of the way so now we have to end
MIDI mapping mood and there's also two ways to do that we can either click MIDI
or we can have command M and that will bring us into MIDI mode and you'll
notice now that on the screen there are highlighted parameters anything that is
highlighted is mapable and the process to map that is really easy just click on
what you want to map and move what you want to map it to but as I mentioned
earlier there are actually three types of MIDI mappings so let's explore those
a little bit the first is what I like to call a continuous mapping or a fader
mapping so with something like volume if you're mapping a knob or a fader and
this is a sort of continuous setting now when I exit MIDI mapping mode whatever I
mapped I'm gonna have control over but what's cool is you can actually change
how much control you have so for example with volume you probably don't want to
be going above zero and maybe you want to be able to drop the level down but
you don't want it to totally drop out so I've set my values there and now you'll
notice I have a certain amount of control but not outside of the
parameters that I have set for myself now the second type of mapping is a
toggle this is like an on/off switch so I'm going to go ahead and map a toggle
button to the speaker here and now you'll notice when I hit it once it's on
and when I hit it again it's off so that's our toggle mapping and the last
one is a gate mapping now a gate mapping has a control active when you're
pressing the button but when you lift your hand it no longer is active so I'm
gonna map that to solo here so now when I hold it down I've got solo and when I
lift it solo goes off and this can be handy if you want to just have something
kind of momentary that's happening but congratulations you've made it to the
end of the video where I'm gonna show you my 3 power mappings that you need to
be using to control Ableton efficiently without a mouse the first power mapping
is being able to move throughout session view without your mouse so to do that
we're gonna enter MIDI mapping mode and we're gonna map a continuous controller
to one of these guys over here right next to the down arrow
and what that's gonna do is allow me to vertically scroll without ever using my
mouse so I can really quickly jump around the set now my second power
mapping allows me to turn sound on and off so if I enter MIDI mapping mood and
I map a button to my chain selector I'm gonna be able to toggle a sound on and
off so minimum is zero I'm gonna set my maximum to one and now when I hit this
button you're gonna notice that I'm able to have it so that when I hit it once
I've got this muted when I hit it once I've got sound and when I hit it again
no sound at all which is a really nice feature and my third one which is the
simplest but perhaps the most profound is your volume faders now this might
seem obvious but this is something you're going to be touching all the time
so if it's a common thing we want to really make sure that that is mapped now
if you're ready to go a little bit deeper what you can do is go ahead and
click on this video here that's gonna show you the real ins and outs of the
MIDI settings in Ableton and if you're trying to map your controller to the
tempo of Ableton it's a little bit different than what I shared today so
this video here is gonna help you to do that now please make sure you click that
like and subscribe button and check out one of these videos and I will see you
next