I'm wondering if anyone can help me with a tricky midi mapping. I want to map a foot pedal to be the record start/stop for whatever track is currently record enabled in the next available slot. I want to use this on the fly while performing, so I need the pedal to auto-map to the next slot or switch to the next instrument if I switch what is record enabled without me having to change midi mapping. It needs to stay on that instrument while I'm recording a loop, and then when I push the pedal again switch to the next slot.

How would I go about setting up that sort of auto-mapping? I know auto-mapping is possible, but I have no idea how to set it up, so can someone please point me in the correct direction?

In case it might matter I can attach the foot pedal to either an APC40 or a Korg PadKontrol, but my preference would be to have it attached to the APC.

Thanks,
Caris

I meant to post this in the pro member board, not sure how it ended up here, if you can move it over I would appreciate it.

I think you need max 4 live to do this.

Ableton can only hardmap midi parameters. Thats normal .

U can map the scene navigation keys ( in the session view on the master track ) to a footpedal for example to select next/previous scene.

A bit more info : forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=158414&view=next


I think max 4 live has some features for this, but i am not experienced with m4l.

Hope something helps.
PLease give feedback if you worked anything out.

Thanks for the pointer, I discovered that there is an auto-mapping function in Ableton (there is a file you can edit), but the APC40 doesn't use it, so that didn't really help. So I think that you are right that M4L is probably the way to go, I have seen some very tricky stuff done with it, like reprogramming the who APC40, or switching it to run as a Monome, but I haven't had a chance to mess with Max so I'm not sure how all that stuff is done yet. If anyone knows it would be of great help.

Looks like that forum post might be helpful, thanks for that. I'll let you guys know if I get it figured....

I don't know if this is the type of thing you are looking for:

bl0rg.net/~manuel/fcb1010-mappings/

I loaded it and am currently tweaking it to my taste. I honestly have no idea how he did it, but it is pretty cool and sounds close to what you are asking. The FCB1010 is nice itself and is not too pricey. Hope this gets you closer to where you want to be.

9000, checked out that forum post, the OP is looking to do the same thing as me, but the question is answered for clip launch, but not really for record. It looks like the solution there is close, but will work for a single track, not for whatever track is record enabled.

Pedeninious, I checked out that page on the fcb1010, the description for pedal 8 sounds pretty close to what I'm looking for, though I would like it to record to the first open slot in whatever is record enabled (which could be multiple instruments ideally), rather than whatever is selected. Unfortunately this page does a setup via a software installation for that pedal board rather than telling you how to setup the mapping for any pedal, and I'd like to do it with one of my APC40 pedals.

So it looks like max is the best suggestion, I'm going to try to find some time this weekend to look into doing this with M$L and see if I can figure it out; definitely will be a sweet setup if I can get it working.

So I believe that I do what you are trying to do. I am kind of a live looping project and I use the behringer fcb1010 foot controller. You can program it to send cc messages making any pedal what u want it to be, therefore it has ten pedals which are like so 1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 0
I have mapped the 5 pedal and the 0 pedal to be my up and down arrows which you see while midi map is pressed over in the middle of the master column. Also in each instrument column in midi map mode is a play and stop button which lets say for my bass i use pedals 1 and 2 for the midi mapped play button which also start record clip if instrument record is enabled and use pedals 6 and 7 as the stop clip button for the column also only seen in midi map mode. Pedals 3 and 4 I use to start recording my loops for keyboard and 8 and 9 for stopping them. So I always have my instruments armed and ready to go and have two columns for each instrument for making loops on the fly. With mapping the stop buttons for each you can do some live mixing with your feet but with the pedals 5 and 0 being my up and down arrows when i push them it either moves down a scene or up a scene, so if you start on scene one at the very top and make a loop you simply push your pedal 0 which moves you down to the next scene which is open so you dont need to stop your previous clip you just push the same pedal was used to record clip but now you are one scene down in an open cell so it just starts recording the new loop. Doing it this way is great cause you can layer by having multiple columns for one instrument and being able to scoll down with the pedals means you can just keep going down and down so it is never ending. Hope this helps and sorry if I didn't do a good job explaining it has taken me a long time to get this figured out but glad to help so let me know.

Heath

pull up a picture of the fcb1010 so you can try and visualize what i am describing.... Also pull up ableton and put it in midi map mode so you can see what I'm talking about

Hey Heath, thanks for the reply, you are basically doing what I want to do, I have been picturing it with use of record enable and without the use of up/down/left/right, but actually that would probably work with a little practice, and may have the advantage of being usable while other band members instruments are running through live which I don't want to loop, which may end up being the case. However I still have the issue of only having one pedal (actually I have three, but that still isn't enough, so it's best to do it with one), and those play buttons are per track. So I need some way to have the midi mapping work with whichever one is selected, and not just map to one of them. Is there a way to do that which I'm overlooking?

I just discovered Bomes midi translator yesterday and I'm betting I can do a remapping with that, but still need to download that an approach the learning curve on it, looks like an extremely cool tool that is being used for a lot of great mods to the APC40 and other midi devices, so I may just learn to use it and see where that takes me.

how many instruments would you be trying to loop and how many at the same time? Sounds like you have the apc40 and i have two apc20 which allows me to arm up to sixteen tracks but with the behringer fcb1010 you can map one pedal to work one track like explained before or the same pedal can do multiple tracks at the same time but if you mapped it that way it would be stuck on starting record on however many it was mapped to but if you wanted sound to be recorded in each of those tracks that one pedal started then make sure on the apc that you have them armed and if you only wanted sound in a couple of them then you could simply unarm the one you don't want... or you could leave all of them armed and push one pedal to start multiple cells recording but if one does not have an instrument going through it than it would still show up as a cell but there would be no wav file in it. It would just be blank. Just keep in mind that you can midi map the same button or pedal to do more than one thing. you can also create a macro which will do multiple things that you want with one twist of a knob but rotary knobs take time and its kind of confusing.

Cheers

let me know what you get figured out

so basically if you want you could take the one pedal and map it to all the play buttons on all the tracks that you might want to loop. All would fire but some would be blank and the ones you used would have sound, but could be tricky if using an apc and looking at it and it looks like there are more loops going than actually are but if you know which columns are the correct one you might be able to make it work.

Thanks Heath, I hadn't thought of that, it could work, at least that would work for now to give me a way to practice the setup, and perhaps in the future I can clean it up more with using Bomes midi translator once I get that figured out.