HOW TO USE ABLETON TO MIMIC MLR
That’s right, music production nerduses, I have made an ableton tutorial video. This baby will show you how to use Ableton and Novation Launchpad
to mimic the functionality of the monome program MLR. Essentially what it allows you to do is to chop up clips by restarting the clip at various points in the clip. This sounds more complicated than it is.
This approach has several advantages over the use of the real-deal, monome version of MLR. 1) you get to use all the cool stuff that ableton can do (routing, pitch transposition, warping, fancy colors) 2) you can map it to anything, even the computer keyboard 3) you don’t have to buy max for live. Nerd out.
I also made this little video of me improvising using this setup. This is from a remix of the Yeasayer song “One” that I started but never finished. I realized halfway through making the remix that 1) I hate remixes and 2) the original song was exceedingly wack.
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awesome! thanks
No problem! Hope it is helpful.
Nice tip. I think the whole “follow action” system in clip view is a highly underrated, yet valuable tool in the Live arsenal.
Agreed, follow actions are little understood, but totally crucial.
Haha this is how i told someone to do this a long time ago. I was shocked when he couldnt figure it out.
I feel like follow actions are difficult for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. Don’t judge your homie too harshly, haha.
Nice, thanks so much! But how do you change the colors on the launchpad? For me it’s all orange, can you change that or does it only appear to be green in the video?
When I was playing the Launchpad, I’m pretty sure that I was using the Session view, which will be green on playback and orange when it’s pending.
You can change the color of the User view by rerouting the MIDI signal from Ableton to the Launchpad and putting a MIDI Velocity effect on it, I go over it in this post: http://www.anthonyarroyodotcom.com/theabletoncookbook/2010/11/05/3-tricks-for-using-launchpad-with-ableton-live-drum-racks/
You might have to skip around, there’s a lot of info in there!
Sweet tutorial.
I only got My Launchpad a couple of weeks ago so ALL the knowledge I can get is cool.
Still really need to sort out a useable template for My Nocturn49 and the Launchpad. Any ideas or tips, especially regarding the Nocturn49?
Lovin what You doing, keep em coming Bro!
Thanks! There are actually two ways: either save a template in Ableton, basically empty except for MIDI mappings, or make a remote script. Remote scripts are a little more complicated but totally doable.
Shit, brilliant. Out comes the credit card…
Totally worth it. Totally.
Very nice or i could rather say Excellent!!
I knew how to use follow actions, but you gave great tips! I didn’t know that it’s easy to use sessionview to spilt tracks easily and drag them in clipview. Also great tip to save the clip so I have a template for clips with follow action.
Thanks for your tips to make great music!
Hi,
Just want to clear something up — in order to use MLR, or MLRV (a more modern variant with greatly expanded functionality, rewire support, etc.), you don’t have to own a copy of Max or Max for Live.
One thing I’ve found to work pretty well is having MLRV rewire into Ableton. MLRV also supports the Launchpad natively now (a more recent feature).
Thanks, Chris.
I don’t have a monome myself. I made an arduinome and I never really had any luck with getting MLRV’s tempo to sync with Ableton. The tempo would float a bit. Are the newer builds more reliable? Or did I just have it set up poorly?
There are also some other amazing Launchpad resources, both free and paid, that extend the functionality.
Firstly is the FREE sets from Aurex, no Max4Live needed – http://www.aurexmusic.com
Second are the nativeKONTROL packages that utitlise a custom Bomes client, but are much more powerful – http://www.nativekontrol.com
Both of these are well worth a look.
Cool! Thanks for this. Going in the Toolbox later today.
I’m using Lpc from nativekontrol (which was mentioned above, together with the monomodular script from aumha (for this you would Need m4l, but the biggest Part is written in Python like all other Control surface scripts so its really stable and fast). I really recommend checkin these 2 Things out!!! With lpc you get 7 additional user modes with step sequencers, loop slicer (like mlr), Device controls, etc. and with monomodular you can use all the monome apps, but they are all rewritten for the launchpad so theres no Need for any complicated config. I agree: many m4l Devices are crap, but this is because of how they are written and Not m4l itself! And there are many patches which are so great i never ever want to live without them again, Most of them are nö instruments or Audio Effects, but patches which expanding the functionality of live itself (all the API stuff)
Best regards
Andreas
I couldn’t agree more. I love M4L, but I don’t know enough to “fix” the devices that I download. That’s more my fault than anything, haha!
And thanks for all this cool information. I’ll definitely be following up on this stuff ASAP.
very good !
i don’t have a Launchpad, but i use this technique allot..
thanks for the post!