Exploring MIDI Mapping, External Instrument, and MIDI CCs

After looking at some of Live’s unique and fun features, such as Tempo Follower and Follow Action, among others, in this chapter, we are going to start by learning more about musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) controllers and getting hands-on with MIDI mapping. MIDI controllers can be a great addition to your setup, especially if you are an instrumentalist or simply like a more tactile music-making experience. They can be considered for both the studio and the stage. MIDI controllers don’t just allow you to play MIDI instruments or external synths; their usage can also be extended a lot by mapping parameters of Live to be controlled by your MIDI controller, which we will explore in this chapter.

We will also look at how you can hook up external synths to Live and what uses MIDI continuous controllers (CCs) have.

The chapter will consist of the following topics:

• MIDI controllers
• MIDI mapping...

Technical requirements

In order to follow along with this chapter, you will need the following:

• A computer with at least 8 GB of RAM and at least an Intel Core i5 processor
• A pair of headphones
• A copy of Live 11 Suite
• Chapter 14 and Chapter 14.2 Ableton Live Projects

MIDI controllers

MIDI controllers send MIDI information to your software (in this case, Ableton Live), and external synths can be connected to mixing desks and even control lighting for shows.

There are many MIDI controllers available made by many different manufacturers in the market. They have become very popular and widely used because they can be accessed even on a super low budget. Because there are so many different types of MIDI controllers out there, we will look at a few things you can take into consideration when picking the best one for you or looking to upgrade.

If you have already done a quick search on the internet, you may have noticed that there are many different types of controllers available, sometimes even on the same MIDI controller device. There can be keys, pads, faders, touchpads, wheels, encoders, and knobs, to name the most popular ones.

You can get MIDI controllers that only have one type of the previously mentioned controllers, which means it is...

MIDI mapping in Live

MIDI mapping parameters in Live are actually really simple. In this section, I will walk you through how to set this up.

Important note

Remember what we learned at the end of the previous section; for MIDI mapping to work, you need to have Remote selected for at least the In port of the device under the MIDI Ports section in the Preferences | Link Tempo MIDI tabs!

If your controller has a screen or lights that can display MIDI controls set to Live, then you should also have Remote ticked for the Out port of the device.

Follow these steps to set up MIDI mapping parameters in Live:

1. Navigate to the PAD track in the Chapter 14 project file.
2. Display the Device View (which is, in this case, an Instrument Rack).
3. Now, press the MIDI button shown in Figure 14.7 or hit Cmd + M (Ctrl + M on Windows):

Figure 14.7 – MIDI map mode switch

Now, you will notice that loads of parameters, buttons, knobs, and faders...

Using hardware synths with Live

Connecting and using external synths with Live is super easy and super fun, in my opinion, as you are expanding your tool set for your music-making projects.

There are different ways you can manage external devices with Live, but we will look at the easiest and most convenient way: using an External Instrument device.

In this example, I will use my Moog Minitaur, one of my favorite synths:

Figure 14.22 – Moog Minitaur synthesizer

Let’s see how to set this up in this section. First, we need to connect and configure the synth, so let’s get started.

Configuring Live’s audio and MIDI preferences

To configure Live’s audio and MIDI preferences, do the following:

1. Open the Chapter 14.2 project file. (Everything is already set up, so you can follow along.)
2. I connected the Moog to the computer with a USB cable. This synth supports MIDI over a USB cable, so I can send MIDI...

MIDI CCs

A MIDI CC is a message category that adds extra functionality to a MIDI message.

We already saw that MIDI CC numbers get assigned to physical controls of MIDI controllers that we can map to a parameter in Live.

However, MIDI CCs can also be used to control the functions of some hardware synths.

In our example, we will control the filter cutoff of my Moog Minitaur using MIDI CC, without actually touching any knobs on the synth, and later record the filter cutoff movements manually from the synth and capture it into a clip envelope in Live!

Before we dive into that, let’s look at a few more things about MIDI CCs.

We have 127 MIDI CC numbers, and they can have a value between 0 and 127. How these MIDI CCs have been implemented can vary between manufacturers, so it is recommended to check! It is like that for my Moog Minitaur, and how the MIDI CCs have been implemented can be found here: https://midi.user.camp/d/moog/minitaur/.

Now that we have learned...

Summary

We have arrived at the end of another chapter.

We learned how to approach MIDI controllers, the different types, and how to map Ableton Live’s parameters to physical controls on your MIDI controller.

Furthermore, we looked at how we can use the Ext. Instrument device in Live to integrate and control your hardware synthesizer with Ableton Live.

We also looked at how to use MIDI CCs to further control your synth.

In the next chapter, we will jump in to talking about playing live!