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MIDI and Key Remote Control 477
Chapter 26
MIDI and Key Remote Control
To liberate the musician from the mouse, most of Live’s controls can be remote-controlled with an
external MIDI controller and the computer keyboard. This chapter describes the details of mapping to the following specific types of controls in Live’s user interface:
1.Session View slots — Note that MIDI and computer key assignments are bound to the slots,
not to the clips they contain.
2.Switches and buttons — among them the Track and Device Activator switches, the Control
Bar’s tap tempo, metronome and transport controls.
3.Radio buttons — A radio button selects from among a number of options. One instance
of a radio button is the crossfader assignment section in each track, which offers three
options: The track is assigned to the crossfader’s A position, the track is unaffected by the
crossfader, or the track is affected by the crossfader’s B position.
4.Continuous controls — like the mixer’s volume, pan and sends.
5.The crossfader, the behavior of which is described in detail in the respective section of the
Mixing chapter (page 199).
26.1 MIDI Remote Control
Live can be controlled remotely by external MIDI control surfaces, such as MIDI keyboards or
controller boxes. Live also offers dedicated control via Ableton Push (page 489), the Akai
APC40 (page 529), Akai APC20 (page 541) and Novation Launchpad (page 549).
Before we explain how remote control assignments are made and implemented, let’s first make
the distinction between MIDI remote control and a separate use of MIDI in Live: as the input for