MonoLive – Monome for Live

monome

Since the release of Ableton Live 8, there has been quite a buzz around Max4Live, the common project of Ableton and Cycling’74. By integrating the powerful Max/MSP/Jitter platform, the promise was to actually enable the users to extend Live with MIDI and audio effects, virtual instruments, customized control surfaces, video playback devices………..

After a rather long beta phase, it has finally surfaced on 23rd november, and it seems to be a pretty good job. Particularly pleasing for owners of the “new kids on the block” in the Live controller world Launch Pad and APC 40 who are just waiting to put those user modes to work.

In order for my beloved monome 64 not to be left behind, I made a set of devices which will allow you to make the little 8×8 controller your one-stop shop for controlling Live.

MonoLive consists of four devices:

  • MonoInterface is the central hub communicating with the controller and the other devices
  • MonoMidi allows you to control a Live MIDI track (clip launch, solo/mute, EQ settings), including MIDI Editing for drum sequencing, patterns and arpeggios with up to 64 steps
  • MonoAudio puts you in control of a Live Audio track (clip launch, solo/mute, EQ settings) as well as controlling the loop length a la Traktor.
  • MonoBufferShuffler is based on the factory BufferShuffler device but has been enhanced to allow controlling it via the monome. The standard functionalities such as clip launch.

In addition to those features, MonoLive can do a little bit more:

  • Support of up to 5 return tracks for bus effects
  • Support of up to 7 FX tracks for modulation of the audio stream
  • Transposition up/down
  • Smooth transition of send values and EQ settings over time.
  • Clip overview mode to support up to 49 tracks with 64 scenes
  • MIDI overview mode to support MIDI clips over 4 octaves and 64 steps
  • Optional Tempo tilt
  • MIDI humanisation mode

The documentation is included with the devices, just download below and start pushing some buttons. I also provided a demo LivePack based on the free Swayzak LivePack available on the Ableton site.

Have fun and let me know how it goes…..
Download

MonoLive v0.91 (update without using 3rd party externals)
MonoLive Demo LivePack

Comments

14 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.
  1. modul8or,

    Hi flakey,
    seems to be a nice one! what’s the OSC address of your plugs?
    Thanks

  2. freelektron,

    Hi Thank you so much for this really nice instrument.

  3. >>The monomeserial prefix is /monolive
    Would love to see this in the docs. Too many authors leave this vital info floating around somewhere 🙂 Also, when editing the device, every it seems every subpatch in your application opens up – about 20 windows. I’d love to just see the ‘main’ patch open instead.

    Do you think this should work with the 128 model? I’m not seeing any clips represented in clip view after placing the control device on my master track.

    Thanks for your work on this – hope to get it working.

    • nick,

      sorry for not mentioning that info in the docs, should be there.

      regarding the windows, I asked that question before at the max forums, didn’t get a satisfying answer how to avoid all the subpatchers to open.

      MonoInterface itself doesn’t display clip info but just collects it from the track devices (except for the FX clips which are handled by MonoInterface). So, you would have to use MonoInterface +MonoAudio/MonoMidi/MonoBufferShuffler.

      Some of the offsets are 64-specific, so not sure if everything works with 128. but shouldn’t be too hard to fix if you let me know how it goes

      nick

  4. bob phillips,

    just got my belated birthday (8 december) present! now if the 64 would only ship. thanks for the toys!

  5. RdF,

    Hi,
    Is there a possibillity to set this up on bigger monome’s? I’m on a 256 and would like to spread the clip launching expecially over the whole 16×16 grid.

    • nick,

      first of all, shortly there will be a completely overhauled version of MonoLive which includes a lot of the functions of MonoAudio and MonoMidi. Still, at the moment, it is hardwired for a 64, but I will eventually provide a version which allows one to configure it for their respective controller.

      Issue is that there are quite some functions which support scrolling, and all of those have to be changed to support different monomes. But I am on it, so stay tuned.

      nick

  6. ohmpow,

    Can not thank you enough for this app! Its opened up so many possibilities!
    I run monomulator and my APC on a PC
    I have most things working great but I have an issue 1 out of 2 times i try to jam within live….
    I am a total noob with max….but I may have found a bug?/ It seems when i want to jump to the number 6 menu to adjust EQ kills, my apc40 button (clip stop row 8) sends a message to play all clips in a highlighted row?

    thus destroying any thing you have just played…

    It could very well be user error, but it s driving my nitz!

    Any help would be greatly appreciated!

    ohmpow

    • nick,

      glad you like it…

      what you found is actually not a bug but a feature. most of the buttons have multiple assignments, so number 6-8 also deal with scene management if you keep them pressed.

      button no 6 will start the currently selected scene if held for longer than half or quarter of a second (can’t remember), button 7 and 8 will scroll the scenes up and down if held.

      so it might be worthwhile to extend the time period for scene launch to prevent this from happening. But in any case, there will be a new version of Monolive very soon which encapsulates MonoAudio and a lot of MonoMIDI too. So you won’t need to put MonoAudio devices into each track anymore, it’s all managed within one single device.

      It will also give you a device selection/dynamic mapping mode to control the first 8 parameters of any device loaded into your set…so stay tuned 🙂

      nick

  7. newty,

    hi, love your app.

    problem im having is that messages gets mixed up between monomidi and monoaudio

    ive also tried using the individual devices as on maxforlive library site, but they have the same problem.

    when i press a button on the step monomidi sequencer it fires another message to the monoaudio

    so frustrating as this would be an amazing app if i could get it working properly, but been trying for days now and looks like ill have to give up

    cheers for the hard work anyway

    n

  8. newty,

    also, hitting buttons on the step sequencer fires the monoaudio in another track, which is strange. i thought the messages would be limited to the selected track

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