Hi guys

Although I've been using Ableton for quite some time, it's only now, when I need to use multiple MIDI ports for MIDI mapping to various parameters, that I notice Live cannot discern the MIDI ports when doing the MIDI mappings. It only sees the MIDI channel and the note/CC.
So if, for example, I have two MIDI keyboards, and I want to use one of them to trigger clips and the other one to play synths, I have to set them to output on different MIDI channels, otherwise when I start playing synths I'll be triggering the clips as well, although each of them is on a different MIDI port, obviously.

Am I missing something here? Or this is the way Live works and it's impossible to select also the MIDI port, not only the MIDI channel when doing the mappings?

Do you have "I|O" showing? That shows your ports

If by that you mean the "I|O" button that shows/hide the In/Out section for every track, then yes, I have that showing, but I don't quite see how that helps when doing the MIDI mapping.

I guess he ment that in the I/O-section you can select only one controller as input-type for a track (instead of 'All Ins') -> see example below


As example, you can set the I/O-input like this:

Track 1 - Drums : input = keyboard 1
Track 2 - Synth : input = keyboard 2

Midi-keyboard-2 only triggers the assigned track 2.

Thanks. Unfortunately it seems I didn't make myself clear enough, and I apologize.
So let me try again, and let's say:

Keyboard 1 (set to output MIDI on channel 1) is MIDI mapped to trigger clips in Session View (clips from different tracks). For example, every note (key) on this keyboard will trigger a different clip.

Keyboard 2 (set to output MIDI on the channel 1 as well) is used to play a synth on, let's say, track 10. Although this track is set to receive MIDI only from keyboard 2, the problem is that this keyboard will also trigger clips because it's set to the same channel as keyboard 1 (although on a different MIDI port).

What can be done is to disabled the Remote Control from the Keyboard 2, so all the MIDI data from it will only be used to play the synth and not to trigger clips. But this is an option just in some cases, because, if Keyboard 2 has knobs and faders and you would like to assign them to control different parameters in a certain synth, then the Remote Control should be enabled.

You were completely clear the first time, people just don't bother to pay attention.

Only solution has to do with enabling/disabling "remote" in the MIDI settings, but like you said, that may limit things more than you'd like.

Well I misunderstood his question

No need to apologize. From the example in your first post I just assumed you only use one keyboard (which has controls ) to trigger things ...


.. but in this case: Yeah, it's like Aural Chaos posted: enabling/disabling remote


Not sure if it might be also possible to make a user remote script for the knobs/faders of the second keyboard. (using it as a control surface to trigger things and enable it under Midi-Port to play notes)) ??

http://www.macableton.com/hardware-midi-controllers/user-rem ote-scripts.html

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/07/ableton-live-midi-remo te-scripting-how-to-custom-korg-nanoseries-control/
Last edited by solger on Tue Jan 22, 2013 9:29 am; edited 3 times in total

Thanks a lot guys for your input. No problem if some of you misunderstood what I was saying. I appreciate that you're trying to help anyhow.


I'm gonna check that. I'm not very familiar with the user remote scripts.

Jta I use apc40 for clips and an alisis kbd, I'll post the config if it'd help