GROUND CONTROL PRO + Midi Translator + Abelton 5

Hi there guys,

After seeing Kid Beyond, I have just brought a Ground Control Pro Midi Foot Controller, Abelton 5 and downloaded a freeware version of Midi Translator. I am running the Ground Control Pro into a MidiSport 2x2 into my ThinkPad T41 Laptop.

Abelton indicates the Ground Control is talking to it because when I press a button on the Ground Control, the 'Midi Track In' indicator goes off in Abelton.

Midi Translator indicates the Ground Control is talking to it because if I click 'Capture Midi' and press a button on the Ground Control it recognises a midi signal: C0 00 (button 1) for example.

I can follow all tutorials on getting midi translator to speak to Abelton via keystrokes on the keyboard no problem . . . I just can't seem to make it work with the grond control pro!

My experience with midi has been limited to softsynths and programing parts. Not hooking up gear to talk to each other . . . So the semantics confuse me.

I know the issue lays in how I set up the Ground Control. The manual doesn't really talk to me. Maybe I am stupid with this sort of thing . . . Maybe I am not. The question is:

Can anyone out there point me in the direction of some online tutorials about programming Ground Control?

Or any suggestions?

Cheers!


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I don't know any other tutorials than the one in these forums.

Maybe you should try it in steps?

1) make sure MT is receiving Ground Control's MIDI data.
2) then you can create a Translator entry, e.g. C0 00 (with Capture MIDI). As Outgoing Action, specify a keystroke, e.g. letter "a".
3) now open a text editor like Word, OpenOffice, Notepad or so, and press the button on the Ground Control. It should enter an "a" into the text program (be sure that the text program is activated).
4) now try the same with Ableton and see if/how it receives the keystroke.

So then you have the basic layout done. Now you can go ahead and load the bmtp and ableton files (from the tutorial) and they should work then, too.

Regards,
Florian

florian wrote:I don't know any other tutorials than the one in these forums.
Regards,
Florian

Is there any tutorial on setting up Ground Control Pro/Ableton in MT Pro to just turn scenes off and on? I'm trying to place ALL my tunes into sets in Ableton Live and then turn on/off each tune (scene) separately.

Gary

Hi Gary,

the general approach and concept is always the same:

1. create a Translator and edit it. The Edit Translator Window opens
2. determine the "Incoming Trigger", i.e. the message that you want to respond to. In case of the Ground Control, or any MIDI device, select MIDI as Incoming type and use the Capture function to see what is being sent by the device. You'll see the MIDI message in hexadecimal notation. If you see "pp" or so replacing numbers, it's an auto fill feature for variables. You can click on individual messages in the MIDI box during capture to use any of the individual MIDI messages instead.
3. Go to the Outgoing Action tab. Here you can enter the translated message or action. If what you want to do (turn scenes on and off) can be done with MIDI, then select MIDI and enter the MIDI message, again in hexadecimal notation. If what you want to do can be activated with a keystroke or a keyboard shortcut, select Keystroke as Outgoing Action and enter the keystroke(sequence) in the keystroke field.

If you have trouble converting MIDI messages to hexadecimal notation, check out the quick help in by pressing the Help button in the Edit Translator window. Or, ask here.

Hope that helps! Otherwise, please provide more details, i.e. how scenes are turned on and off in Ableton Live, etc.
Florian