ableton Live OSC tools

hps-OCS Tools is a toolset for ableton Live 9 with MaxForLive and Liine Lemur iApp. All of these devices share the same design and OSC messages’ nomenclature for a minimal and, I hope, easy configuration. The Lemur iApp auto-detection looks for your iPad on your Wifi network (for best performance, use an “adhoc” connexion between your iPad and your computer – more informations about that at the end of this page).

Why using OSC instead of MIDI messages ? OSC messages are MUCH more precise and it’s important when modulating specific parameters like filter cutoff. Also, the physic behaviors of Lemur objects make this software controller iApp quite unique ! That’s what some of these devices try to explore.

Use the ableton Live help box (at the bottom left) while flying over the MaxForLive devices with your mouse.

Download

The ZIP file below contains the 4 MaxForLive devices (frozen devices), the 3 Lemur templates and 2 Lemur library objects ready to use in your own templates.

hps-OSC-tools-v1_0.zip (2487 downloads)

The small audio clicks and glitches are the result of the fullscreen capture that was running as a background task.

hps-OSC control
A simple device to let you connect up to 6 OSC controllers to 6 ableton Live parameter : select first the OSC controller number (ctrl1 to ctrl128), set the smooth time (from 0 ms to 10 sec), then “auto-map” the ableton Live parameter with a minimum and maximum. DONE !

hps-OSC vector matrix

Same underlying concept and usage as hps-OSC control but with a specific focus on the Lemur multiball object used as an XY pad (with or without physic behaviors). With just 2 OSC messages, you can control up to 8 ableton Live parameters through a matrix dispatch.

hps-OSC vector mix

Same underlying concept and usage as hps-OSC vector matrix but with a specific focus on audio vector mixing of 4 sound sources (a linear mode is also provided for other uses). The 4 audio sources can be 4 tracks or 4 macro controlling instruments’ volume in a rack instrument or … I think you’ve got the point.

hps-OSC nodal mix

I like to summarize this MaxForLive device as “how to dynamically mix 8 audio sources with just ONE finger !”. This device goes one step further than the vector mixing concept by using the Max nodes object in a clever way. Each audio sources (up to 8 tracks or instruments in instruments racks or …) is represented by a node with its X-Y location (it’s a conceptual 2D location, not a “real world” one) and its radius or intensity. Then, there is the listener node – if the listener is inside the radius of one or more nodes you will hear the sound sources with a intensity relative to how far/close the listener is from the nodes.

What is very interesting in this concept is that both the audio sources’ nodes and the listener one can be manipulated with your fingers, but also by the use of the physic behaviors of Lemur multiball object. That’s what the same video at the beginning of this page is about.

Create an adhoc Wifi connexion between your computer and your iPad by watching the videos on the right (or at the end of this page if you are reading it on a small screen device).

In your Lemur and in each device, you have to inform the communication port (that’s where the OSC messages are received). I’m always using PORT 8050 and it’s quite reliable.

In hps-OSC control, hps-OSC vector matrix and hps-OSC vector mix devices, the OSC message nomenclature is:

ctrl1 => /hpsounds/ctrl1 ... ctrl128 => /hpsounds/ctrl128

In hps-OSC nodal mix device, the OSC messages are “hard coded”. I will documented it later here.

For Mac OS

For Windows