Free Ableton Live AfroDJRack #61: Quantize Mapper

Midi Map Record Quantize and Global Launch Quantize in Ableton Live

My 61stFree Ableton Live Pack is another great example of the incredible community of electronic musicians and specifically, Ableton Live users.  For the last couple of months I’ve been in email contact with Ableton Certified Trainer Loudon Stearns, sharing ideas, tips and advice, and we decided to collaborate on a project.  Loudon, is a professor at Berklee Music, and wrote their Ableton Live course.   Turns out he is also well versed in Max for Live.

Loudon asked me if I had any ideas for a Max for Live patch.  I told him that I wished I could control the midi record quantization with a midi controller.   The APC40 can turn it on and off, but there is no way to adjust it otherwise (the iOS app Touchable is the only thing I’ve found that can do this).   I wanted to be able to change the value of quantization with the push of a button on a midi controller.  Aside from supplying a picture for the user interface, testing out the prototypes, and offering a few suggestions, that’s pretty much where my input ends.

Loudon not only created exactly what I had hoped for, but he also added control for the Global Launch Quantization.  Totally awesome.  Another cool thing he did was annotate the actual parts of the patch in the patching mode.  If you’re like me, when you open a Max for Live patch, your brain melts.  Loudon added little notes near every part of the patch and just from that, really helped begin to demystify Max for Live for me.

There were a couple things in the patch that we’d like to function a little differently, and that’s part of this release… maybe you can help!   I noticed that if I mapped the quantization buttons to pads in user 2 mode on my Launchpad, then switched to user 1 mode and then back to user 2, the pads no longer illuminated with the patch.  Somehow it fell out of sync.  Also, if you turn on a certain quantization value,  1/4  note for example, then press it again to turn it off, the quantization value stays at 1/4.  We think it should turn quantization off.  All in all though, the Max for Live patch works great, but we’d love to see what the community does with it, so feel free to mod it and figure out fixes for those issues.