Ableton Live 9 with The Alphasphere

Hey. My name's Liam Lacey and I'm the software developer behind the AlphaSphere and its AlphaLive software. In this tutorial video I'm going to show you how to use the AlphaSphere as a multichannel MIDI instrument within Ableton Live 9. I have also made videos for a number of other DAWs, so make sure that you check out the ones that are relevant to the DAWs that you use. Also please note that this is part 2 of the "Using the AlphaSphere as a Multichannel MIDI Instrument" tutorial, so if you haven't done so yet, you may want to first check out part one of the tutorial where I go over how to program the sphere to be a multichannel MIDI instrument using its AlphaLive software. So in this video I'm going to cover three main things within Ableton Live -- how to connect multichannel MIDI instruments, how to add new instrument tracks and assign individual MIDI channels to each, and finally give an example of how you can map MIDI CC controls to software parameters. So here I have Ableton Live 9 running on OS X. I've got a new empty project open, which I set up by going to 'File-> New Live Set', and then I just deleted some of the default tracks that they give you, just leaving one MIDI track. The AlphaSphere is plugged into the computer and here I've got the AlphaLive application running, and I'm using the AlphaLive project that we created in part 1 of this tutorial, which essentially set different MIDI channels to the different rows of pads. First, lets go over how to connect the AlphaSphere to Ableton Live and setting up its MIDI input. What you need to do first is go to 'Live-> Preferences' if you're on OS X, or if you're on Windows the 'Preferences' option will be in the 'Options' menu here. So lets go to 'Live-> Preferences' and in the preferences window you want to go to the MIDI options down here. So click on the MIDI tab, and here are all your MIDI preferences. The AlphaSphere should automatically appear in this MIDI port list. Lets go to the Input AlphaSphere port and we want to make sure that 'Track' is set to 'On', and 'Remote' is set to 'On'. And that's all you need to do to connect the AlphaSphere to Ableton Live. Next, I'm going to show you how we go about adding 3 virtual instruments to Ableton Live and giving each one a different MIDI channel. First lets give an instrument to this default MIDI track. You can find the instruments in the browser window here; if you can't see the browser you can display it by toggling this button here. So lets go to 'Instruments', and lets find a lead sound. This *** harp sound seems good. So lets double-click that, and as you can see it's applied it to this first track. Next we need to click this button here so that we can show the in/out section of each track -- that's given us these options here. Lets set the MIDI input -- lets set it from 'AlphaSphere', and lets give this track MIDI channel 1. We need to make sure that the track is record-enabled, which it is because this button here is red, and when you press pads on the AlphaSphere it should play that track. If you remember back to tutorial 1 we set this row of pads to send Modulation Wheel MIDI data with the pressure of the pads. So as I apply more pressure you can hear it modulates the sound bringing in Vibrato. Next lets create two more MIDI tracks, and apply instruments to them. There are two ways you can create a MIDI track -- you can go to 'Create-> Insert MIDI track' (so as you can see it has put in a new track. Now lets find a nice pad sound, double-click, and it's applied it to that track there. Lets set the MIDI input and the MIDI channel to MIDI channel 2, and then lets play some pads on the 'sphere). The second way that you can apply a MIDI track to the project is by finding the instrument that you want (lets find a bass sound now), and then what you can do is just drag the instrument to this section here, and it just creates a new track. Set up the MIDI input (so this track is from MIDI channel 3) and if you play the pads on the 'sphere which are set to MIDI channel 3, you can hear sound. Finally we need to arm-record all tracks, so to do this you just cmd-click on Mac or ctrl-click on Windows on the 'arm session recording' buttons so that they're all red, and now when you play the different pads on the AlphaSphere you should hear that it's triggering the different instruments. Finally I'm going to give you an example of how we can map MIDI CC pads from the AlphaSphere to control software parameters within Ableton Live. First what we need to do is go up to the top right-hand corner and select this 'MIDI map mode' button. When you click this you will notice that a lot of controls on the interface are highlight blue, and any of these controls can now essentially be controlled by any MIDI message. So lets find some parameters that we want to control; I'm going to select track two, and there's a nice set of 8 parameters here that we can control. What you need to do is first select a parameter, and then press a MIDI CC pad on the AlphaSphere, so I'm going to press a pad on the top row. And when you press it you will notice that a little box will appear and this will show you the channel and the CC controller number that you pressed, and also the assignment will be added to the MIDI mapping section here. So now I'm just going to assign the other 7 pads on the top row of the AlphaSphere to the other 7 controls here. So select a software parameter, and press a pad. Once you're done assigning CC messages, click the MIDI map mode button again, and then when you press the MIDI CC pads on the AlphaSphere you will notice that it's controlling these software parameters. So for example if I play that pad sound now, I'm controlling the sound using other pads on the AlphaSphere. So that's how you use the AlphaSphere as a multichannel MIDI instrument within Ableton Live. If you use any other DAWs make sure you check out the other relevant videos, and make sure you look at our other tutorial videos too. Thanks for watching!