Switch Applications to Finder within Ableton to Select Clips?

[groovymose]

Hello!

Just purchased a midi fighter twister and one of the reasons I purchased it is I saw a video made by ill gates where he showed that you can use it to switch applications to finder to select a clip and import that into ableton so that you can cue up clips without ever using a mouse. I have searched how to do this and haven't had any luck so far so am hoping someone in the community knows how to do this?

If you want you can see ill gates doing it in the video here at 1:48:

Thanks for the help!

[Patch]

I can't watch the video at work - but Iremember this from way back when iLL Gates was The Phat Conductor at Ableton.com!

Are you on Mac or PC? I can definitely help if you are on PC, since I did something similar after seeing him do it in a Mac.

Basically, you need to use a midi-to-keystroke converter software, and use that to trigger keyboard shortcuts for opening finder/explorer, and changing focus to that window instead of Live. Then (I assume) you'd use the MF to navigate (up/down arrow, copy/paste/return, etc...) and copy/paste from finder/explorer and into a clip slot in Live.

Software wise, for PC, I used Bomes Midi Translator. I think for Mac, Dylan used MidiStroke, and ControlAID.

WARNING!!! Once you understand what can be done using this method, you're going to want to do A HELL OF A LOT MORE WITH IT!!!

[groovymose]

Great, this is a good start. I will give this a try. I am on a Mac. This makes sense - I hadn't considered the possibility of using other software.

So you say there are many things you can do with this method. Care to share an example or two of things you really like using it for?

Thanks for the help!

[Stewe]

It's really powerful tool once you put all peaces of it together. One idea that I had was to create a tool that emulates mouse clicks plus cursor position in the screen to come up with some basic options that are not addressed in Traktor's Controller Manager ( Export, Import, Duplicate, Delete, etc)

I only need time but If this works, I'll also build the system that adds new I/O command and have control over button options all from the controllers.

[Patch]

Stewe - have you heard of some software called AutoHotKey???

It can do precisely the mouse-click+co-ordinate location that you mentioned...

Combined with Bomes Midi Translator the sky really is the limit!!!

[Stewe]

Yes, but never actually tried it out - I saw dude using similar program to hack Traktor's Remix Decks at the moment when those mappings weren't available in MIDI but you've still be able to fire off clips by clicking cells in the deck.

Got to give it a shot soon! Dedicate my two BASE controllers just to this functionality.
Such kind of utility or call it a "Mapper Tool" would make my life a lot easier. Imagine pressing some button that adds all Transport controls or all effect parameters with desired Unit assignment, all in a sequence. That would be amazing.

[Patch]

Agrred.