“21” – Touchscreen FX Controller for Traktor Pro 2 (Lemur for iOS)

DJ Software & Apps Controller Mappings
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“21” – Touchscreen FX Controller for Traktor Pro 2 (Lemur for iOS)

Hello,

I would like to share a simple yet powerful touchscreen MIDI controller I made using Lemur for iOS. I call it “21” because it puts 21 of your favorite effects in Traktor at your fingertips. Literally. It doesn’t offer any effect presets, but instead lets you create your own combinations on the fly. The freely assignable touch-sensitive XY pads with optional physic allow for quick effect inserts and some extra craziness.

First, here is what you’ll need aside from Traktor and iPad.

Additionally, you’ll need to trim down the list of effects in Traktor to exactly 21. This can be done through “Preferences → Effects → FX Pre-Selection”. If your list of effects differs from mine, you’ll also need to use Lemur editor to make changes to the effect names in the template. Unfortunately, those are hard-coded and can’t be easily changed on the fly. Needless to say, the order of effects must be exactly the same both in Traktor preferences and in the template.

NOTE: The controller is designed to work with 4 FX units. Make sure Traktor is configured accordingly.

I won’t explain how to load the template into Lemur running on iPad or how to load the mapping in Traktor. Those processes are very well documented in many other places.

Here is a screenshot of the controller with most functions explained. It’s just one page that consists of 4 FX units. Each unit can be switched between “Single” and “Group” modes with most of the controls effectively mirroring those of the FX units as they appear in the Traktor interface. The layout is a bit different though.

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Below the regular effect controls is a section that lets you assign any of the three sliders controlling fx amount (in Group mode) or fx parameters (in Single mode) to X and Y of the XY pad. If any of the sliders is assigned, XY pad will turn the effect on while being touched. This is great for creating quick filter sweeps, drum fills, short glitches, etc.

NOTE: It’s recommended to assign each parameter (in Single mode) or effect (in Group mode) to only one axis of the XY pad. Assigning one thing to both X and Y isn’t very useful and can create unexpected results.

The “Invert” button will invert the X/Y control to go from 1 to 0 instead of 0 to 1. This can be useful with certain types of effects.

And finally, the button marked with “P” will turn on/off the physic for its respective XY pad. This can help create some extra madness with an additional layer of modulation.

NOTE: When “P” is enabled the XY pad is no longer touch-sensitive and effects need to be turned on and off using the corresponding buttons. This is because you’ll probably want to change the direction of the ball while it’s bouncing. Attraction, friction, speed, etc. are not adjustable. You may change those by editing the template.

One last thing – everything is mapped for two-way communication. In other words, if something changes in Traktor (for example, you use a different controller to select an effect or change any of the parameters), the change will be immediately reflected on the controller screen.

Have fun and please let me know if you have any questions or comments :smiling_face:

P.S. If you are running iOS 5, you’ll wish it was possible to disable multi-touch gestures on iPad :smiling_face:

P.P.S. A couple more screenshots of the controller in action.

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Forgot to mention - in Single mode you can store FX preset (standard Traktor function, nothing special here) by touching Dry/Wet fader + FX reset button. The fader sends a message when touched which is used as Shift in the mapping.

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What a great template! Thanks for all your work and sharing this. I had been looking for something just like it and was surprised to see there was something of a gap so you’ve definitely filled in a big hole.

Easy setup and wow - this is the Lemur FX controller of which I had dreamed. It literally puts the power of Traktor’s best effects at my fingertips and it’s so well designed for touch. This is a really sweet compliment to any setup. Definitely putting more value into the cost of the app.

Major props. Great template. I’m glad I just started using Traktor because I wouldn’t want to control the effects any other way.

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awesome work! it’s stuff like this that makes me want to buy an ipad… specifically the ability to actually view the list of available effects on the ipad and select from them. this is the kind of thing that sets a touch screen interface like an ipad apart from other controllers

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fantastic work, just trying it out now and all seems excellent.

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This is so awesome! :slight_smile: Thanks, guys. I’m very glad you liked it.

I started off with TouchOSC and was experimenting for a very long time with other layouts that didn’t necessarily mirror the actual FX units in Traktor. As a result, my mappings were getting super-complex and most importantly couldn’t be easily modified to change the pre-programmed FX combinations. I didn’t like that because I couldn’t improvise with what effects I wanted to use at any given time.

The goal here was to create something that allows for full control of the individual FX units in Traktor so you can quickly come up with new ideas. If anything, this type of controller is good for exploring new FX combinations. I’m actually thinking of creating a separate mapping for another controller I use or just another page in this template to quickly load my favorite FX combinations. The great thing about that is that it will be super-easy to do. I don’t need to bother with modifiers or mapping controls individually for each FX combo anymore. Just load a specific effect, which is literally one line in the mapping, and everything else will just automatically populate on the controller screen! That’s the idea at least :slight_smile:

P.S. I’m also working on an additional page for this template to control the decks. Similar to the effect units, each deck will be switchable between “Transport” and “Cues” views to access the basic transport/move functions and cues/pre-set loops respectively. It’s a lot of work and will take some time, but I’ll update the thread when the new version is available.

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It is possible to disable multitouch in iOS 5 (at least on iPad 1), check the general preference tab.

Nice map btw.

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I just checked and you are correct, sir :slight_smile: I don’t know how I could possibly miss it before… :open_mouth: Thank you.

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I had a $50 iTunes gift card I was sitting on, trying to figure out what to do. This sold me on Lemur. This is an incredibly inspirational mapping. I’m starting to dream about possibilities for a preset driven FX mapping of my own. This post not only gives me insight into what’s possible with Lemur, it’ll help me find some new FX combos to use. Seriously. Freaking brilliant!

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Awsome mapping! very useful! It would be cool if you create more mappings like this one :slight_smile:
great work

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Hey! Thanks for the positive comment. I’m glad you like the controller.

I only made two so far. This one and another one to control Sample Deck/Loop Recorder. I ended up publishing them both in User Library at liine’s website. The links are below.

21: http://liine.net/en/community/user-library/view/196/
Sample Rekorder: http://liine.net/en/community/user-library/view/197/

P.S. I do have one more to control the decks in Traktor, but it’s a bit too custom. I don’t think most people would find it useful unless their workflow is exactly like mine :slight_smile:

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Just a random question and its for the future, I have never looked into dj’ing with an ipad so its off topic a bit.

Basically, can this setup work with windows+traktor+wirelessly?

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yup.

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can you think of any way to pull the ‘track name/title’, via midi, into the Lemur app? There’s a way to get Traktor to output this information via midi by tricking Traktor into thinking that a certain type of Denon controller is attached.

See here for more info: Traktor track name / time to LCD via MIDI! ...using Denon LCD support & Arduino

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Really good template cheers man

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@ kev yeah i tried this myself and as far as i can see its the long way round by changing it 4 times

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Yes, absolutely. I would not recommend using iPad as your only tool for dj-ing, though. At the very least you’ll need a decent soundcard like Traktor Audio 6/10 from NI. Most laptop soundcards just won’t cut it. Also, I personally find a touchscreen interface good for some things, but not the others. For example, I can’t imagine a better option to control effects. I would, however, prefer to use something like Kontrol X1 for transport controls and looping. Cue points is another example. Something with actual pads or buttons is best for that. The tactile response it just too important. My recommendation is to use iPad as an additional controller next to something else.

Yes, I did think of that. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to implement that functionality at the moment. It would have been super cool, though.

Lemur is extremely powerful. You can program it with complex mathematical expressions. It can also operate multi-dimentional variables (vectors). So, the crazy hack described in the thread you linked could probably be done. It’s a bit too much for me, though. If someone makes a script to decode the text in Lemur, I’ll happily use it in my future creations. Otherwise, we’ll just have to wait for an easier way to become available.

Cool. I’m glad you got it sorted out.

Yes, unfortunately, you have to do it individually for each menu in the template. Another way is to copy/paste the whole menu, but you’ll have to make sure the new objects you create retain proper names and most importantly are configured to send the same midi messages as originally designed.

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Great work- thanks for this!

touchscreen dj

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First off… Great work on this!!

I do have an issue though. I set up Traktor FX as stated in the instructions. All functions work as noted.

BUT

About 5 minutes into using the template (sometimes more/less) the entire thing flips out. Buttons go haywire randomly turning on and off and faders bounce all over the place. These random actions are confirmed in Traktor as well with FX knobs and buttons moving all over the place.

I use an APC that has FX mappings so the first thing I did to troubleshoot was delete the APC map so there would be no issues with double assignments. Reboot Lemur and re-import ‘21’ tsi. Same issue minutes after.

My Lemur set up is an Alesis IO dock running midi in and out to a NI komplete Audio 6 which is then USB to the mac.

Thanks for the assistance!!

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Select the mapping in controller manager then make sure both in and out ports are set to ‘Lemur Daemon’ (I think that’s what it’s called) rather than all ports.