The settings form of a mapping can be accessed by clicking the mapping’s name in The Mapping Table.
Each section in the Mapping Settings Form can be shown/hidden by clicking its name. You can expand/collapse all sections using the button in the top left corner of the form.
Section: Basic Settings
Name A descriptive mapping name
Mode Select the Mode which the mapping will be assigned to. The list of available modes are taken from the mode view in the Script Editor.
Controller Input The ‘select input’ menu contains all the inputs which are available in the attached controller template (displayed in the controller template editor).
Section: Tags & Notes
Tags Set tags which mappings can be filtered by in the script manager. Type the tag name then click return to set it
Notes Enter helpful notes about the mapping here.
Section: Input Control Override
The control Override option enables you to override the Controller Template’s default ‘control type’ functionality for the assigned Controller Input.
When set to default, control settings from the attached controller template input are used. Setting it to ‘Custom’ displays a group of override options.
Why override default Controls?
Overriding controls gives you the ability to change how the physical inputs on your MIDI Equipment interact with Ableton Live parameters on a per mapping basis.
For example, you can change the physical buttons on your midi controller to act like incremental/decremental knobs, gradually moving an ableton parameter up/down instead of the default on/off functionality.
Control Type
Set how you want the physical input on the midi controller to behave with the mapping.
Absolute
Inputs which send MIDI Message Values from 0 – 127.
When this option is selected, 2 further options are displayed below it, first and last.
First / Last options
Used by the ‘Absolute’ control type to set the MIDI velocity value range which the mapping will listen for. It’s important to note that ‘First’ must be the lowest value & ‘Last’ is the highest.
Example, you are creating a Volume mapping and you only want to use a part turn of your physical knob’s complete turn range.
If your knob has a velocity range starting at 0 (turned all the way to the left) and ending at 127 (turned all the way to the right), you could set this mapping to only use a portion of the range such as First: 0 and Last: 63.
The volume mapping would now move from 0db to 6db in Ableton Live with only a half turn of your Knob.
Invert values
Used by Absolute controls to reverse/invert the direction of the control.
Takeover Mode
Used by Absolute Controls. mimics Ableton Live’s internal Takeover mode, except that here you can set it per control.
Relative
Inputs which send a single value continuously while turning the input left and another single value when turning right/up. Example: when turning an encoder to the left it continuously sends the MIDI velocity value of 20. When turning to the right it continuously sends the MIDI velocity value of 80.
Left / Right options
Set the left/right MIDI velocity values which the mapping will listen for.
On/Off
By default, on/off MIDI buttons can send MIDI data in 2 different ways, depending on how the physical MIDI Controller is configured. If it is Momentary button, a MIDI ‘on’ velocity value is sent when the button is pressed down, then an ‘Off’ value is sent when the button released.
If it is a Toggle button, an ‘on’ MIDI velocity value is sent on first press. Then an ‘Off’ value is sent on second press.
On and off will alternate with each press. You can change a button to behave like either a momentary or toggle button for the specific mapping by using the switch type option (see below).
It’s important to note that this does not change the configuration of your Physical Controller.
Steps
Used by Relative, Increment & Decrement control types.
It is used in different ways depending on the Mapping Type which is being configured. For example, with mappings that have Value Ranges such as Volume, Sends, Pan, Device Parameters, ‘Steps’ refers to the amount that the Ableton parameter will move for each button press/knob turn, and is calculated by the total range divided by the number of steps that you have set.
For navigation type mappings such as Track/Scene Navigation, the step number is the number of tracks/scenes to move by with each press/turn.
Switch Type
Used by On/Off, Increment & Decrement Controls to handle when a mapping should fire.
Note that a matching On or Off value must first be received by the script before this point is reached in the execution process.
Momentary
Will fire only when the ‘On’ value is received.
Toggle
Will fire when ‘On’ or ‘Off’ is received.
Delay
Will fire only when the time between receiving the ‘On’ Message and ‘Off’ Message is greater than the value set in ‘Delay Amount’.
Delay Amount
Sets the delay amount (in seconds) to listen for. 0.5 equals half of a second delay. Only available when ‘Switch Type’ is set to ‘Delay’.
Increment & Decrement
Increase or decrease the current value of an Ableton Live parameter. Useful for controls inside Ableton Live which have value ranges such as Volume, Tempo, Sends, Device Parameters etc and Navigation type Mappings such as Highlight Navigation and Session Box Navigation.
Usually can be used in combination with the ’Steps’ field to set the amount in which the control increments/
Section: Track selection
Mapping types which are located inside a track in the Ableton Live session will have configuration options for ‘track selection’. Here you can set which track the mapping relates to.
Track Type Set the type of track : track (all tracks in the main mixer portion of the Ableton Live session). return (all return tracks in the Ableton Live session), selected (the currently highlighted track in the Ableton Live session), master (the master track).
Track number If track or return is selected for Type you can select a track number here.
Use modifier Instead of using an exact number for the Track number above, checking the ‘Use modifier’ box displays a menu containing all of the available ‘modifiers’ which can be selected instead.
Modifiers are value holders/variables which can be dynamically set using the Reactions mapping type. (see modifiers for more details on this).
Relative to Session Box position If a Session Box is active on the same mode and you have selected ‘Yes’ for this option. Then your track number will be relative to the current position of session box, meaning it will automatically update with the Session Box.
If you set this to ’No’ then the track selection will always stay the same regardless of the session box position.
Include folded tracks If ‘Relative to Session Box position‘ is set to no, this option will appear. Setting it to ‘Yes’ means that the ‘Track number’ count will include folded tracks.
Section: Device selection
Mapping types which are located inside a device in the Ableton Live session will have this settings section.
Chain Targeting In the Ableton Live session, devices can be nested within other ‘Device Chains’ such as with the Audio Effect Rack. If the device you want to target is contained inside parent device chains, you can use the Chain targeting section to select it. Clicking the blue plus button will add a new device chain level. ‘Device’ is the parent device number and ‘Chain’ is the chain number within the device which you want to select. You will then select the device number in the chain using the options below: ‘selected or device number’ and ‘Select device number’.
Selected or device number Set this to ‘number’ or ‘selected’ depending on if you want to target a specific device number in the device chain or the currently selected device in the chain.
Select device number Set the device number in the chain in the chain which you want to target. Checking the ‘user modifier’ box allows you to use a dynamic modifier value.
Snapping
Snapping on/off Used in combination with a mapping type’s Minimum & Maximum settings (only some mapping types have this).
If the Ableton Live parameter is positioned outside your Minimum/Maximum settings and snapping is turned on, when you move your physical control, the parameter will first snap to either min or max then continue moving as normal.
If snapping is turned off then the parameter will only move if it is already positioned inside your Minimum/Maximum settings.
If it is outside the minimum/maximum settings, then the parameter in the Live UI will not move when you move the physical control on your MIDI Controller.