With ROLI Dashboard you can use the Seaboard Block or customize the Lightpad Block’s touch-responsive surface to control Ableton Live in a wide variety of ways. This article will show you how to use the Lightpad Block and Seaboard Block as melodic instrument controllers in Ableton. You may also control Ableton Live clips and instruments with the Lightpad Block, and see more guides here.
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Go to Preferences → Link MIDI → MIDI Ports.
Ensure that Track and Remote are turned On next to Input: Lightpad Block or Seaboard Block.
The Lightpad Block and Seaboard Block use multiple channels of MIDI so that each dimension of touch can be expressed polyphonically.
When Ableton records multiple channels to a single track (MIDI From is set to “All ins”) it sums all of that data to a single channel. This means that dimensions of touch will no longer be polyphonic – modulations would be heard equally on all notes.
To fully unlock the Lightpad and Seaboard Block’s expressive potential in Ableton, you will need multiple MIDI tracks and a multi-timbral instrument in your Ableton Set. Download the attached templates that have created these tracks for you.
First, launch ROLI Dashboard and connect your Lightpad or Seaboard Block. By scrolling through the list of apps and selecting a program, you can fully customize how your Block behaves, and you can also modify a Lightpad Block’s LED display.
If you're using a Lightpad Block, select the 'Note Grid' app.
Click on 'Edit' to ensure the following 'MIDI Settings' are selected:
* Smaller channel ranges can be selected. Fewer channels will reduce the number of tracks required in Ableton, but will also reduce the expressive polyphony. More details on selecting the ideal range here. In this example, we are using a range of 2–16 (which will provide 15-voice expressive polyphony) but you can just as easily use a smaller range, which will require fewer tracks and provide fewer voices of expressive polyphony. Select 1 if using Single Channel mode for mono-timbral instruments.
If you'd like you may use the 'Pitch,' 'Play mode,' and '5D Touch' options to control the number of pads your Lightpad Block displays, what key and scale it's in, and the responsiveness of the five dimensions of touch.
To use a 5x5 grid of notes, for example, go to 'Play mode,' and set 'Mode' to 5. (You can also scroll through modes via the Lightpad Block's Mode button, and you can adjust the dimensions of touch with an attached Touch Block.)
If you're using a Seaboard Block, ensure that the MIDI Settings in ROLI Dashboard are set as shown below.
We have selected:
* Smaller channel ranges can be selected. Fewer channels will reduce the number of tracks required in Ableton, but will also reduce the expressive polyphony. More details on selecting the ideal range here. In this example, we are using a range of 2–16 (which will provide 15-voice expressive polyphony) but you can just as easily use a smaller range, which will require fewer tracks and provide fewer voices of expressive polyphony. Select 1 if using Single Channel mode for mono-timbral instruments.
If you'd like you may use the 'Pitch,' 'Play mode,' and '5D Touch' options to transpose or change the Seaboard Block's range and control the responsiveness of the five dimensions of touch. (You can also adjust the dimensions of touch with an attached Touch Block.)
In this guide, we will look at two scenarios of Blocks as melodic instruments, with a multi-timbral instrument like Equator and with a mono-timbral instrument like Live's Operator:
See attached Live Templates for Lightpad or Seaboard Block with multi-timbral instrument.
In order to use the Lightpad or Seaboard Block as an expressive controller in Ableton Live, we'll want to create:
Ensure ROLI Dashboard settings are set up as shown above.
You have just created your host track. It will produce the audio from the plugin you've loaded, in this example Strobe2. The Lightpad or Seaboard Block's note data will reach this track on multiple channels via the voice tracks (which we will create in the next step).
If using Strobe2, for example, navigate to the MPE factory presets to select the preset of your choice. These presets will instantly respond to the Lightpad and Seaboard Block's dimensions of touch.
If using Equator, select the preset of your choice – all of Equator's presets are optimized for the Lightpad's and Seaboard's five dimensions of touch.
Next, we want to create a number of MIDI tracks, which will each receive a separate channel of MIDI from the Lightpad or Seaboard Block.
To quickly arm or unarm the voice tracks, we will use Ableton's key mapping feature.
With all of the voice tracks record-enabled (armed), simply press record. The notes will be spread out over all MIDI tracks and will play through the Strobe2 plugin.
If you are creating your own patches in other synths, remember to check that you have set the synth to respond to each of the Lightpad or Seaboard Block’s dimensions of touch in order to unlock the Lightpad Block’s full expressive potential.
Operator is a mono-timbral instrument capable of producing one timbre on one channel of MIDI at a time. You’ll need to create a number of identical instances of Operatorto access the multi-timbral capabilities of the Lightpad and Seaboard Blocks and take maximal advantage of the polyphonic dimensions of touch.
Ensure that ROLI Dashboard's settings are setup as shown in the attached template.
Create ➝ Insert MIDI Track to add a MIDI track to your Set. Under MIDI From, select the Lightpad Block Ch. 1 or Seaboard Block Ch. 1.
Load Operator into the track. At this stage you might want to set ROLI Dashboard's Mode to Single Channel so that all of the notes are transmitted on the same channel while you experiment with your patch’s response to the dimensions of touch.
Adjusting a few settings within Operator will allow it to respond to the Strike, Glide,and Press dimensions of touch – Strike corresponding with ‘Velocity’, Press with ‘Aftertouch’, and Glide with ‘Pitch Bend Range’.
Set Polyphony and Pitch Bend
Set Velocity and Aftertouch
Step 4: Duplicate your MIDI track
Using ⌘–D (Mac), or Ctrl–D (PC), duplicate the first track 4 times and set the channels under MIDI From so that each track receives on a channel from 1–16.
Note: If you have set ROLI Dashboard's Mode to ‘Single Channel’ to build your patch, you can now set it back to ‘Multi’.
Arm all 5 tracks with ⌘-click (Mac), or shift-click (PC) and play!
If you change your mind about the patch, go to ROLI Dashboard and set Mode back to Single Channel. Preview the patch on track 1, and then you can copy it quickly to the other tracks by duplicating again.