Cell DNA Max For Live Devices
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Contents |
CellDNA Control with Max for Live devices
Getting Started
The CellDNA Max For Live devices provide a communications bridge between Ableton Live and Livid's CellDNA video performance software. If both applications are running at the same time, these devices provide a sophisticated mechanism for controlling video clips and effects with controls, MIDI data, and audio from your Live set.
Requirements
CellDNA 2.17 or above ([1]) Ableton Live 8.12 or above Max For Live
Using the CellDNA-Control Device
Put the DNA-Control.amxd file into your Max For Live MIDI effects folder:
- OSX: /Users/yowstar/Library/Application Support/Ableton/Library/Presets/MIDI Effects/Max MIDI Effect/
- WIN: /Users/username/Documents/Ableton/Library/Presets/MIDI Effects/Max MIDI Effect/
Start Ableton Live and open a new set (or a current project).
Open the Live Devices browser and navigate to /MIDI Effects/Max MIDI Effect/ where you will find the CellDNA-Control device.
Create a new MIDI track in Live, and add the CellDNA-Control device to the track.
Press the "Launch CellDNA" button. If this doesn't launch the CellDNA application, then press the Configure button to open the Configure window. Go to the OS X finder and drag the CellDNA application to the Configure window (Windows users: this is disabled. CellDNA must be located in the C:/Program Files/CellDNA/ directory). Now press "Launch CellDNA." You can, of course, run CellDNA before you open Live, and you can run CellDNA as you normally would from the OS X Finder or Windows Explorer.
Basic Use
Once CellDNA is open, the CellDNA-Control interface will update with the current effect names and states of the various buttons in CellDNA. In the Live Device interface, you can click on the numbered clips in the clip grid, turn knobs for effects, and use all the buttons to control video playback options. Like any other control in Live, you can use Live's MIDI Learn feature to assign MIDI and keyboard controls to the interface of CellDNA-Control.
For more information about using CellDNA and its controls, refer to the CellDNA manual.
MIDI Control
The "MIDI Control" button lets you enable control of CellDNA using MIDI Clips. This way, you can create specific sequences of video controls that can be triggered with other audio and MIDI clips individually or as part of a scene. You could even just drop in clips intended for other instruments, like drums or synths, and see what they "look like" when playing video clips! This feature uses notes 36-95 to trigger clips, program changes 0-31 will change clip banks 1-32, and program change 64-95 will change effects banks 1-32.
Automation
The "Automation" button will let you record and use automation lanes in Live's Arrangement view. If it is off, then the interface updates from CellDNA will interfere and override the automation. If this happens (for example, if you turn the Automation button off at some point while automation is playing back), you can stop playback, turn on Automation, then use Live's "Back to Arrangement" button (below, in red) in the transport area to regain automated control:
Using the CellDNA-SoundTrigger device
Getting Started
Put the DNA-SoundTrigger.amxd file into your Max For Live Audio effects folder:
- OSX: /Users/yowstar/Library/Application Support/Ableton/Library/Presets/MIDI Effects/Max MIDI Effect/
- WIN: /Users/username/Documents/Ableton/Library/Presets/MIDI Effects/Max MIDI Effect/
Follow the instructions above for adding CellDNA-Control to your set. This device needs to be added because SoundTrigger uses Control to communicate to CellDNA.
Open the Live Devices browser and navigate to /Audio Effects/Max Audio Effect/ where you will find the CellDNA-SoundTrigger device.
Create a new Audio Track, or use an existing audio track, and add CellDNA-SoundTrigger to the audio track, in the same way you would use any audio effect. You can, of course, add this effect to the Master track, so you can use your final output as the source for sound triggers.
Start playback of a clip in the same track as the SoundTrigger.
The controls of SoundTrigger are arranged in an easy to understand set of tasks: Find the sound, Define the trigger, Create an envelope, and Assign to CellDNA controls.
Find the sound:
Use the filter interface to isolate the sound you want to use as a trigger for controlling CellDNA. If you press the "pass" button, it will activate the filter so you can hear the filtered output, which may be useful in better isolating sounds.
The filter has several modes depending the type of sound you want to isolate. Lowpass is good for isolating bass drum and bass synths, highpass is useful for isolating hi-hats, and bandpass is useful for isolating snare drums. It is worth noting that, because you are using the filter for isolation of data, rather than audio quality, extreme values of gain and resonance are not harmful (unless you are listening to the filtered audio, of course!).
Define the Trigger:
The waveform viewer helps you see peaks in the filtered audio, and provides a slider to set a threshold for creating triggers. Values above the threshold will create triggers, values below it are ignored. As you move the slider, a horizontal line over the waveform will help you precisely see the threshold against the filtered audio.
Create an Envelope:
You can use the triggers to not only provide automated "button presses" for CellDNA (such as triggering a clip or toggling play/pause), but you can generate an envelope from the triggers that can be routed to effects and other knobs.
The "attack" and "decay" parameters can be set with sliders, and provide an in and out slope for the triggered envelope. Use the "amount" slider to set a maximum value that the envelope will reach. You can see envelopes in realtime as triggers are generated from audio input, and adjust the sliders as needed.
The "Re-trigger" mode, if enabled, will re-trigger the envelope as triggers are detected from the audio, otherwise, all new triggers are ignored until the envelope has completed its attack and decay.
Assign to CellDNA controls:
Now that you have isolated triggers from audio, and created envelopes, you can assign these to different events in CellDNA. Because some parameters rely on momentary actions and others on continuous control, the different parameters are grouped to respond to either triggers or the envelopes.
You can, of course, assign MIDI controls to the parameters of the SoundTrigger itself, and adjust and change these on the fly during your performance, re-routing triggers and envelopes, and changing the envelope values!
Using the CellDNA-MIDIToVideo Device
The CellDNA-MIDIToVideo device operates just like the "MIDI Control" button in the CellDNA-Control Device: it converts incoming MIDI notes into pre-defined clip triggers. Howeever, this device communicates to the CellDNA-Control device, and does not communicate directly with CellDNA. It is designed as a smaller "satellite" device that you can use in many tracks to provide a large variety of note-to-clip sequences and arrangements. You can also pre-define the clip bank and effects preset that will be controlled on the track.
