LINE 6 FBV Express MkII Manual [50/82] Ableton live fbv mkii setup tutorial

FBV MkII Advanced User Guide: Controlling 3rd Party Software

6•4

Ableton Live

- FBV MkII Setup Tutorial

We’ve provided a step-by-step tutorial here for how to conﬁgure the popular Ableton Live software’s

functions to be controlled by an FBV Shortboard or Express MkII device. For this example, we’re using

Ableton Live version 8, but the steps are similar for most recent Ableton Live versions (including the

Live Lite Line 6 version you might have received with your other Line 6 gear!) Ableton also offers a

free downloadable demo of Live at www.ableton.com/downloads should you want to try it out. This

tutorial should help you grasp the basics for how to set up other MIDI/DAW software for your FBV

MkII Controller, however, most such applications vary to some degree in their MIDI options and

features, so be sure to check your software’s documentation for more speciﬁcs!

Note: For the following steps, we’re running a Mac®, but the steps are the same if you are using Windows®

7, Vista® or XP, unless otherwise noted.

FBV Control Assignment Conﬁguration

The ﬁrst step, before even launching Ableton Live, is that we’ll need to conﬁgure a set of MIDI

assignments for the footswitches and pedals of our FBV device. Ableton Live, like many other DAW

applications, utilizes MIDI CC commands to access most of its parameters. Therefore, we’re going to

assign MIDI CC commands to our FBV footswitch and pedal controls using the Line 6 FBV Control

application, and save these settings as an FBV preset:

• Connect your FBV MkII device to your computer and launch Line 6 FBV Control.

• Go to File > Open and load the “Blank.fbv” preset.

• Go to File > Save As and let’s title this new preset “Live.fbv”.

Ableton Live incorporates a “MIDI Learn” type of functionality for setting up MIDI Control devices

(see “MIDI Learn Functionality” on page 6•3 for more about this). So, this means it really does not matter

speciﬁcally what MIDI CC numerical Value we assign to each Control, as long as each Control is

sending a unique CC Value.

For this example, we’ll conﬁgure several FBV Controls as follows (you can do the same on either an

FBV Shortboard or Express MkII device):

• Assign the A, B, C & D footswitch Controls to use MIDI CC’s 001 thru 004, respectively.

• Set the Switch Mode for the A, B, C & D Controls to “Single”, since we want each press of a

footswitch to send the same single MIDI CC command each time.

• Assign the Pedal Wah and Pedal Vol Controls to use MIDI CC’s 5 and 6, respectively.

• Set the Port and Channel for all of the above Controls to “1”, since we want to transmit all our

MIDI commands to the FBV USB MIDI Out Port 1, Channel 1.

• For all other FBV Controls, we’ll keep them to “Unassigned” since we won’t be using them right

now.

The result should appear in the Control Properties list like this: