Hi all,
I am Danish, and English is not my first language, so I had Claude (Anthropic’s AI) put this post into words for me. What it says is mine.
I play live with a KeyLab 88 mk3 and Ableton Live, and I wanted the keyboard to do what a stage keyboard does: pick sounds and start songs without looking at the laptop. Arturia’s own Live script is made for producing, so I ended up with my own. It is now on GitHub, free to use and change:
What it does
- Screen buttons arm and un-arm your tracks, up to eight. The label shows the track name, or the preset it is playing.
- Hold a screen button and a preset list opens on the screen. Pick with the jog wheel, Play or Back/Forward. All tracks share one list, built from a Collection in Live’s browser plus a text file you can edit by hand.
- The middle of the screen is your set list: the locators in the Arrangement. Play jumps to the song at the cursor and starts it, and playback stops by itself just before the next one.
- Faders set track volume, and the screen shows the track’s value when you touch one.
- Tap, Metro, Record, Save, Undo, Redo and Quantize do what they do in Live.
- Clip launch on the pads is included but switched off by default, because a stray pad hit on stage can start the transport.
What it needs
Only Live. No Max for Live, no companion devices. The keyboard must be in DAW mode (Prog + screen button 6).
Tested on a KeyLab 61 and 88 mk3 with Live 12 on macOS. Live 11 is untested.
Worth knowing before you build a set around it
Choosing a preset reloads the instrument, so held notes are cut and a big sampled instrument takes its time. Change sounds between songs or sections, not in the middle of a phrase.
How it was made
The screen and LED protocol was worked out with a MIDI monitor against the real hardware; those notes are public here: GitHub - saxofonbrian/keylab-mk3-sysex: Reverse-engineered SysEx, CC maps and LED IDs for the Arturia KeyLab 61/88 mk3 screen — plus an Ableton Live + Max for Live proof of concept. · GitHub
The code and its comments were written by Claude as well. The idea, the design decisions, the measurements and all the testing on hardware are mine.
The README walks through the setup step by step, and a ready-made Live set is included. If you try it, I would like to hear how it goes – especially on a 49, on Windows or on Live 11, which I cannot test myself.
Brian