Changing instruments in Ableton 12

structurefall · 2025-06-02T02:35:16+00:00

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Hi everyone,

I have a Komplete Kontrol S49 MK2 keyboard, and after months of trying to make it behave under my preferred live software, Mainstage, I've given up and switched to Ableton, which is supposedly directly supported, but seems to barely work.

I am a live keyboardist for a band, and the band also runs backing tracks and synchronized video, all now running from Ableton. Each song has a different instrument that I need to control with my keyboard, including knob movement and any visual feedback, etc., provided by running NKI plugins with the Komplete Kontrol software.

When performing, I need to stay at my keyboard between songs and not go to the computer or use some external thing- I just want to stay at my keyboard and play it, that's it. I want my patches to change based on where we are in the set. This is an extremely common use case and should be very simple.

I have tried every possible different arrangement and usage of Ableton and cannot make instrument changes happen.

Ableton does not allow for the selection of specific tracks to be automated, so putting a new instance of Komplete Kontrol on each track doesn't work
Using a supported software platform such as Ableton disables the "instance" button on the keyboard so I can't switch with that, but it can't be automated anyhow
The MKII ignores KK switches made with a chain selector in an instrument rack, so the knobs will always work on only the first instrument in the rack, even if the keyboards are playing something else
There doesn't appear to be any way to send program change messages to the KK software

Additionally, I'd really like to be able to control scenes with my keyboard, which seems to be supported in theory but the entire "Arrange" section of the keyboard (scene, pattern, track, key/mode) is greyed out in all modes and doesn't seem to do anything.

At this point it looks like I'm not going to be able to automate anything and will have to put everything on separate tracks, go to the mixer and select the correct track for each song, which is incredibly inconvenient and risky in a live situation. It also looks like I might be able to write a Python script pointing to an unsupported Ableton API, which I'm not really looking forward to.

So far my entire experience with this keyboard has been miserable. It seems like nobody involved with this project has ever played with a band or even spoken to a musician. Is there something I'm missing here, or is this thing just totally useless for performance?

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structurefall

Oh PS: It's also worth mentioning that the navigation knob will allow you to select tracks by pushing left or right… But that knob also alters volume and changes location on the timeline, so if I accidentally turn it while switching during a performance, the tracks will skip ahead by a bar.

Five seconds of consultation with an actual performing musician should have made this flaw immediately evident. I cannot imagine why they would do this. If somebody knows a way to manipulate that behavior in some way, that would also be helpful so let me know.

Kymeia

Scene, pattern, track, key/mode are controls specifically for NI Maschine - they were never intended for other DAWS.

structurefall

@Kymeia well, that explains that part, I'm not using Maschine. This wasn't clear to me from the manuals, but good to know that there's not something I'm doing wrong on that front.

The text in the manual just says: "(4) Arrange buttons: Let you switch between the different arrangement views and modes in supported hosts." Seems weird to exclude just those buttons, which would have clear and (one would think) easy to implement functionality for hosts that are supported in every other function.

For anybody dealing with a similar issue reading this thread in the future: It looks like the LoadeR Max for Live plugin will probably solve the problem by allowing preset loads via MIDI, but unfortunately it hasn't been updated for Ableton 12 yet as of this writing. Apparently my account is too new to post links, but the developer is called "valiumdupeuple."

They appears to still be actively developing Max for Live tools, so hopefully by the time you see this it will be available.

[Links inserted by moderator] :

LoadeR by Valiumdupeuple on MaxforLive.com

LoadeR by Valiumdupeuple on GumRoad

structurefall

Oh my god, okay I figured it out but this is ridiculous and I will again comment in the hopes that somebody sees this in the future. Also, dear NI people: It appears that the instrument rack thing worked in Ableton 11 and does not now, so perhaps this is a legitimate bug? I like the instrument rack solution, if you're reading this, "Allow Ableton instrument racks to switch Komplete Kontrol instances" would be a great solution to my problem.

Anyhow: I misunderstood the Ableton licensing stuff and I thought I could use Max for Live devices with a standard license, but in fact I cannot, so even though I found other devices that might work for this, they won't work for me unless I spend some money which I'm trying to avoid at the moment.

Instead- and be warned this is going to be a MacOS-only solution- I grabbed a free (although I'm about to donate!) program called MIDIPipe, which, amongst other features, accepts MIDI input and runs Applescript based on that input.

I activated IAC for internal MIDI routing, and created a MIDIPipe instance with two objects: a MIDI input and an Applescript trigger. I pointed the MIDI input to IAC, and wrote the following janky Applescript:

on runme(message)
if (item 1 of message = 144) then
activate application "Ableton Live 12 Standard"
tell application "System Events" to key code 125
end if
end runme

Item 1 of message is the channel, and for whatever reason you have to add 143 to it, so 144 indicates channel 1. I found that from reading various forums, but once you're sending messages to MIDIPipe you can do something like:

display dialog item 1 of message

…and you'll get a little popup with what item 1 comes out to. I believe item 3 is note. Anyhow key code 125 is the down arrow, so I created a MIDI track in Ableton with no input and output set to IAC channel 1, and I put a random MIDI note in a clip whenever I want to change tracks. I'm running in arrange view, I make sure I have the first track selected when I start, and it works.

Thank you all for joining me on this harrowing, stupid adventure in… Not even music, I don't even know what this was, but I guess I'm good for now.

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