Control Ableton Tempo from MaxMSP

Question

My question is firstly- is midi cc information integer only. 0 - 127, but not 5.55

The reason I ask is that I'm trying to control the tempo in Ableton Live from MaxMSP Patch (not Max for Live).

I found out that cc 0 registers a tempo of 20bpm, and cc 127 registers a tempo of 999bpm

But it seems like my accuracy is totally ruined, because each cc integer is about 9bpm apart, and 9bpm off isn't very convincing. Too messy

I'm wondering if there is something I missed, or maybe another protocol to use. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

Live's tempo can be mapped to MIDI CCs in two parts: coarse and fine. You can map one CC to coarse, and one to fine, so your coarse setting can have 128 steps of resolution, and between each of those, you can set a further 128 steps with the other CC. When you enter MIDI-mapping mode (cmd+M), you can see that the global tempo has two mappable areas.

To further increase your precision, you can open Live's browser during MIDI mapping and specify the maximum and minimum tempo range that your 128 steps will represent. If you never plan to go below, say, 60bpm or above 200, then you can specify these as the endpoints, and now your CC steps are just under 2bpm apart instead of 5. The narrower you go, the finer the resolution.

This also generically works for any parameter you map using the mapping interface.

Answer 2

Midi information is 7-bit, however the sync function getting information from an MSP uses a float for bpm, so you shouldn't have this problem.

Have a look at this page for some info: http://www.cycling74.com/docs/max5/refpages/msp-ref/sync~.html