Cheap foot controller for looping in Ableton Live

[James B]

Maybe there's more appropriate forums out there for this topic, but I thought I'd try it here first...

I've been interested in looping in Live for a while, but I've been put off by the price and size of the foot controllers as I just want to give it a go for a bit of fun/ experimentation rather than anything serious.

Anyway, I picked up four of these Stealth Switch things for about £14 in total on ebay, thought I had nothing to lose at that price. They're surprisingly solid and would work pretty well if I could set them up right.

Basically they function as a keyboard, except with just one key which is the number 5. So I assigned key "5" to record slot one in Ableton. This works fine, but the problem is that the other three switches are all simply recognised as number 5 also. Ableton/ Mac OS can't tell that they're separate devices, so they can't be assigned to different functions in Live.

I have the iKey key mapping/ automation software, but this also doesn't seem able to recognise them as separate devices.

Anyone got any advice?

Cheers.

[diligentdogs]

Something I did, which is absolutely hackish as hell but works well and is free:

I've got a PS2 Keyboard to USB converter and tons of old PS2 keyboards laying around. I'll map different Live functions to keys that are far apart on the keyboard - Left Shift, G, P, etc, and then use a screwdriver to pop off all the keys around those so that I can hit the desired keys with my foot.

[Dan Rosato]

[comfortstarr]

Bumping and refining this thread.

I'm recently coming off a longish recording hiatus. I upgraded to Logic 9 and lo and behold Mainstage can now do realtime looping with the cool "loopback" plug. So, I too, require a midi foot controller. While I generally stay away from Behringer stuff, their pedal (FCB1010) seems kind of ideal.

Anyone have any experience with it and Mainstage? Any other reccos?

Thanks in advance.

[dubphaser]

I highly recommend the Logidy UMI3. Really rugged and easy to setup.
I made a video that they posted on their site. It goes on a bit but shows how easy it is to use it with Ableton Live (and probably anything else that lets you map midi)

http://logidy.com/
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~Jose Franco~
@jose_franco_

[C_R_J]

i use one of these

http://www.behringer.com/assets/FCB1010_P0089_Left_XXL.jpg

mine is reprogrammed to send cc messages though. its a bitch to reprogram. it might work with the default programming. ill mess with mine later and report back.
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time is money and im wasting both...