Can you set locations to midi notes?

Beam for Live
1

Is it possible to pre-program pan and tilt locations and then assign them to a key press of a midi controller?

Maybe by assigning pan and tilt controller data to a midi clip that is fired by that key press?

If I had 30 Moving head fixtures and I wanted each to have a unique pan and tilt, I would need to create 30 fixtures channels in Ableton right? and then 30 midi clips and assign them all to the same keypress?

2

Hi @Hungry_Man,

Here is a video that shows 3 ways to control 128 moving heads using 8 pan/tilt parameter pairs (each parameter controls 16 moving heads), leveraging Generic’s functionality for distributing parameters across multiple fixtures.

  1. Use Clips to store all the parameters as automation.
  2. Store the parameters using Macro Variations.
  3. Use Instrument Rack chains as presets, leveraging Beam’s merging capabilities.

Here I just used the mouse, but you could of course also trigger clips or change Macro Variations using a MIDI controller.

If you wanted to have individual control for 30 moving heads, you could group them into e.g. 5 groups of 6 fixtures and use 5 Generic Instruments.

3

Thank you!!! Will try it out!!!

4

So now I am controlling all 26 moving heads in my plot with one generic instrument.

I have 6 pan and 6 tilt knobs.

If I drop an LFO on the channel and assign it to tilt, it controls tilt for all.

I thought if I drop a 2nd LFO and assign this to tilt as well, the 1st LFO would control the first 13 fixtures and the the 2nd LFO would control the 2nd half, but this is not the case.

When controlling my fixtures in 6 groups like this, is there any way to set the effects up on the channel, so each effect controls one group?

Or is it better to use tag sets and different tracks to get these behaviours?

pic included for fun :slight_smile:

Thanks

Screenshot 2025-03-15 at 10.32.17
Screenshot 2025-03-15 at 10.32.171830×1038 66.3 KB

5

I thought if I drop a 2nd LFO and assign this to tilt as well, the 1st LFO would control the first 13 fixtures and the the 2nd LFO would control the 2nd half, but this is not the case.

That’s indeed not the case, adding a 2nd LFO to a signal chain will just further process the lighting signal generated by the 1st LFO.

To control each group of fixtures with a separate LFO you will need to use a separate Tag and device for each group. If you do that, you can then still add them to a Group Track or an Instrument Rack device if you want to also process them together.

Cool stage! :smiling_face_with_sunglasses: