APC40 Hack
8,389
Published 2020-07-22
Hhhhhhhyup. You most definitely can.
By sending a sysex message to the APC, you can enable a secondary firmware mode that enables more user controlled parameters, essentially taking your 8 "Device Control" knobs and making them into 72 user defined parameters.
SPOTIFY
- open.spotify.com/artist/0uxxzdxnMSEx8xOZqOpjyY?si=…
- www.twitter.com/middream_la
TWITCH
- www.twitch.com/middream_la
- www.instagram.com/middream_la/
Specifics:
You MUST wait until after ableton recognizes all equipment (any APCs, Push, etc) and is ready to play. So ableton must initialize the APC and all other equipment and have their red/yellow boxes in the session view become active. Once that is finished, you can then send the sysex message to reconfigure the APC. You have to do this every time you open ableton. All your mappings will remain!
You can use Bome's Midi Translator as a middle-man between Ableton and the APC. That's what i'm doing. Any information passing between Ableton and the APC is going through Bome's. That's how it be. So basically i press a button on TouchOSC, and it sends my computer a midi note. Bome's receives this note, and then "swallows" it, meaning mutes it after it is received. Bome's is then told to send the SysEx message out to the APC, and that's it.
If there is any way to send the APC a sysex message, you can also do that. I've yet to experiment, i like Bome's, a LOT. I hear there are 3rd party plugins to do the same, possibly even with max4live. I'll look into the max4live situation soon, so you can have a little device in a track that sends the message to the APC for you. As of yet I've only tried this with Bome's.
THE SYSEX MESSAGE!!!!!
F0 47 7F 29 60 00 04 40 10 00 06 F7
If you do manage to get this SysEx message out to the APC and it's not working for some reason, fiddle with the "10 00 06" portion of the message. The message is written in hexadecimal, and that specific portion of the message pertains to the current version of ableton that you're running. If you're running Ableton 10.1, try and send that portion as "10 01 06" or something. It may take some fiddling about. You'll get it.
All Comments (21)
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GREAT job! Just found a potential use for my older (original) APC40. Can probably put it to use. I also have BOME, though, have not used it in a long time. Will try to leverage some of your work. Thanks for sharing.
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Really love this! Thanks!
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Yooo, this is fkn great! I was looking for this and u're the only god that actually alked about this. I'm just wondering, how did u find out about the "secret" firmware mode and the relative sysex message? And could there be other firmware modes that could be uinlocked by sending other sysex messages? Would be very cool to discover even more new ways to use the APC Mk 2
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Ooook thank you for sharing! I was going nuts trying to figure out why my device control wouldnt change banks when I changed channel!!! If only I had it in me to want to go back to my mk1......
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Dude first of all, this is sick and cheers to you brosef. So for the sake of conversation. Is the Apc 40mkII operating different firmware without actually changing the firmware of the device itself? Meaning could you now just plug this apc into a different computer and it work normally?
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Thanks for this!
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You're a genius.
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What does the tiny computer do? My interested.
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Hey, I'm trying to put my Mk1 in generic midi mode. Can you please help me?
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This is great
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Amazing
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theres so much going on here haha, dope.
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Masterclass on how to NOT get to the point
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is live 11? can you make a midi script for maschine jam in ableton11?
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This is awesome. Is it possible to do this with a Mk1 and a Mkll? Would be a game changer for our setup
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Trying to learn how you managed to activate the buttons to encoders
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How in hell have you found the sysex message? Can't see it on the Mkii MIDI Reference document. Amazing stuff btw
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I respect a Nord Lead 4R that has a moustache
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has anyone else tried?
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DnD dice :D
