How to control Ableton Live with your iPhone
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
- Jailbreak your iPhone with ZiPhone (download for Windows and Mac)
- Download Masayuki Akamatsu’s akaRemote (download .zip here) and upload it to your applications folder with Fugu (Alternatively, use the Installer app that comes with ZiPhone, and find akaRemote under the “Network” category)
- Install i3L Midi Bridge software for Mac OS X (download .dmg here) This will allow you to intercept the controller data being sent from the iPhone
- Open akaRemote on your iPhone, and go to the configuration page. Double tap the series of numbers after “Host Address”. Change this to the ip address of the computer that will receive the MIDI data. On most home wireless networks, it will be something like 192.168.0.X, or 192.168.2.X on other routers. I don’t know if this will work without a wireless network router.
- Open i3L and then run akaRemote on your iPhone. When you press buttons and move sliders in akaRemote, you should see corresponding activity in i3L’s buttons and sliders.
- In Ableton Live’s preferences, under “MIDI Sync”, you should see “Input: from i3L_v0.2 1″. Turn on Track and Remote.
- In Live, hit Command + M (Ctrl + M for PC users) to access the Midi Map mode. Now click any button or slider that is highlighted in blue. Now press a button in akaRemote on your iPhone. If everything is correctly configured, you should see a number appear in a box over the blue highlight. This is the MIDI CC number of whatever button you pushed.
- Hit Command + M again to exit Midi Map mode. Now press the buttons that you have assigned and they should activate the ableton live buttons.
- Awesome!
