Description

This is a bi-directional Live interface for the Novation Bass Station II, allowing you to control BS2 from within Ableton Live and / or record automation straight from BS2 to Live. As of version 2.1, it also allows you to save and recall presets from within the M4L device, and as these presets are sent back to the BS2, they will temporarily overwrite local preset values, making it possible to play your own presets from just your Ableton Live set on any Bass Station II that happens to be at hand... ;-) (Notice that you obviously will need to save to the BS2 itself manually if you want to use these presets without the M4L device.)

HOW TO USE THIS DEVICE

- Just create an empty midi track and put this device on it. Set MIDI out to your BS2 and arm the track (obviously set the MIDI in settings as appropriate for how you want to use the device)

- You will be prompted to create a file called BS2.json the first time you open or close the device. This is your preset file. Somehow, this file really likes to be at the path Documents/Max/Max for Live Devices/BS2 Interface Project/data/BS2.json (on mac, not sure how this translates on windows), so you might have to place it there to work properly. Also, you can create 'banks' of presets by first placing the original BS2.json file in a different folder and then saving a new BS2.json file to the original folder. By changing places between these two, you can use one file as preset 0 - 127 and the second file as preset 128 - 256, etc. Finally: it seems as freezing the device will disable saving presets, so keep this in mind!

Please feel free to tweak and / or build upon this device +re-use it's basic principles and any of the code you think might be of help for your own device.

ABOUT THIS DEVICE

The first version of this device was built upon splonge's Bass Station 2 Controller (-> http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/2818/bass-station-2-controller ), which was itself a very minimal rework of JoeM's Bass Station II Editor (-> http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/2453/bass-station-ii-editor ), which in turn was a rather elaborate expansion of Justin Foster's original Bass Station II Patch Editor (-> https://cycling74.com/project/bass-station-ii-patch-editor )

For this version (2.0), I re-coded the entire device to make it as straight-forward and transparent as possible, using only native M4L components and keeping CPU as low as possible (1% on my 2009 mac mini). I also added a whole bunch of commentary (accessible when opening the device in patching mode), where I explain in detail how the device works, how I handle CC, double CC and NRPN messages, + some peculiarities from BS2 itself and how I've dealt with them.

Most of the UI elements I used are recycled from splonge's / JoeM's version of this device, but I've quite drastically re-arranged them, re-defined their ranges to better mirror BS2's behavior and re-defined their auto-mapping index so as to make more sense (to me) when used with controllers such as Ableton Push, Akai APC40, the Novation Launch, Keys, and Remote family, etc.

2.1 UPDATE

- Added save and recall presets from within the M4L device that will be applied - but not saved - to your BS2 on preset change

2.2 UPDATE

- Re-designed the UI

2.3 UPDATE

- Fixed an issue where not all parameters arrived to BS2 exactly as they should on preset change. These now work 100% as they are supposed to.

2.4 UPDATE

Re-introduced the random function (Notice I've made every parameter (except for patch volume) completely random, so the outcome will almost always be something rather experimental / SFX like, while not necessarily being very musical indeed... ;-)

Enjoy!