MidiMirror

Save device mode configurations for each specific device. Happy with your specific set-up for a device, say Ableton's Analog, or a VST like Diva, Serum or a TB-303? Maybe you want the filter cut off to always be on knob1, and the ADSR on the faders? Hit the save device configuration button and MidiMirror will remember the exact order you set up for that device, so each parameter will always land in the same spot on that device in future.

It is a fact about the device, not about the set: the order you settled on for Diva comes back on every Diva in every project, on any track, without you saving a template or re-mapping a thing. Drag two knobs onto each other with Swap order until the row reads the way you think, then press the button and it is that device's layout from then on. A Forget button appears beside it on any device you have already taught, to hand it back to Live's own parameter order.

Double-click any control and choose its job: a mixer function on this strip or a named track, a parameter of the selected device by position or by name, an envelope stage found by name on whatever instrument is in front of it, or one exact parameter on one exact device on one exact track, written out in full.

Press one key and the panel remembers where every knob and fader is standing. Build the track up however you like, sweep the filters, ride the sends, push it all into the red, then press the same key again and the whole thing snaps back at once.

While something is stored, every control that took part carries an orange mark at the value it will return to, a pip on a knob's ring or a line across a fader's well. That answers the only question worth asking mid-take: if I hit it now, what happens?

Hold the drop key to re-aim it. Keep it down, move whatever you want the return to land on, let go, and that is the new snap-back point. Nothing moves on the way in or out, so you can change where a drop returns to in the middle of a take without ever passing through the sound of the old one.

Run two controllers at once: two Control Surface slots in Live, each with its own generated script, and you get two windows, one per controller, both on screen together. Neither is a copy of the other: each draws its own hardware, keeps its own saved setups, layout and modes, and answers only to its own MIDI.

There is nothing to switch between, which is the point. A mirror is glanced at while your hands are busy, and a glance cannot click. The first time two are open they are placed side by side for you; move either one by hand and it is yours from then on, remembered per controller and per monitor, even if you unplug that screen in between. A window appears when its controller does and goes when it goes, so changing Live's Control Surface slots rearranges the windows to match with no restart, and it will not steal focus from Live to do it.

Switch to JamWare mode and the panel becomes the front panel of another JamWare app. Every knob, fader and key fills with the parameters of whichever of Chordinator or MutationStation you last touched, named, with live values, in the app's own order. Turn a knob here and the app moves.

It follows focus the way device mode follows the blue hand: click into MutationStation and the panel is MutationStation's, click into Chordinator and it is Chordinator's. There is nothing to select or map, and no port to choose: the parameters arrive already labelled. The app's own groups claim whole columns of the panel, so a switch sits directly beneath the knobs it changes, and a key bound to a switch lights to show whether it is on, both ways: flick it in the app's window and the key follows.

Nothing runs until you ask for it. MidiMirror announces itself only while this mode is showing and the apps publish only while it is, so leaving the mode closes the port on both sides. Free mode is untouched and still there beside it: that one hands your controls to Live's own MIDI map, while this one hands them to the app.