MIDI note to trigger specific section of a song, instead of next section

[Ronald]

Hi there!
Im in charge of playback for a popular Dutch band that is currently using a custom made max for live setup. It’s solid, but we’re in need of more features. I’ve been given the green light to design a new setup and I have been looking into Ableset. What an amazing plugin! The one requierment though, is that for the drummer, nothings needs to change. Were currently using pads on a DTX to send midi notes to the system. Those notes trigger sections. If we implement ableset, id like to use the section features, but I also need to option to have the drummer trigger specific sections. For example, we could be in chorus 2 and decide to go to the outro in stead if the brigde, so Id need to have the bridge section to be triggered by a specific midi note. That note would idealy stay the same for all songs that have these specific sections. In other words, i dont want to program the pads per song. Is this doable with abelset? Would love to find out

Thanks in advance and all the best!

[agustinvolpe]

Hey Ronald! Welcome to the forum, and thanks for the detailed question — cool to hear you’re looking at AbleSet for your new playback setup

Short answer: yes, this is absolutely doable, and it works exactly the way you’re describing.

If your drummer is already triggering fixed MIDI notes from the DTX, you can keep that workflow and simply map those notes to custom OSC commands in AbleSet’s MIDI Mappings.

What you’d map the pads to

You can assign any pad to jump to a specific section using:

/setlist/jumpToSection [number or name]

Examples:

/setlist/jumpToSection 2            → jumps to the 2nd section
/setlist/jumpToSection -2           → jumps to the 2nd-last section
/setlist/jumpToSection Chorus       → jumps to the first section named "Chorus"
/setlist/jumpToSection Chorus true  → jumps to any section containing "Chorus"

So if you always name your sections consistently across all songs
(e.g., “Chorus”, “Bridge”, “Outro”),
you can map one fixed MIDI note per DTX pad, and it will work across all songs without having to reprogram the kit.

For example, your drummer could hit:

• Pad A → always jumps to Bridge
• Pad B → always jumps to Outro
• Pad C → always jumps to Chorus

…no matter which song you’re on.

How to set it up

Just create a custom MIDI mapping in AbleSet:

1. Go to Settings → MIDI Mappings
2. Add a mapping for your MIDI note
3. Choose Custom OSC
4. Enter one of the OSC commands above

It should look like this:

And that’s it — the DTX pads will now control AbleSet sections directly.
Use whatever MIDI notes and channels work best for your setup.

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Let me know if this works for your setup, I’m looking forward to your reply!

Agus

[Ronald]

Hi Agus!

Brilliant and thank you for your swift reply. Sounds amaing! Will try it out this weekend. One quick follow up question: do you need to go online with the machine your having Ableset on? I want to have the new Mac be offline forever, but maybe Ableset license needs te be checked trough the internet?

[agustinvolpe]

Good question!

Just to clarify how licensing works:

You’ll need to connect your new Mac once to activate your AbleSet license on that machine.
But after that, you’re totally fine to keep it offline forever — AbleSet doesn’t require any ongoing internet connection once the license is activated.

The only moment you’d need to go online again is if you ever want to deactivate that Mac, to free up a slot and activate a different computer.

As long as you’re staying on the same machine, you’re good — fully offline playback is no problem at all.

Agus

[Ronald]

Perfect. Really excited about implementing this. We’re touring 'till the end of this year with the current setup and I will build the new one in januari and february. Ill be sure to let you know how things go Thanks again!