Can Play / Pause button resume playback in Ableton?

[benoftroy]

Hello!

I have searched high and low and and can't find the answer to this question: can the play/pause button on a Keylab mkii (88 key) pause and resume playback from where you hit pause in Ableton arrangement view (or when looking at a clip).

I can stop and resume from the playhead, but if I want to resume from where I paused/stopped, I have to go back to my keyboard and use they keyboard shortcut Shift + Space.

Seems like hitting the play/pause button should do this, no?

Would appreciate any help here

[LBH]

Hi and welcome to Arturia forums?

I don't know much about Live.
Do you know of any controllers that can do this? At least without doing something in Ableton Live first.
How can a controller do this in Live? I mean how to access the functionality within Live from a controller to do this? The controller can only control/ use functionality in/ for the software.

[benoftroy]

Hello, @LBH, yes, new to the forum.

Determined, I did some even further digging… 

First, I believe Ableton refers to this feature as "Resume". You can resume with the keyboard shortcut Shift + Space. I find it really useful since it behaves just like a play/pause button on a tape deck. Play picks right back up from where you hit pause instead of skipping back to the beginning of the clip or loop (which is also very useful, of course!)

I finally stumbled upon a post in the Ableton forums that explicitly outlines the Ableton-specific control messages that supporting controllers can use to communicate transport instructions. Of course, the Keylab supports these messages. Unfortunately, there is not a control message for "Resume". I think that settles it. Until Ableton adds a new control message for resume, Arturia (or any other manufacturer) could not support that feature.

Alas.

Thanks for the reply!

[LBH]

Your welcome.

Thanks for reporting back. It's good to know.

[benoftroy]

Just wanted to update this post with this info:

This is a link to an Ableton support document about scripting control surfaces:

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/206240184-Creating-your-own-Control-Surface-script

Which will lead you to the UserConfiguration.txt file here:
Mac: HD:/Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/Ableton/Live x.x.x/User Remote Scripts
Windows: C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\Ableton\Live x.x.x\Preferences\User Remote Scripts

…where you'll find this bit at the end of the file:

[TransportControls]
# The transport buttons are also expected not to be toggles.
StopButton: -1
PlayButton: -1
RecButton: -1
LoopButton: -1
RwdButton: -1
FfwdButton: -1

…which sadly does not include anything called "Resume". This is why I'm fairly confident no third-party controller could support resume. In fact, I hear that not even the Push supports it. I've found reference to M4L devices that may add support for resume.

Hope this is helpful to someone