Next to the octave controls, the C key (on your computer keyboard, not the note ‘C’ from a musical keyboard) changes the input velocity down by 20 units and V changes it up by 20. As long as the Computer MIDI Keyboard switch is activated (see my blog post about navigating Live, or find it in the top right hand side of your Live window) you can easily check which octave is selected by a quick review of the status bar at the bottom of the Live window when striking the C or V keys.

On the row below our ‘white keys’ on the computer keyboard we also have some controls by which we can transpose the keys an octave up or down (Z moves down and X moves up). This is the part that stumps many new users. So, if you strike Q, R, or I on your computer keyboard, you won’t trigger any note and therefore shouldn’t hear anything. From E to F there’s no black key, nor from B to C. This is because there’s not necessarily a black key between every white key on a musical keyboard.

In the row above we can trigger the black keys (or ‘sharps’) from a keyboard, but you’ll notice that not all of the computer keyboard’s keys trigger a musical note here. In the diagram above I have replaced the computer keyboard’s typical key names with musical note names that correspond to the black and white keys on a regular musical keyboard… so, we can see that the A key on our computer keyboard plays the note C, and directly next to that and moving to the right are the notes D, E, F, G, A, B and then C again (but an octave higher than our first C). So, like always, I have set out to explain it as simply as possible with a diagram. Playing notes from your computer keyboard into Ableton Live is incredibly easy, but for new electronic musicians it can become confusing when trying to figure out which key on your computer keyboard is triggering which musical note on your Live Device or third party plugin.

Turn computer keyboard into synthesizer