…actually, it’s just me 😉 My name is Jan and I’m based in Berlin. I mainly compose music for audiovisual performances. Besides piano, bass guitar, and a bit of drums, the cello is my primary instrument. Over the years, I have also worked as a media technician and graphic designer, which eventually led me to pick up some programming skills along the way.
I originally created Keyswitch & Expression Map for my own workflow because I could not find a satisfying solution for managing orchestral articulations in Ableton Live in a comfortable and intuitive way.
I love working with Ableton, but orchestral composing often meant either loading articulations into countless separate tracks and scrolling through them until you get dizzy, or relying on keyswitches while memorizing MIDI notes and CC numbers that vary from library to library — and sometimes even between instruments of the same library.
Multi-Clip Editing in Live 10 was a fantastic addition and definitely made orchestral composing more straightforward. Still, it did not quite provide the workflow I had in mind.
At the end of 2019, I suddenly found myself with a bit of free time between projects and spontaneously decided to build my own solution in Max for Live. Excited to finally have the workflow I had been waiting for — and encouraged by enthusiastic musician friends — I started developing the device further so it could become useful for anyone looking for a more natural and intuitive way to perform or edit multiple articulations within a single track.
So I tried to imagine what other Ableton users might want from such a device and finally released the first version in April 2020.
Over the last six years, Keyswitch & Expression Map has become a daily companion for more than 1000 musicians and composers worldwide. This has been both a huge compliment and a great motivation to continue improving the device. Thank you very much for your inspiring feedback, ideas, bug reports, and support over the years. I hope Version 5 includes everything you were hoping for.
If you have ideas for improvements, questions, discover a bug, or simply want to say hello, I’d be happy to hear from you. Just send me a message using the contact form.
I wish you lots of success and inspiration with your projects!
All the best,
Jan
PS. Here are two links to some of my performances in case you are interested:
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