BU16 – How to use pressure as aftertouch without retriggering notes?

Grid
1

Hi everyone,

I just bought a BU16 and my hope was that I could use the pressure parameter in Ableton in a similar way to an MPE controller.

My goal:

  • Each of the 16 pads should trigger a standard drum note (MIDI notes 36–51).
  • The pressure from each pad should be sent as MIDI CC74 (continuous control, 0–127).
  • I want the note to trigger only once on press/release, while the pressure data is updated continuously (like channel aftertouch or poly-AT).

The problem:

When I put the BU16 into pressure mode, every new pressure value retriggers a new Note On, which produces a lot of noise and makes it unplayable.

How can I configure the BU16 so that Note On/Off is only sent once, and pressure is mapped only to CC74 without retriggering?

Is there an example profile or a Lua snippet I could adapt for all 16 pads?

Thanks a lot in advance for your help!

Best,

Pablo

2

Welcome to the forum!

I think what you are trying to to is possible using the conditional block in Editor. If i understand correctly :

  • Nothing is sent until the Button is fully pressed.
  • Once the button is fully pressed then a Note on is sent and mode is changed to preassure
  • After that CC messages are sent with the measured preassure value until value becomes 0 (fully released)
  • When value is zero we change back to button mode.

Is this correct?
@narayb what do you think, is this possible?

3

Hi, thanks for your answer.
I think the first non-zero value should trigger a MIDI note when the key is pressed for the first time. After that, the pressure should be sent as CC continuously until the key is completely released, at which point a MIDI note-off should be sent.

This is basically the same behavior as with an MPE controller I think.

Would be glad to hear if its possible.

4

This is possible, I created a prototype config yesterday, but it turns out mine triggers at the exact half way point. Now I modied it to fit your need. Search for “Aftertouch Low Trigger” in profile cloud!

Screenshot From 2025-09-10 09-48-12
Screenshot From 2025-09-10 09-48-121920×1048 414 KB

5

Thanks a lot! it works really well. Now I have a lot to explore with this kind of interaction.

The only problem I have, is that the CC is not going to 0 after I release the key. If I release the key faster the release leaves a value of 80 or more. If I release it slowly it is around ~6 but never 0. A work around could be that the when velocity of the midi not is 0 the CC value goes smoothly to 0 as well. I don’t know how to program that with in the grid platform.

I will try to see I can solve it somehow with some max coding for the moment