How To Make Your nanoKontrol2 Lights Respond to MainStage 3 or Ableton Live

A great feature of the nanoKontrol2 is the lights that will respond and stay lit up based on patch changes in MainStage 3. It's actually quite easy to get MainStage and the nanoKontrol2 lights synchronized. This responsive feedback makes it even easier to use the nanoKontrol 2 with Sunday Keys or your own MainStage concert.

A big thank you to those in our community who worked on figuring this out, especially Steve Case who was the first person we saw who documented the final steps thoroughly.

If you are doing this in Ableton Live, you can ignore the MainStage parts, but you will need to follow the same steps for the nanoKontrol 2 itself, then in the Ableton midi preferences, select “Remote” in the Out section for the NanoKontrol 2.

If you are having an issue with needing to press the buttons twice to get them to activate, you'll also need to change Type: to Alternating Value instead of Press / Release and change that for all the buttons.

If you are using Catalina, Big Sur or Monterey OS and using an Intel or M1 Mac, you will need to take a couple more steps outlined on Korg's website to update it and run an uninstaller, and make sure you are using the most recent Korg Editor to set this up. Click here to read an article with more details about how to do this. 

Check out the video to learn how to do this: