Ableton live 8 & Akai MPK Midi

[LoonyTunez]

Morning all,

New user so be gentle with me..

I have purchased a Akai MPK Mini, to control Ableton, and for the life of me, cant figure out how to get it to talk to ableton, tried the preferences and Midi / Sync Tabs, but no MPK is avalible from the Drop down box

Please help, as the cheese is starting to slip off my cracker...

Regards

M00DY

[Brunsmen]

If there are no MPK models on your list, you may be using an older version? I'm a pretty basic user as well, it took me half a day to get my MPK25 working. You will have to choose a device from that list for it to communicate at all, and for the buttons to work correctly it likely needs to be the one made for your controller. This you may already know so the important question is this: What release of Live do you use? I use Live Lite 8.2.1 and it contains many MPK scripts if not all.

[ianf39]

can't you just map the midi functions you want or is the computer not recognizing the midi messages at all?

[pugeek]

I have the same problems, Ableton receives Midi signals. You're able to play with the keys or the pads
and even with some devices the knobs are working. And when you're in Mapping mode the little yellow lights
shows you that there IS as Midi signal, but no matter what I want to map, it doesn't work...
I'm using Version Ableton Live Suite 8.2

[stefski]

Also looking for setup advice for this. At one point the MPK Mini Editor software asked me to make a selection I couldn't fully read because the box was too constrained. It listed the midi out of my Motu soundcard, and three different choices all referring to some "USB...." (again, this is what was cut off/not readable because the prompt was poorly designed).

By the way Pad 1 gets stuck on note on until I hit the casing around the pad, so I'm gonna get it replaced tomorrow.
Akai rarely fails at stunning me with build quality. Get a working unit and you're good to good. This one, obviously, has a mechanical error to it.

Please help on setup advice though. I'm not getting knobs to affect any parameters right now.

[stefski]

Problems using the Editor software for MPK Mini

Ok so the keys work fine and in a predictable manner, right out the box. The octave buttons on the hardware work. It plays whatever channel I activate for midi input. Here is what I'm not getting.

Knobs to send midi
I would like knobs to be able to send midi data. I'm not seeing any incoming midi in Live currently. It's not possible to assign in Live's midi map mode, the way the MPK mini is currently configured at least. Any help to have the knobs start transmitting?

Is this how you guys organize drums for pads?
I understand the concept of Pad Bank 1 and 2, and that the Note value is also relevant to what each pad/bank cover in a drum rack. So I'm reorganizing the drum rack in Live to have each sound on neighboring notes, then having Pad Bank 1 & 2 cover than full range.

#CC and #PC?
I remember #CC being something midi for control... Not sure what to make of those values. It's some sort of control command... How is it different from Note# and PC#, and how is PC# important?

I would like the tempo to possibly slave to Live's tempo.
Not sure this can be done.

What is "Momentary"?
Those "Momentary" buttons for the pads do what? If I hit one it turns black and reads "Toggle".

Picking it from the menu
Will the MPK Mini likely be a supported control surface in Live's settings? And what is the point of that if I still need to assign everything?)

I'm sure there's a super easy way to get started with this controlled. Worst thing is knobs not working. Hypercontrol it has not. Sorry for not understanding the basics of midi. I just want to understand how it all relates to this specific controller, so reading about it elsewhere might not be helpful to me.



The MPK mini Editor looks like this:

[stefski]

Bump.

Pretty please? I tried organizing my questions best I could.

[mothergarage]

It looks as if the mpkmini might provides two midi devices as you can select different midi channels for the pads and keys/knobs, so check your midi settings for two usb devices.

Concerning the pads: PC means program change. cc is the midi controller number. you can toggle between momentary, which means the controller acts like a trigger for drumhits or notes, whereas toggle acts like on/off to switch stuff.

As far as I remember it is possible to sync the arpeggiator as a slave. But the tempo can be flaky and it doesn't trigger "on the beat".

Maybe the mpkmini will be supported in the future. But you could write your own remotemap.

[stefski]

Thanks! That explains it a lot better. However still no luck getting the knobs to function.

[Mapleking]

Hi,

newbie too Got my MPK mini last week and Ableton Live the week before !

I have no problems with the knobs... I just mapped it in the midi screen, and it worked well. However I just found the way to map the knobs to one particular instrument, It don't seems to map automatically to the active instrument or the different midi programs(if someone know how to do this, please) In the Live parameters I choosed the MPK25 that was in the list.

One thing that is annoying is that the pads are not well mapped, I guess it's because the MPK25 has three rows of pads. I didn't do any configuration with the Akai soft, so I shall try there...

Here is a link to a demo set with the 4 programs each assignated to a track, it helped me ia lot !

http://www.soundware.co.uk/news/2010/11 ... on-live-8/

I hope it will help you too !

Cheers,

Nico.

[stefski]

Hi,

Here is a link to a demo set with the 4 programs each assignated to a track, it helped me ia lot !

http://www.soundware.co.uk/news/2010/11 ... on-live-8/

I tried this template. While Live receives midi when I turn the knobs (incivated upper right corner), I am still not getting the knobs to connect with any parameters in Live. Also, this template assumes that you need to change Program (PROG 1-4) on the MPK Mini in order to be able to have the drum pads NOT play, say, the Lead or Bass or String sounds, which are accessed by switching programs. Is there now way of separating the Pads from the Keys?

Still not able to Cmd + M midi assign the knobs, which is driving me nuts... Please help.

[Mapleking]

I played a bit more with it yesterday and you can actually have the 4 programs for knobs too ! The 4 program knobs can either control all the same instrument/effect or you can map only two knobs to instrument 1, 2 others in the same program to a different inst/eff.

In the template only program 1 as knobs assigned for drums, which got me confused too.

I don't know this cmd + m... I will try when I get home and let you know !

Cheers.

Nico

[stefski]

Duh.. activate remote on Input: MPK mini from Preferences Midi/Sync.

A little confused that there are two inputs from the MPK MINI Editor (1 and 2). I have these set to Remote Off, and Track On.
Is one MPK Mini Editor for pads, and the other for keys and knobs?

What exactly does Ableton receive from the two instances of MPK MINI Editor software? I don't suppose I'm controlling anything from the program, and that all that is required is the MPK mini to be active.

I also tried adding MPK 25 for the blue hand, but no luck, Knobs will not affect anything, unless manually assigned.
Perhaps the MPK mini will have native support later then.

[Mapleking]

Okay,

Back home.

So Cmd + m get you on the Midi assignation screen. First choose the program 1 on MPK Mini. Then click on the command you want to assign, then turn the knob on the MPK you want to assign and it's done. You will have a little icon on the command indicating 1/? (1 being program 1 and ? Being the number of the knob you turned) then when you return to main screen each time you turn this knob in mode program 1, it will affect the command.

I hope it helps...

I dont think you can separate the pads and the keys. You mean to play same time drums and keyboard but going each in a different clip.

For the drum pads I guess you have to map each program to different notes with the MPK Mini editor, because drum racks don't seem to be always on the same keys. So by having each program covering a different 4x4 area, you can then choose the best program according to the drum rack configuration. I still have to do this as I always have a gap of 1 row of pads when I switch from bank 1 to bank 2.

However don't take my advice as an expert one, I only have 2 weeks experience in Ableton and any music production

Cheers !

[Mapleking]

I didn't saw your post.

Yeah I think there will be no knobs automatic mapping until native support. I hope it will come with next release

The MPK mini editor is a bit confusing and I can't find this PDF on my Mac ! Only when I read the Cd on windows ?!?

Cheers,

Nico