Mapping an electronic drum kit

[danny klim]

Hi, I'm trying to map my DM6 drum kit and having issues. Could you please help?

I plugged in my Alesis DM6 kit and loaded a drum kit in ableton, but a few of the pads didn’t map anything at all and several of the pads were incorrectly mapped (i.e. crash is triggered by the kick drums).

What is the best/easiest way to map a electronic drum kit in ableton?

Is there any way to auto-map it correctly? Of, if not, how can i manually map it?



Also, is there any way to change the volume and the sound of one particular drum sound? Some of the sounds are too loud and some are too quiet… and i also would like to be able to customize the sounds of each kit.


Thanks, Dan

[firstnameavailable]

Hi Dan,

Did you ever get a response to this? I am having the same problem with an Alesis Crimson kit and, three years on, it doesn't appear that the answer to your question has yet reached the shores of the internet.

thanks,
mxt

[Tone Deft]

visually determine which Drum Rack Cell is being played
hit that cell's hot swap button (swirly arrows)
the focus jumps to the left pane, Live's browser, open it if it's closed
at the top of that pane search for "OHH", for example
hot swap in a sample from the search

[timday]

OK so the Alesis probably conforms to GM (General MIDI) standard e.g. Kick on C, Snares on D and E etc. You can see what the GM sounds ought to be by hovering over the pad and looking at the bottom left, or if you open up the I/O and right click on the recieve field you will see a menu with all the GM sounds on it and the pads they should be on.

Not all Ableton kits are GM, in fact many of them are not, this is so as to put the most useful sounds into a 4x4 grid to make them more useful for Push or Akai MPD or other grid type controllers. So that's likely the issue.
- If you just want to change the sample and keep any FX or device settings etc you can hot swap as abovve.
- If the sound you want is on another pad i.e. you want to move them around you can quickly re map a chain (i.e. a sample and all its effects) by clicking on the recieve field as above and if you select a note that will move to to the new pad. If there is already something on that pad it will result in a multi (i.e. a pad with more than one sound)
- If you want to totally change something e.g. change a sampled kick to a kick made from Operator, delete the chain on the pad and drag the new sound in from the browser
- In general you can start from an empty rack and populate it by dragging samples or synth presets you like onto pads from the browser.

[fishmonkey]

Hi Dan,

Did you ever get a response to this? I am having the same problem with an Alesis Crimson kit and, three years on, it doesn't appear that the answer to your question has yet reached the shores of the internet.

thanks,
mxt

the MIDI notes sent by your drum module are in its user manual --- it looks like you can edit them too...