Mapping the Axiom 49 to work with Live 8

[Perfectsounds]

I was looking for a good midi keyboard at a reasonable price and bought the M-Audio Axiom 49. I also have the APC 40 along with Live 8. So you would think I have all the tools I need for creating spectacular remixes and music. It has been a humbling experience. I have been a broadcast and mobile DJ for 27 years and produce radio & TV commercials/imaging for a living. I have never had such a challenge learning software and hardware...ever
I have read the entire Axiom manual, downloaded the lesson, and scoured the Internet looking for instructions on how to get the Axiom 49 to work with Live 8. Don't get me wrong...I am getting sound using the "instrument rack" and the the key pads seem to randomly map themselves to sounds as well. But I can't control any other parameters in Live or figure out how to map things manually. It seems like all the documentation leaves out the basic steps. I am looking for a video or podcast or manual or something that can tell me in plain english how to set the Axiom up with Live 8 so I can start creating. All the documentation say's to use "preset 17" but there is no information "anywhere" that tells you how to access "preset 17" on the Axiom. It is driving me MAD! Nothing seems to be intuative. Any help I can get using the Axiom will be greatly appreciated.

All the best,
Perfect Sounds

System Info:
HP Touch 25"
Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor P7350 [2.0GHz, 3MB L2]
6 gigs Ram, 500 gig HD, 500 gig external
Vista 64
Denon HC4500 controller with internal sound card
APC 40
M-Audio Axiom 49

[honeydont]

Hi,

my setup includes an Axiom 49 and it works perfectly with Live 8. Let's go over some setup steps and try to figure out what you're missing.

First of all, in Ableton's preferences under the MIDI Sync tab, you have to select the "Axiom 49 61 Classic" as your control surface, setting its input to USB Axiom 49 In1 (supposing you're using M-Audio's driver).

Also make sure that the "track" (for note input) and "remote" (for DAW control) buttons are clicked (yellow) for this MIDI input on the "MIDI Ports" section right below.

You then have to click the "dump" button on the right of the control surface selection dropout boxes, which will overwrite presets 18, 19 and 20 on the Axiom.

To access different presets click the "recall" button on your Axiom (the rightmost button on the bottom row of the function buttons) and while the LCD is flashing press "+" or "-" on the Axiom's numpad.

Basically, you'll use preset 18 to play Impulse, preset 19 to mix and preset 20 to control plugins and devices.

Hope this helps

[Rogue Scrunt]

there is an axiom lesson in the lesson oflive.
if it is not there, you can DL it from the abelton website.

[Perfectsounds]

Honeydont...thank you much. I did the set up ok...but I will try some of those other steps as well...much appreciated. So the deal is that you have to recall those presets to work the different Ableton parameters, right?

Maybe you can help with this. When I pull up a drum kit...the pads are assigned to most of the sounds, but not all. How do I change a pad assignment to a different sound within the Kit?

Thank you again!
Perfect Sounds

[honeydont]

Honeydont...thank you much. I did the set up ok...but I will try some of those other steps as well...much appreciated. So the deal is that you have to recall those presets to work the different Ableton parameters, right?

Maybe you can help with this. When I pull up a drum kit...the pads are assigned to most of the sounds, but not all. How do I change a pad assignment to a different sound within the Kit?

Thank you again!
Perfect Sounds

Preset 18 is the one designed with the pads assigned to the right MIDI notes so that they can play sampled drum sounds. It's designed to work with Impulse, and it works great since both have just 8 "slots". The pads are assigned to C3-C4, only white notes.

The new Drum Rack or 3rd party VSTis, however, are a different story. They normally have more than 8 slots (i.e. Native Instrument's Battery 3 or Toontrack's EZDrummer) and so can't be fully "covered" by Axiom's 8 pads.

You can use M-Audio's Enigma freeware or the hardware controls on your keyboard to assign different MIDI notes to the pads so that they correlate to the 8 drum sounds you want. The others will have to be recorded via the regular keys or written manually.

Hope this helps

[Perfectsounds]

Ok...you have been so helpful...can you help me with how to use Impluse?:)

I know it pulls up blank slots for any instrument, but how do you get the drums or instruments into the impulse slots?

Thanks again!
Perfect Sounds

[H20nly]

^ drag and drop

[honeydont]

Ok...you have been so helpful...can you help me with how to use Impluse?:)

I know it pulls up blank slots for any instrument, but how do you get the drums or instruments into the impulse slots?

Thanks again!
Perfect Sounds

Yup, like stated above, just drag and drop from the file browser. You can start messing around by loading Impulse's presets. You can see them when you click the little triangle pointing right on the side of impulse in the file browser.

Just drag any of them to a MIDI track or empty space and start playing, as the sounds are already mapped.

Alternatively, drop any samples from your collection (wav/aif/rex) on the slots and they'll be mapped from c3 to c4.

Hope this helps

[Perfectsounds]

Thank you all for helping. I am playing all kinds of instruments and kits...mapping is fine.

[Perfectsounds]

Another question about Impulse. I wanted to take several measures of a song and assign it to a pad in Impulse. I have done it...however when I play it back it only gives me a second of the clip, not the full amount of measures I dropped in. I that just a function of Impulse? Am I looking for it to do something it's not meant to do? I have the APC 40 and I am looking to chop up songs and beats and make them into clips to put on different tracks so I can play them synchronized of course. Any thoughts of how to make this process easier for me. Anyones help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[H20nly]

I think you might have to hold down the pad if you put a long sample in there.
That could be the issue.

Another thing could be the sample... did you set the loop points around it before you dragged it into Impulse? One way to tell if you got what you need is to copy the sample ('ctrl + c' on a PC) and then paste it into a blank area in Arrange view just to make sure what you think you're triggering is indeed what your dropping in to Impulse...

[MalakitheMostHi]

Yo I have my axiom working perfectly with my old cpu in win XP. But I just got 8 suite and rt on a 64 bit Vista which everything is working so far except for my axiom. When I go into the midi preferences it wont hilight the input window just lets me select axiom 49-61 and the output only has windows graintable as an option. The axiom/m audio site says there is now driver for the axiom in vista 64, its totally plug and play.

Anyone know what Im over looking? Ive looked through all my settings on my xp set up and cant figure it out.

Thanks in advance.

malaki

[dinaiz]

2 things :

- Did you power on, and connect your axiom before running live ?
- And does vista recognize your axiom as well ?


Maybe it could be a driver issue ...

[H20nly]

- Did you power on, and connect your axiom before running live ?

+ 1

AND have you re booted your PC with the Axiom on? You may get a prompt to install/reinstall a driver for it if you do... check Device Manager in Vista and see if you can find it among your USB devices... it probably won't say Axiom but there should be an entry regarding midi.

I have the Axiom 25 on XP but I'm not at home right now so I can't check the exact verbiage. If you uninstall from the Device Manager and re-install by leaving it powered on during a reboot your problem might go away or rather, might ask you to finish approving its install. All those extra little Windows pop-ups "are you sure..." and "Windows has detected..." that come up in Vista may have caused you to skip part of the install. If I remember right you have to say yes to 4 install prompts when installing that device in XP (so maybe 8 prompts in Vista ).

[MalakitheMostHi]

its working now, had to get driver from D:\ i dont get that... but it works