Problem with MPK Mini MKII and Ableton Drum Rack/Impulse
Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:24 am
Hi forum, I need your help if you can.
I have a student who bought the MPK mini MKII to start making music with Ableton. I don't have experience with this device until now. The 8 pads aren't automatically mapped to Impulse which is super dumb, but through the MIDI editor that came with it, I was able to get it to work.
Problem is, now that Impulse works, Drum rack doesn't. The pads for drum rack start on C1 and the Impulse C3, so if I map his pads to C3 then drum rack doesn't work on the typical squares that are filled with samples on a preset, for example. But it gets much weirder.
I wanted to make one "program" on his MPK mapped for Impulse and one program mapped for Drum rack, so at least he could switch between the two. But when mapping the second program pads to C1 and up, chromatically, ableton doesn't seem to register it correctly. Here's what I tried and what happened.
Assigned pads to C1 and up (the right thing) --> ableton interprets it as C0 and up
Assigned pads to C2 and up (to see if it would go to C1) --> ableton interprets it as C2 and up!
Assigned pads to C0 and up --> ableton interprets it as C-1 and up
Assigned pads to C2 and up AND added pitch MIDI effect at -12 to see if this would work --> the first four pads work this way, BUT the other four trigger E0 - G0.
In 2015 I'm really dealing with this? I don't know if this is an ableton or an akai thing, but it's incredibly frustrating for a kid who's just starting out and doesn't understand MIDI, let alone how to fix or workaround this stuff. If anyone can provide any insight into this, it would greatly be appreciated.
I have a student who bought the MPK mini MKII to start making music with Ableton. I don't have experience with this device until now. The 8 pads aren't automatically mapped to Impulse which is super dumb, but through the MIDI editor that came with it, I was able to get it to work.
Problem is, now that Impulse works, Drum rack doesn't. The pads for drum rack start on C1 and the Impulse C3, so if I map his pads to C3 then drum rack doesn't work on the typical squares that are filled with samples on a preset, for example. But it gets much weirder.
I wanted to make one "program" on his MPK mapped for Impulse and one program mapped for Drum rack, so at least he could switch between the two. But when mapping the second program pads to C1 and up, chromatically, ableton doesn't seem to register it correctly. Here's what I tried and what happened.
Assigned pads to C1 and up (the right thing) --> ableton interprets it as C0 and up
Assigned pads to C2 and up (to see if it would go to C1) --> ableton interprets it as C2 and up!
Assigned pads to C0 and up --> ableton interprets it as C-1 and up
Assigned pads to C2 and up AND added pitch MIDI effect at -12 to see if this would work --> the first four pads work this way, BUT the other four trigger E0 - G0.
In 2015 I'm really dealing with this? I don't know if this is an ableton or an akai thing, but it's incredibly frustrating for a kid who's just starting out and doesn't understand MIDI, let alone how to fix or workaround this stuff. If anyone can provide any insight into this, it would greatly be appreciated.
