Beatstep as sequencer to kickdrums live?

[wombcorps]

Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out how to use the Beatstep ext sync to control a channel in Ableton for my live sets - the channel has lots of different kicks in and I want to use it to sequence the rhythm of whatever kick I am playing. I use an APC40 so the kicks are launched from there, but you can't sequence on there (unless you get scripts, which I don't want as it will be a pain to use live having to switch between views just to change a kick sequence).

The channel in Ableton is an audio channel with around 20 diff kicks on, I tried using ext sync with a midi channel and the midi clock was spot on with the BPM (even changed it to check) but it wasn't changing the sequence or even launching anything. ideally it would just act as a sequencer for this one audio channel, is this possible?

Apart from this query, the beatstep works like a dream with analog synths! but if i could get this sequencing working it would be even better

I'm on Ableton 8 & Macbook pro

Idea's and suggestions welcome!

[Richie Witch]

Here's an experiment you can try....

Try recording the MIDI output of the Beststep to an empty MIDI track. This will give you the MIDI note data coming from the Beatstep to Ableton. Once you have that, put your 20 kicks into a drum rack, spreading the kick samples around the same note range as the Beatstep is sending. This should allow you to sequence your kicks, and using the knobs on the Beatstep, change the kick launched on each step.

Or you could use the Transpose feature on the Beatstep to change all the kick note values at once.

If you save different sequences/note values to different save positions on the Beatstep, you could even "play" strings of sequences across all the different drum samples.

I don't think this is exactly what you were trying to do, might produce a similar result.