Ableton Forum

Using Ableton Live 11 Suite, with a Native Instruments M32 midi keyboard. In the Ableton browser, I choose Drums, then choose a kit and the kit is loaded into the first MIDI track and the device interface appears at the bottom of Ableton. I notice that I can hit various keys on my midi keyboard (only the 11 keys from the lowest F to the next Eb), and when I hit one of these keys, one of the sounds on the device will be produced. Cymbal, Tom, HiHat, etc.

The problem is that the device interface at the bottom shows 16 different sounds, but only 11 keys on my keyboard produce sound, so what winds up happening is that I can produce a Tom, a Cymbal, but there is no key that activates the Snare.

Is there a mechanism for changing the key mapping of the keyboard to produce the 11 particular sounds I want out of this device? I'm very new to music production so forgive me if I'm not stating this clearly, I hope the problem is understood.

I would appreciate any insights or suggestions on how to approach this. The more detail the better (honestly, I've never used any of these tools prior to now, I am an utter noob at all of this. But I'm also a fast learner. Thanks in advance!

EDIT: I may have figured it out. I notice that when I hover over one of the sounds, a little circular icon appears and the Info view tells me that I can open the Hot-swap browser and replace the current sound with any other. I did this and chose a snare for one of the accessible slots, so I now have access to that sound. Is this the correct way to address this or should I be doing something different? I'm assuming that the original kit I loaded came pre-configured for this particular combination of sounds with the expectation that different keyboards would have more keys available to reach all 16 sounds. Can I make my own drum sets that have just exactly the sounds I want? Thanks again!

On your keyboard, the keys towards the right are the higher notes and the keys towards the left are the lower notes.

But a keyboard might not have the ‘full range’ where it can play the absolute highest note and the absolute lowest note directly from the layout in front of you.

So they have buttons on the keyboard that will have your keys play Lower notes or Higher notes using usually a Plus and Minus symbol for changing the Octave. Or it’ll say Octave Up / Down.

So if your lowest key doesn’t play all the notes of a particular instrument, you might have to press the Octave - or Down button so that your keys now play a lower set of notes.

Of if you are playing a piano and the high note you need seems to go right off the edge of the keyboard, you hit Octave + or Up and now your keys will all be bumped up an octave higher.

Usually you can move octaves up or down a couple times so that you can do really high and really low notes.

Most drum kits are arranged to be played from the lower notes end of the keyboard. On a Drum Rack, you can usually see which Cells are being triggered on the visual interface on screen. The cells towards the top are played by higher notes. The cells towards the bottom can be triggered with lower keys.

I just looked up images of that model.

Octave buttons are above the Pitchbend and Mod touch strips. They have arrows for left and right.

Thanks, everyone. Very useful tips. Man, there's a lot to learn in the music production universe. I'm having a blast learning it all, but whew!