Ableton Forum

I've been using ableton for about 6 months now and I love it, I currently have my yamaha keyboard plugged into it but I also want to invest in a midi pad but they sure aren't cheap. I was wondering if there is a way to use my numpad on my computer keyboard as a midi pad until I decide to buy a real midi pad.

any suggestions?

It depends on what you want to control with it. If you wanna play impluse, you will need bome's midi translator or midistroke I guess. And no velocity.
If you just want to trigger things (clips, record, solos...), it will do the job very well.

you can use all buttons of your numberpad with the help of autohotkey and bomes midi translator.

you have to use autohotkey for changing keys of your numberpad which are predefined hotkeys in live. after that you can translate all keys of your numberpad to midi notes... with bomes

All you have to do is to assign them through key map control assignment in LIVE.
(I suppose you want to trigger clips/tracks? You don't explain..)
You can also assign clips to notes on your yamaha kbd...
Notes are ON/OFF, no velocity...

That's what I do; in MIDI map control in LIVE, I assign midi channel 2 of my Edirol PCR 50 to keys. 4 octaves makes a lot of triggers
Then I switch to midi channel 1 and it is a "keyboard" again! Plays NOTES on virtual synth...
It is a simple, inexpensive solution for trigggers/controls on/off etc...

You don't need bome's midi translator for that...unless you start translating more complex commands...