Ableton Forum

I want to use ableton live with a alesis control pad. Ideally I'd be able to use certain pads for changing the scenes and others for triggering sounds from a drumrack/sampler. Is this possible? Does anyone have any handy tips or tricks?

i bought one recently and sold it after a week. If you hit a pad it creates an extremly short note event which is a hell to edit. Of course one could lenghten them but that doesn't work in some cases. I bought a trigger Finger instead. It does all you discribe and has controller functions.

The m-audio looks great but I'm going to be using live to fire out samples etc... in my band. I play drums and so the alesis would be easier to use I think. Is it effective for just triggering scenes etc...?

For trigging samples it works absolutely perfect out of the box.
Havn't tried triggering scenes but it should work just as any controller.

I'm satisfied, for the price it's a tight bargain.

The short sample length can be a pain until you figure out the "lengthen" plugin, I use 200ms and it works fine. Live does some crazy things with notes that carry over the end of the loop though, so watch out.

Otherwise it works great for either triggering notes or clips. The velocity curves are a bit weird, but otherwise it's fine.

If you can find out, get a Roland SPD-20. A far superior 'bit o kit' IMO. Older, yes, but far, far better.