Help needed hooking up MIDI drums & Ableton [moved]

shreddedloops

I think this is the right place for my problem.

IM having trouble connecting my Millenium MPS-200 electronic drums to my PC. Im using a MIDI cable to connect the drums to a 'sound box' which is connected to my PC. But I cant figure out how to actually record or even pick up a signal from the drums.

The most information I have is that when I go into Ableton Live there is a little green box that flashes whenever I hit a drum. However that is as far as I got. I tried reading the Ableton manual about MIDI but Im too much of a newbie to understand all this complex stuff.

To sum up, I THINK I have to assign MIDI keys??? Or something like that but I would really appreciate some help from the pros

Thanks in advance!

BTW I am really new to this Ableton/MIDI stuff and have just learned all I know from the Ableton manual

cornbb

I've moved your post into a thread of its own.

If you get the green flashing light in Ableton then it looks like you're 90% of the way there, it looks like its just a matter of assigning an instrument to the MIDI track. I haven't used Ableton in ages but I'll try to explain - open the Devices browser to the left of the screen and select an instrument - I think Impulse is a drum synth:



and drag and drop it onto a MIDI track:



Make sure the monitor/arm button or whatever its called (the one in red to the bottom of this image) is on and you should hear something.

Thats just a quick and dirty tutorial, someone with a bit more Ableton know-how might be along in the morning.

Its all a bit daunting to start off with but the Ableton tutorials are an excellent place to start too

shreddedloops

WOW! Thanks dude! Wouldnt be able to pay for better service!!

I'll give that a try and see if it gets me any further.

shreddedloops

Well I did all you said and it got me further but I still don't have sound.

Heres where I am at the moment.. That box in the corner lights up yellow when I hit a drum. I'v played with all the buttons but got no joy.

cornbb

Hmm, try these steps so, one by one, and let me know if any of these steps produces results.

- Switch off MIDI learn. This is the button labelled MIDI to the top right of the screen that is making everything go blue. You only need this for mapping parameters.

EDIT: I've just noticed that Impulse seems to be switched off. There's a grey button to the left of the Impulse label towards the bottom of the screen (but above the boxes labelled kik, snare etc), make sure its lit up green before going any further Also might be worth getting rid of the Reverb and any other effects you're using til you sort this problem out.

- Where your MIDI channel says "Ch. 10" switch this to "All Channels". Drums usually transmit on channel 10 anyway but you never know. Also change "MIDI From" to "All Ins" instead of SB Audigy 2. Let me know if you see a tiny green bar light up next to "All Channels" when you've done this.
- Try playing back individual drum hits with mouse clicks, just to check that Impulse is working - i.e. click the play icons inside the boxes labelled kik, snare, tom1 etc.
- Try different Impulse presets, or try another instrument instead of Impulse. Its possible (but unlikely) that your drum hits are not being mapped to any of the available notes in Impulse.
- Drag and drop any audio file (eg any loop from the library or any mp3 file) into any of the slots in your Audio track and hit play, just to check that Live is playing any audio at all.

shreddedloops

Just tried all those.

Seems like its Impulse that isn't working. I changed to a different instrument, think it was called Tom Designer, and got some noise but wasn't really the full drum kit I was looking for. I'll just search for another instrument to use another than Impulse.

At least I know its working now!
Thanks for the great help anyways!

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Have you connected the drum to your soundcard using audio cables as well. You only mention connecting the midi cable. The midi cable doesn' transmit sound, only notes, so you need to deal with the actual audio signal seperately.