Splitting a MIDI controller?

Help, Support & Bugs
1

I recently got an Akai MPK mini. Very slick, nice device. It has a piano-style keyboard, assorted knobs, and some pads along the top.

For whatever reason (naivete, wishful thinking) I thought I would be able to use the piano keys and pads independently.

That is, use the keys to send notes to one track and the pads to send notes to another track.

Of course that’s not how it works. It’s a single device and it sends MIDI messages. They all go to whatever track is active.

Is there some way, though, to get this kind of split? Maybe using a meta device? Something that can route a range of messages to one or another track?

2

Does this help? I can’t tell is it applies to the mini or not: http://www.akaipro.com/kb/article/1509

3

I’ll take a closer look at what that is actually doing, but based on the article I think it assigns different channels to the keys and pads. When I tried that myself using the controller editor I didn’t see how Renoise would route MIDI based on the channel.

OTOH even if I had two keyboards I’m not sure how I would have Renoise map them to different tracks.

I have a feeling I’m missing something obvious …

4

I think the answer lies here:http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/MIDI

I can select my device and then set stuff for channel, assigned tracks, other things.

Not seeing how to set this up for multiple channels at the same time (i.e. channel one goes to one instrument, channel to another).

Have to explore this more.

Update : The trick to assigning different MIDI aspects to different instruments is that you have to select the instrument you want, then edit the MIDI input section.

For example, in my song I selected the bass instrument and then edited the MIDI controller (the MPK) so that ch1 went to that instrument.

I had to then select a different instrument (some drums) in order to then edit the MPK settings such that ch10 went to that instrument.

The MPK already had a program setting that split the pads off to channel 10 (fairly common assignment) so I was all set.

5

Oh. Pretty sure what you’re looking for is under the MIDI tab, you can set “Input Device” and also “Channel” there and associate the track you want in the bottom left (little menu that lists the available tracks). Am I wrong?

Edit: right, yeah, you got it. Is where your getting stuck maybe the fact that instruments aren’t necessarily hardwired/associated to a specific track, they sort of exist in their own space and play in any track where their instrument number is called… ? at least that’s my understanding.

6

Oh. Pretty sure what you’re looking for is under the MIDI tab, you can set “Input Device” and also “Channel” there and associate the track you want in the bottom left (little menu that lists the available tracks). Am I wrong?

No, that’s exactly correct. I updated a previous comment with what I’ve manged to do. The wiki is not (to me) terribly clear about this, about needing to select the instrument you want to associate with a track and MIDI input qualifications (note range, channel, etc.)

7

Yep, it took me ages to figure this out – in my case, how to have different sections of the same MIDI keyboard going to different instruments (on the same track, or on other tracks). I think the documentation around this could be better. It’s one of those things that seems simple now but took a lot of time and frustration to figure out.