Mapping Akai MPK Mini drum pads

I have a new Akai MPK and use NanoStudio 2 on an iPad….its keyboard works great but I can’t seem to work out how to map the drum pads to specific Slate pads….the NS2 IN/OUT screen shows MPK mini 3 under Track Input and when I hit a drum pad I see the various velocity hit showing up in the velocity window under the mini channel enable matrix….so I know the thing is connected correctly lol….but I only hear drum hits if I use the keyboard….the pads light up but they do not trigger anything…

Comments

  • I haven’t done this myself, so I appologize if I leave out a detail. If I understand correctly this is basically a situation where the Akai minipads are sending out MIDI notes in the wrong octave for NS2 to receive them. Slate has 32 pads and each one can be configured to receive a specific MIDI note. In the manual there is a page that looks like this:

    Adjust the Slate pads to the MIDI notes the Akai pads are sending out (hopefully info that is available in the Akai manual), and you are set. If you save the Slate kit as a User kit, the new MIDI note settings should remain the same, so creating a defaut AKAI User kit with the custom note ranges would be a time saver when creating future kits from scratch.

    I just looked at my Akai 249. It’s mini pads are set an octave above the Slate Factory kit Back Alley Band (should be the same in all Factory & IAP kits). Pad 1 sends out to Slate Pad 13. Pad 2 sends out to Slate Pad 15. So my Akai pads are not sending out the black key MIDI notes. You may find a similar situation on your AKai keyboard. Anyway, I hope that helps. If it does please let me know, and any tips you discover would be nice to post here for some person who finds the same problem in the future.

  • Thank you!!! I’ll try this out and post for everyone’s reference if this works!

  • This worked great and the great thing about the MPK mini is that it’s display shows it’s midi note when you strike a pad…..thank you

  • Glad to hear it is working! And good to know there are people enjoying NS2.

  • edited March 2022

    This place used to be a great source of info on Romanian exotic massage services, and now all we get is solutions for making music on iOS. I miss the good old days.

  • During the really good old days, the NS1 forum, some clever chap copied a spam bot post and had it read by an AI text to speech app (don’t remember which) and set that to an NS1 track. The real problem is we just aren’t appeciative enough of the inherent creativity in posts of spam bots.

  • edited March 2023

    I use an Akai MPK Mini 3 and tried SlapHappy's suggestion and it is a quick workaround, but for me the better solution was to download the MPK Mini's editor and create and replace one of the default programs with one setup for NS2. Not sure why the dev's chose to set the starting pad midi note to 48 - C2 instead of 36 - C2; I think 48 is supposed to correspond to C3.

  • edited April 2023

    @Ilykmuezik said:
    I use an Akai MPK Mini 3 and tried SlapHappy's suggestion and it is a quick workaround, but for me the better solution was to download the MPK Mini's editor and create and replace one of the default programs with one setup for NS2. Not sure why the dev's chose to set the starting pad midi note to 48 - C2 instead of 36 - C2; I think 48 is supposed to correspond to C3.

    There's no defined convention for octave naming in the MIDI specification. One app or hardware may call note 36 or 48 any octave they like, but it the difference is usually only an octave or two. It's just one of those things that you have to get used to with MIDI. It's been that way since 1983.

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