Akai MK2 Mini, LMMS and Hydrogen

Talk about your MIDI interfaces, microphones, keyboards...

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Diogenes
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Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2017 10:12 pm

Akai MK2 Mini, LMMS and Hydrogen

Post by Diogenes »

The core of my problem is that, while I can get everything else working fine, I would like to be able to use the drum pads at the same time as my keyboard.

I am on Ubuntu Xenial, with pulseaudio(I know, ugh, but I largely use it as a desktop for now,) and LMMS is the main program I wish to use. It is no problem to get the keyboard working, plug and play. But, it plays the keyboard and drums as the same instrument. I tried Hydrogen, and I could use the drumpads as expected. So, using the MPK editor, I changed the drums to channel 2, and kept the keyboard channel 1. I then installed jack, and configured it to run Hydrogen and LMMS at the same time. If I run them, however, LMMS works fine, but Hydrogen doesnt detect the Midi input from channel 2, though it does play sound when I click/use the sequencer.

I am good with Linux, but audio, especially Jack, is new to me, and I could use some help here. Besides being largely preferential to LMMS, I am willing to use different software than I have listed above, I have played around with Ardour, and similarily, it works on it's own, and while I haven't bothered much, it doesn't seem to work with jack no matter what I do. All I want is to be able to use both the drumpad, and keyboard, at the same time, I am fine with any solution that allows this.
glowrak guy
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Re: Akai MK2 Mini, LMMS and Hydrogen

Post by glowrak guy »

Found this from an Akai page in google:

How do I assign separate midi channels for keys and pads on the mpk249?
I know this shouldn't be hard and I must be missing something.
I just want to play keyboard with the keys and use the pads for drum sounds.

Here's how:

1) Press the EDIT button.
2) Press any key
3) MIDIChannel is the first parameter to set there. USB A1-16, USB B1-16. or Common
4) After you set that, hit any pad.
5) Adjust MIDIChannel for that as well.
6) Press PRESET to return to the main screen
7) Press the right cursor arrow once to store this change.
8) That's it!

That's the basic procedure for editing anything on the MPK2 series; press EDIT, then press the control you want to edit.

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For using hardware in linux,

http://libremusicproduction.com/article ... arted-jack

this page, and the many around it may help get things started. There is a good linux reaper version,
and you may find more online help for the Akai usage in a reaper context.

Find Reaper at landoleet dot org and a linux-reaper-windows-items discussion
is here : https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=193761

Cheers
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