Beginner Help

[iceman007]

Hi Everyone


I'm fairly new to using Ableton and purchased the Keylab 49 Mk2 a few days ago and am struggling to get much of anything happening.

After much searching I can't find any beginner tutorials at all (other than showing what each button etc can do etc), can anyone point me to any if they exist? Tutorials which show you have to do a few basics step by step (not just a walkthrough of each button etc and what it does/can do).

The main issues I have are:

*) If I have Analog Lab open, I can click the virtual keyboard with my mouse and it plays a sound. However the piano keys on the Keylab do nothing.
Also everything I've seen about using Analogue Lab show that If you have the Analogue Lab button selected on Keylab then rotating the knob would scroll through presets etc, but on mine it does not do this. All the screen shows is the words "Analog Lab" and that does not change.

*) As above, If I have the Piano V2 software open the virtual keyboard plays sounds, but the Keylab piano keys do nothing.

*) In Ableton if I have a demo track there I can start and stop it etc with the transports on Keylab. But again I can't find what needs to be changed so the Piano keys on Keylab will actually play an instrument.

I'm hoping that someone can point me to some worthwhile beginner tutorials as I haven't found any and without some helpful beginner type tutorials my keylab appears to be an expensive paperweight as the Piano keys do nothing in any of the tools.


Iceman

[Vivi]

I'm not a Live user, and only beginning using MIDI controllers too. One thing comes to mind, though:

If you fire up the arturia instruments as seperate programs (double clicking the icon from the desktop or sth like that) after you've launched Live, then the two won't "work together"; each will do its job completely ignoring the other. There might be some MIDI channels assignation conflict, or your Arturia softs not getting MIDI from your keyboard at all. On top of that, if at least one app uses ASIO audio drivers (I'm guessing you have every one outputing to Direct Sound) only the first app launched will have access to your computer's audio output. Which is normal, and usually preferable, if a bit surprising at first.

tl;dr: arturia softs have to be incorporated into your Live project as VST plugins.

As for tutorials about integrating 3 elements (Live + arturia softs + keylab), they usually are "out of scope" of basically anywhere… neither manuals of the keyboard or Analog Lab have anything to say about that. I'd say your best bet is to look it up on youtube. If I try a search for, say, "Ableton Live keylab mkII"… damn, even that is hard, so many commercially-oriented suggestions to skim through ! >_< (looks like I've been researching before buying) Even the Arturia channel doesn't provide much help right off the bat ;-/

If you're issue indeed stems from lauching Analog Lab/Piano V/etc. as separate programs, you might try finding it in the "plugins" folder instead.

Was that helpful?

[MajorFubar]

Sounds to me like you haven't gone into your software midi preferences and designated the keylab as an input.

[iceman007]

Thanks for your reply Vivi

Well thankfully I've managed to get something happening
After playing around a bit then restarting my computer I now have response from the keyboard keys in Ableton and Piano V2 etc so that's some progress.
Now need to try to learn more r utilizing it more with Ableton etc 

Cheers