Unable to reassign pads using MIDI CC.

[Wazan]

Hello, this is my first experience with anything like what miniLab and Analog Lab offer. I am interested in using the keys to play chords/melodies while at the same time playing drum beats on the pads. My device seems to work properly, I can play whatever sounds Analog Labs offers but I can't program it to change the pads to take on drum sounds - right now they'll only generate chords. I've carefully followed the MiniLab_EN.pdf instructions in section 5.1 to use MIDI Control Center to assign kick and snare but nothing different happens after sending the commands to the board on memory location 1 and switching to Analog Labs and pressing SHIFT+1. I've also tried randomly selecting settings in MINICC (e.g., assigning the volume knob's min to 0 and max to 5 but after uploading that I still get the full range of the volume knob.) but after sending them to the board nothing new happens. It seems pressing "Send to keyboard" has no effect or I'm accessing the changes incorrectly in Analog Lab but if that's the case I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Again, my goal now is simply to assign a drumset to pads 1-8 while hopefully being able to use the keyboard for melodies. I'm following to the letter the instructions in 5.1 of the MiniLab_EN.pdf, sending to keyboard on memory location 1, moving to the Analog Lab software, holding SHIFT+1 and expecting to get a kick and snare out of pads 1 and 2 while some sound preset plays on the keys but am not having luck - I still get chords out of the pads. I've looked all over the documents and online and have run out of ideas. I would very much appreciate guidance.

Thank you!

Wazan

[Greg]

Hello wazan,

What software were you planning on using?
I too just started out using the minilab and it is a tricky beast to tame.
Here's a link as to what I did to get the minilab to work in ableton and on the iPad.

http://www.arturia.com/evolution/smf/index.php?topic=13167.0

I am not a midi pro by any means and really wish someone with more midi knowledge would post a step by step guide to setting up the minilab for different software setups. 

[Wazan]

Hi Greg, thank you for your reply. I'm using Analog Lab that came with miniLab on a PC running Windows 7. I followed your instructions in that other post and it helped - using your encoder setup guidelines I was able to change the behavior of the encoders which showed me that flashing commands in MIDI Control Center does have an effect which was something I was suspicious of. So while your encoder setup worked the pads didn't work for me. I set it up precisely as you defined and hit "Send to Keyboard." I then moved to Analog Labs, hit Shift + 2 (2 was my memory location) and as far as I know this is all I need to do or can do and at this point the pads should be assigned to drums. Is this correct or am I missing a step in Analog Labs? Either way, when I hit a pad it still plays a chord rather than a drum sound.

As a test, I assigned the volume encoder on memory 1 to be Relative 1 and on memory 2 to be Absolute and flashed the controller. Then switching between the two presets the volume encoder behavior changes drastically. I then reversed them on each preset and the behavior reversed as I would expect. So it's strange, my changes in MIDI Control Center are getting to Analog Lab but the pads never change from playing chords. (Also strange is that while I can change the mode of the encoders I can't change the range. I tried restricting the volume from 10 to 15 and that did nothing.) I also tried channel 10 because I read that channel is dedicated to percussion but that didn't work either. miniLab wants to play chords on the pads as the default and I wondered if I had to do something allow that to be overridden but there are very few menu settings in Analog Lab and I can't find anything.

Given that I can make changes on the encoders (Mode at least but not range) but not the pads using your setup, does this ring any bells?

Thanks for your time.

Wazan

[Greg]

Seeing as you're using just analog lab, I don't recall seeing any sort of complete drum kits(ie: snare, kick,and high hat all together in one patch)

So knowing that, I don't think it's possible to assign individual patches to separate pads like you would in ableton or similar software, where each part/sound of the drum kit would be assigned to individual pads.

Sorry I can't help any further but you may want to wait for an arturia rep to chime in on this.

[Wazan]

Hi Greg, this is helpful - I wasn't aware of that limitation. Thanks again for your time.