My apologies to the friends and family that normally read my blog. But. I just got an Axiom 25 (for putting drums and keys and things into stuff like the song in my last post) and I've found just getting started with the thing frustrating as all hell, mostly due to the lack of quality tech support from the manufacturer. I'm making this post in the hope that some other poor sap like me that's just trying to figure out how to get started using MIDI stuff might find it in a google search and avoid some frustration.
If you look at the M-Audio forums, several people have asked how to have the keys and drum pads on the unit at the same time, and the @$$hole tech support people never give any answers other than something like "you should be able to do this in the Enigma software" without ever bothering to explain how you do it. Frustrating. After several hours of being really pissed off and annoyed, I finally figured out how to do this and thought I'd share it with the world.
This is in Ableton Live Lite, because it comes with the Axiom unit (I know, I know, I'm a "noob," but I ain't plunking down a bunch of money for DAW software without being 100% sure I know what I'm getting is what I need, first!). Anyhow. Connect your Axiom to the computer and turn it on (Duh). Set the Axiom to program 18 (supposedly you can use programs 17-20, but 18 worked for me, so stick with that for now - and if you don't know how to recall a program they *Do* actually cover this in the shitty manual, and on the M-Audio forums - I don't have my Axiom in front of me right now, so I'd probably give the wrong directions if I attempted to explain this). Open up Ableton. Open up the preferences/options menu (maybe I have that backward, it could be options/preferences) and set it up to recognize your device (you'll have two axiom slot, arm all these, and then click the "on" buttons for "track" and "remote." Close this window. Make two MIDI tracks and arm both of them (you have to right click on the red "Arm" button to be able to arm two track simultaneously). Open up the midi instruments folder and set one of these to something you would control with the keyboard - keys, organ, strings, whatever. Set the other midi track with whatever you would want the pads to control - probably drums or techno-y stuff. Now, click the button in the upper right hand corner that changes the view of the tracks from horizontal to vertical. You can now see a little thing that says something like "Midi all channels" or somesuch nonsense. You want to change this to "1" for your keyboard controlled part, and "10" for the drum controlled part. Now you *should* be able to have them trigger independently. The other thing to do now is set the drum pads to play the notes/drums you want them to play, which is explained pretty well somewhere in here (look at response #13 - that's how I did it).
If that helps one person, I'll feel like I've done my good deed for the day. This whole thing seemed like an awful big debacle just to be able to program some drums and keys into some roots-rocky type stuff that I cook up in my living room, but hopefully I'll be glad I bought a (slightly) more professional piece of equipment in the long run, even if the learning curve is steep!
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