Hi there! This is my first post to this forum. I recently bought an Arturia KeyLab 88 MkII. I've have used MainStage a bit before, but my new keyboard has 16 pads and I'm trying to take advantage of this in MainStage. I understand that I can assign the pads to trigger samples or backing tracks, using the MS Playback plugin, but is there anyway to take an existing drum kit in MS and assign the pads to play the kit, while still being able to play piano or organ from the keyboard? Or do I have to take the drum samples individually into channel strips in my MS patch and use multiple instances of the playback plugin? Thanks for reading, Dave

I think I may have figured out an answer to my own question. I add a channel strip to my MS patch and set it up as a drum kit. For each of the pads, I add an assignment to Channel 10 and state what MIDI note I want to play with that pad. This is not very elegant as I have to do this for each of the 16 pads individually. Arrrrg! Not only that but the drum kit sounds are also sounding from the keyboard keys! MS is still a bit of a maze to me.

Hi Dave - I think you're correct -- that's how it works in Logic, you have to channelize when you want different controllers to play different sounds independently, and of course MainStage is based on Logic. However if the keyboard doesn't let you set a different MIDI transmit channel for the pads than for the keys, then you might end up with the behavior you're seeing. If that is a limitation, then I guess you could re-map the drums to unused high or low notes above or below the normal keyboard range, and then make sure that the range of keyboard Instruments doesn't overlap those notes. There might be another way to do it in MainStage [maybe some other kind of zone setup or remapping?], but I don't have a keyboard with pads here to be able to test it out..

Thanks for the help Joe! I was being stupid a real noobie error. The Keylab 88 Mk II can set different channels for the pads and the keyboard via the Midi Control Center application, but there is no need to do this with MainStage. In MS, I just had to set the Keyboard parameter to "None" on the MIDI Input tab for the channel strip used for my drum kit. Voila! The kit no longer sounds when I play on the keys. Cheers, Dave

Hi Dave, I was surfing the web trying to solve the same problem you had months ago and luckily found this thread. I just opened my new Keylab 88 Mk II and the first thing I tried was setting up MS such that the pads and keyboard played different instruments each. Yet I am still unable to get the result I want, which, if I understand correctly, you may have achieved. As far as I know your solution was setting the "keyboard" parameter to "None" under the midi input tab for the drum sound. What I don't get is how you get the drums to be triggered by the pads in the first place! What I've managed to do so far is to make the pads trigger the drums only, but my keyboard still plays both the piano and the drum sounds. And... even so, I kinda don't know how I got it to work that way. MS can be really confusing, as you said. So I just wanted to know more about the way you solved this. For example, do you have one only keyboard and an additional 16 pads showing in your layout mode? Is the Keylab's keyboard set to "1-16" channels in layout, or is it just 1 (does that even matter)?

Hi Teo - In case Dave is no longer following this thread, I attached a MainStage course at the top -- video 19 talks about setting up two keyboards for playing two different sounds independently, maybe that'll be of some help..

Hi Teo, I hope the screenshot below helps you. Go to the MainStage patch you are using (in my case Organ & Kit) You'll notice on the right in thew channels trips I have one for my keyboard sound and another for my kit ("Blue Ridge"). Select the channel strip for the kit Open the MIDI input tab in the inspector. Set the Keyboard value to none - this makes sure that the keyboard doesn't play the kit sounds. I assign the keypads' channel to 10 in the layout. The keyboard to Channel 1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrj33ftx69bf2co/Screenshot%202021-11-29%20at%2016.14.24.png?dl=0 I hope that helps. If not, feel free to ask any further questions. Dave