SOLVED: Separating Drum Pads From Keys (Arturia MiniLab mkII)

I own an Arturia MiniLab mkII, which is a 25 key and 8 drum pad (with two drum banks) MIDI controller. Using MIDI Control Center (a software used to view and modify the settings for the Arturia keyboard), I configured the drum pads to use MIDI Channel 2, and the keys to use MIDI channel 1.

I have two tracks selected in Cubase Elements 9.5 - A Halion Sonic Electric Piano, and a Groove Agent drum kit. Currently, when I play the drum pads, it plays both the drum sounds and electric piano sounds (in MIDI Control Center, the Arturia keyboard software, the first drum pad is set to C1, and it goes up from there). I know there must be a way to select a track to only use inputs from one MIDI channel - therefore, the Electric Piano track should only accept inputs from MIDI Channel 1 (the keys), and the Drum Track should only accept inputs from MIDI Channel 2 (the drum pads).

I’ve tried for hours to figure this out, and I can’t seem to find the answer in the manual or on other online resources, so hopefully these forums can be of assistance.

Thanks in advance!

Joseph Hlucny

Hi and welcome,

The best would be, If Arturia could select the Pads data on different MIDI Port than the Keyboard data. Then in Cubase you could set from which MIDI Port do you want to record to which MIDI Track.

If this Is not possible, might be, the Pads are sending the MIDI data on different MIDI Channel. Unfortunately in Cubase Elements you have no MIDI Input Transformer, so you can’t separate data by Channel while recording automatically. So you would need to do this after more or less manually.

The last possible option would be, that the Pads are sending MIDI data in different range (octave) than the Keyboard. Again, you don’t have MIDI Input Transformer in Cubase Elements, so you cannot filter the data out automatically while recording, and you would need to do it afterwards manually.

Thank you so much, Mr. Jirsak. This really answers a lot of my questions.

I am not able to connect the drum pads and keyboard as separate MIDI devices! So indeed, my only options would be to edit it out what I don’t want manually after recording, or to upgrade my Cubase :slight_smile: I plan to upgrade eventually, but I wonder if there are any 3rd part plugins that allow me to manage MIDI channels!

Thanks so much!

Joseph Hlucny

Hi,

MIDI Inserts are a post processes. So you would have the data in one track anyway.

In Cubase Pro, there is a Dissolve Part function. Which would also solve it. You can dissolve by Channel or dissolve by Pitch. But as far as I know, this is not Cubase Elements feature.

In any case you can change the colors in the Key Editor so that one Channel data has the same color. So you can see easy the channel.