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thanks in advance for reading this post.. I'm hoping I'll make it clear enough.

I have an Akai APC mini and a full size midi keyboard. I am trying to use my APC mini to control turning off different effects that run through my piano channels. So each channel needs both the APC and the Piano as inputs (one for playing, the other for changing the sound).

The problem is, if I map something to my APC, most of those buttons clash with my keyboard. Meaning as I'm playing the piano I can accidentally hit a key which triggers an action that was meant to be used only on the APC mini.

All of my Googling is telling me to lock inputs for channels, but this isn't possible with my ideal setup (As I want the APC mini to arm the track and the keyboard to play the piano). I'm guessing I either need a way of changing the range of the APC mini, or I need to rethink the setup.

Anyone have any suggestions?

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In MIDI + Sync preferences there are things called Control Surfaces and MIDI Ports. Each MIDI port has three buttons: Track, Sync and Remote. Do you know what they mean? Ok, that was just a rhetorical question. Set the things like this for the APC mini:

APC Mini Control Surface

APC MINI Port settings

For the piano keyboard you want to have Track turned ON, so that its MIDI input is recorded on the tracks. But the APC mini you want to use only as a control surface.

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  • Perfect, thanks! In case you didn't know the answer.. I had no idea what Track, Sync, and Remote did until googling it a second ago. Thanks for your help Apr 27, 2020 at 14:30
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    @DavidSigley I had used Ableton for years without understanding what exactly the buttons did! It was only when I bought an external controller when I bumped into the issue and found out that it's actually explained in documentation. I have an APC mini as well, it's a nifty little controller. Apr 27, 2020 at 14:43
  • I'm glad I'm not the only one. I've had Ableton for a few days now so just trying to survive the initial learning curve. APC Mini is really cool.. but I've had to ditch the APC Mini control surface and map everything myself.. which is pretty daunting Apr 27, 2020 at 14:57

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