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alexmidi Online
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- Posts: 14
- Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 11:59 am
Wed Nov 21, 2018 12:54 pm
The answer depends on which model and what you expect it to do.
The following is for the AKAI APC Key 25
These are the main features:
* 25 Key MIDI keyboard with velocity sensitive keys
* Dedicated buttons for Octave Up, Octave Down, and Sustain
* Eight control knobs laid out on 2 rows with 4 control knobs in each row
* Pads: 5x8 clip-launching grid
The 25 Key MIDI keyboard can be used just like other MIDI keyboards. I'm running Debian Linux 9.6 amd64 with LMMS 1.1.3 and use ALSA-Sequencer MIDI interface option as per these instructions
https://lmms.io/wiki/index.php?title=Using_MIDI
Once the keyboard is working, then Octave Up and Octave Down work as expected (need to re-check sustain).
The eight control knobs can be mapped to the controls on the instrument plugin.
The 5x8 clip-launching grid is quite limited in LMMS. The grid is laid out in 5 rows and 8 columns. The far left pad on the bottom row appears to correspond to MIDI 0 and the far right pad on the top row appears to map to MIDI 39 which corresponds to D#2/Eb2. These pads are not velocity sensitive, so perhaps not as useful in LMMS as having a keyboard with more keys.
To get the full use of these pads you'd need Ableton Live or some other software with pad support, but the APC Key 25 is still quite usable as a simple MIDI keyboard.