Akai MPK mini Remote Support

David Antliff, Pitchblende Ltd., david@pitchblende.co.nz
Carlos Eduardo, SP/Brazil, carlosedp@gmail.com

This remote script has been added to Reason 8.3 by Propellerhead Software. Now Reason detects the MPK Mini controller natively. MPK Mini MK2 is not tested so there is no guarantee that it would work.

The latest version supports:

Compatible with Reason 8 but may work with previous versions too.

Kong pads - turn off CC and PROG CHANGE, then Pad Bank 1 maps to Kong pads 1-8, Pad Bank 2 maps to pads 9-16.

Switches - turn on CC and each pad will act as a switch. Pad Bank 1 maps to switches 1-8, Pad Bank 2 maps to switches 9-16. Note that 'toggle' mode for the switches does not work correctly, and probably never will, so the pad lights will not stay lit.

Prog Change - turn on PROG CHANGE and each pad will generate push-button events. Currently these are set up to send Transport messages:

1 - Play
2 - Stop
3 - Record
4 - Loop
5 - Tap tempo
6 - Add overdub
7 - change to previous sequencer track
8 - change to next sequencer track

|---------|     |---------|     |---------|     |---------|
|  Pad 5  |     |  Pad 6  |     |  Pad 7  |     |  Pad 8  |
|  CC#24  |     |  CC#25  |     |  CC#26  |     |  CC#27  |
| TapTempo|     |  OvrDub |     |  TrkUp  |     |  TrkDn  |
|_________|     |_________|     |_________|     |_________|

|---------|     |---------|     |---------|     |---------|
|  Pad 1  |     |  Pad 2  |     |  Pad 3  |     |  Pad 4  |
|  CC#20  |     |  CC#21  |     |  CC#22  |     |  CC#23  |
|  Play   |     |  Stop   |     |  Record |     |  Loop   |
|_________|     |_________|     |_________|     |_________|

Knobs - eight knobs that are mapped to 'sensible' Reason controls. Note that Knob 1 is the top left knob. The knobs use soft pickup so they only act when the value on the knob matches the value of the control it is assigned. This way it is prevented that the control "jumps" when you modify a knob.

Keyboard Sustain (Damper Pedal) support - hold the "Sustain" button to activate.

Installation

Part 1 - Load the MPK mini Preset (optional, do this if needed)

The script uses Akai factory default values from preset 1. If you never uploaded any preset this step is not needed.

The default preset is included in 'Presets' directory so you can load it into any program slot (1-4).

To load the preset follow instructions below:

• Ensure neither Reason nor Record are running - they may interfere with this process.
• Run the "Akai MPK MINI Editor" (on the CD provided with your controller, or downloadable from Akai's product support page)
• Click "Load Preset" and load the "Preset1-Chromatic" file from the Presets directory that you earlier unzipped.
• This will automatically switch the display to Preset Slot 1, but you can upload the new preset to any Slot you wish by clicking the "Preset #" drop-down and select the slot number you want to upload into.
• Click the "Upload" button, and then click OK:

Part 2 - Copy the Remote Files

The files in the Remote directory should be copied into your user's Remote directory:

OSX: Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Propellerhead Software/Remote
   it is also possible to install into /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Propellerhead Software/Remote if you want to keep them separate from your main Reason installation.
Windows XP: C:/Documents and Settings/Application Data/Propellerhead Software/Remote/
Windows Vista: C:/Documents and Settings/Program Data/Propellerhead Software/Remote/
Windows 7: C:/ProgramData/Propellerhead Software/Remote

Carefully copy all of these files, strictly maintaining this directory structure:

Remote/Codecs/Lua Codecs/Akai/AkaiMPKmini.luacodec
Remote/Codecs/Lua Codecs/Akai/AkaiMPKmini.lua
Remote/Codecs/Lua Codecs/Akai/AkaiMPKmini.png
Remote/Maps/Akai/AkaiMPKmini.remotemap

Now restart Reason so that it sees the new files. Go into Preferences and select your new MIDI controller - you can tell Reason to try and auto-detect the MPK mini, or you can add it manually.

Customisation

Because the Lua Codec maps almost every control on the controller to a 'control item', you can customise the device mappings however you want. Simply edit the AkaiMPKmini.remotemap file to associate the MPK mini's controls with whatever Reason device controls you want. More information can be found here.

The available control items are:

• Keyboard
• Sustain
• Knob 1-8
• Pad Button 1-16
• Prog Change 1-16

Adapt code to add soft takeover on your controller script

The main things one need to change is:

• Add the “gFirstAnalogIndex” variable to the start of the script to provide the index of the first analog control in the “itens” array.
• Make sure the itens for the analog controls have the 'input="value", output="value", min=0, max=127’ itens for each analog control.
• Comment out the auto handling for the analog controls since we will handle them manually.
• Add the variables for the amount of analog controls and the mapping to the control index (in itens variable) and it`s CCs. Get these values from the commented automapped values.
• Add the variables and loop to populate the initial values for the controls.
• Add the part to handle the midi in the "remote_process_midi" function. Check the MIDI channel used for these controls from the commented section.
• Add the remote_set_state funtion to keep the variables updated.

For further details please visit:

https://github.com/carlosedp/Reason-MPKMini-Remote
http://offwhitenoise.blogspot.com/2011/09/akai-mpk-mini-reason.html

Note: I am not affiliated or associated in any way with Akai or Propellerhead. I have created these files myself with the files and programs legally available to me.

WARNING: You download and use these files entirely at your own risk!

I release this under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/