controlling Kaoss Pad 3 looping with MIDI foot pedal

Miiilo · Post by **Miiilo** » Sat Dec 12, 2009 11:21 am

I'm looking to get into live looping with guitar, bass, and keyboard and I'm borrowing my brother's KP3 as a possible solution. What I'd really like is to be able to run the looping functions using a MIDI foot pedal (which I don't own yet) but from what I've seen in the KP3 manual, the "sampling" 'arm' button is not supported in the factory MIDI settings (even if the 4 loop activation buttons are). That means I could launch the loops with the foot pedal after I'd recorded them but I couldn't set the loops up live 'hands free.'

Suggestions appreciated! I'm pretty green in terms of MIDI so the solution may be very simple.

salamanderanagram · Post by **salamanderanagram** » Sat Dec 12, 2009 6:47 pm

do a search.
there's at least 10 topics on this already.

Miiilo · Post by **Miiilo** » Sat Dec 12, 2009 11:52 pm

salamanderanagram wrote:do a search.
there's at least 10 topics on this already.

After searching the forum again (this time for 'pedal' instead of 'MIDI'), I learned that the answer is, as I feared, "No, the 'sample' button cannot be controlled by MIDI."

chad9477 · Post by **chad9477** » Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:51 pm

Miiilo wrote:the answer is, as I feared, "No, the 'sample' button cannot be controlled by MIDI."

This is true...but it's not too hard to get into the habit of hitting the sample button whenever you've got a free moment onstage, then tapping the footpedal to sample later on when you're ready.

But if you can't take your hands off the instrument for that long, and/or you want more than 4 measures of sample time per loop, then yeah, you'll want to look into a dedicated looper pedal instead.

SMK · Post by **SMK** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 5:26 am

Miiilo wrote:
salamanderanagram wrote:do a search.
there's at least 10 topics on this already.
"No, the 'sample' button cannot be controlled by MIDI."

Oh man...how many times have I answered this???

Okay! yes the sample button can not be mapped however, and this is a big "however", hitting the sample button does not instantly record a sample. What it does do is arm the "A" through "D" buttons to be triggered which can be mapped to a pedal controller that sends "MIDI NOTE" messages. So really before you start a new song, hit the sample button, let ABCD buttons flash until you need one. While trying to pull your hand away to hit record is distracting while playing guitar, but to find a moment to just "arm" the tracks that will be set off by a foot switch, sounds a little more realistic.

I've done this many time in my rig...I do live looping while I play guitar. Been doing it for a while to. I dumped my RC 20 for the KP-3, the best move I ever made.

salamanderanagram · Post by **salamanderanagram** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 5:57 am

smk, thanks for bothering to type it out. i was too lazy.