How to Sync Abelton with Arturia's Keystep 32

Some brief notes on my setup for syncing Arturia's Keystep 32 to Abelton.

I thought this is a quite useful & practical post as the Keystep is a really cheap and reliable

way to integrate old pre MIDI/USB vintage gear into a modern DAW.

The Keystep is very flexible ... has DIN MIDI, USB MIDI, Analog clocks, sync, CV/Gate

etc etc.

The Beatstep, Keystep Pro and Keystep 37 will probably all work the same.

My aim was to combine a Roland Jupiter 4 & Promars and record into a DAW.

The J4 only has a ARP and I have no intention to add MIDI.

The old Keystep clocks the J4 really nicely.

You need at least a 5V gate.

It also sequences & adds a basic Arpeggiator to the Promars.

The Promars has CV/gate. No MIDI or ARP.

The CV is 1V/Oct. Gate is 10V

(the Arp on the Jupiter 4 is fabulous, and Ive always wanted one on the Promars).

The keystep is plugged into my PC using USB

I've set the keystep to internal Sync.

Thus, it can still be used if the DAW is off.

I have a Mio XL MIDI interface with plenty of USB hubs.

1. Connect the Keystep 32 to your computer via USB.

2. Launch Ableton Live and open the MIDI preferences.

Double click the Ableton Live icon to launch the software. 

Then, in the top menu of Ableton, go to the Preferences menu by opening the ‘Live’ menu and clicking ‘Preferences’.

3. Select the Beatstep from the list of available control surface devices.

    (ableton doesnt has the keystep as an option in the settings so I choose Beatstep 

     like its written in the manual).

My MIDI interface can host up to 8 USB devices.

Ive picked HST 1

Click the the MIDI Sync tab, make sure that Input and Output for the Keystep are checked.

4. In the ‘MIDI’ section of this tab, make sure the ‘Track’ and ‘Remote’ boxes are checked 

    for both the Input and Output of the Keystep (Sync can also be optionally checked).

5. Activate the Ext tab in the top left corner.

Note that after an external sync source  has be enabled, the EXT button in the Control Bar 

next to the TAP button appears.

You can then activate external sync either by switching on this button or by using the external sync command in the Options menu.

The upper indicator LED next to the EXT button will flash if Live receives usable sync messages from the Keystep. The keystep will also send MIDI notes, etc.

The Keystep is now ready for use with Ableton Live.