I recently got the Alesis Surge Mesh kit and wanted to configure it to trigger drum samples in the Reason Drum Kits Rack Extension. I was hoping that it would be plug and play, but I found out that I needed to make several changes in the Surge Drum module to make everything work.
When I purchased Reason Drum Kits I noticed that it included new keyboard layout presets. One preset was labeled Alesis Kit. I turned on my Surge Mesh Kit and selected the Alesis Kit preset in Reason Drum Kits. Unfortunately, not all the pads triggered the correct sounds in Reason Drum Kits.
The Surge Mesh Drum kit triggers the following midi note numbers
Reason Drum Kits keyboard presets show just the midi note, so I had to convert the note to the corresponding midi note number.
I ended up using the Original Key Map in Reason Drum Kits so that I had more drum sounds to choose from, and setup each pad of the Alesis Surge Mesh Drum kit on a user preset with the following midi numbers.
To change the midi note number for a user preset on the Alesis Surge Mesh Kit do the following:
Select the user kit number. Kit > NUM40 (or whatever kit number you want to edit)
Press voice and hit the pad whose settings you want to adjust, or press its corresponding Pad Select button.
Press Voice or Page/Select until MID(###) is diplayed.
Use the < and > buttons to adjust the value.
Press Save
It would be great if Reason Drum Kits allowed for custom keyboard layout presets in a future update. Until then, I hope this information helps anyone trying to setup an Alesis Surge Mesh Kit (or any other kit) with the Reason Drum Kits Rack Extension.