Posts Tagged ‘padkontrol’

New equipment purchase - update and review on Korg padkontrol

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

As in a previous post I stated that I was purchasing a Midi controller, (Korg padkontrol) after some time of getting used to installing it on several machines, several times, I’d like to sad that its just like using it in the Youtube videos that I’ve seen… but it not as straight forward as that.

So, open the box to see that you get this light piece of kit, and the first thing I’ll state is that you need to have a computer or midi device to run it, its powered by a USB or by a separate power supply, it doesn’t come with a power supply!

The software installation isn’t tricky, it just that you have to do it in a number of stages, when you’ve hit setup on the software I like to think that your ready to rock and roll just out of the box! I started to set it up in the evening on the night I took delivery and after much frustration I got a step closer at getting it working by 1am. I needed to start another install of drivers.

Referring to earlier of not knowing that the software needs to be installed/setup again after the first time!!

 Moving on to the bundle software, the products that come with the padkontrol are some of the most widely used and respected programmes, but again can be a pain to use straight away.  ‘Reason’ is the name of the programme that I’ve been using with the pad and it worked in the middle than at the beginning, but after some Youtube and net help, got it to work with the pad - liked the auto-detect feature in Reason, which added to the setting up.

You have the option to connect it up to a midi device, I’ve got a Roland drum kit (TD8) and I tried setting it up to pad, this I could not get to communicate with one another, I couldn’t find the right setting for the TD8, so I cast that option into the bin, (I will try again soon, see a video that someone else as managed to do it)

I’m growing to enjoy the challenge that it is to try and learn play the drums in time with the focus on my fingers, I still feel a little clueless about what other things that I can achieve with this kit?  Maybe some partnering with a DJ friend on a gig. 

Easy of use 6/10

Easy of set up 3/10

Feature and application 8/10

Overall 5/10, if your wanting to use this equipment like a drum machine your going down the right track, but to use like David Haynes does, then I stick to a dedication machine, is my recommendation, as you’ll have to invest in a laptop to go with the pad.