Akai MPK 49 Controller Keyboard
What a freakin great piece of hardware!
First let me say-
I'm coming from a MPC 1000, apparently the MPC1000 and the MPK midi controlers
have "terrible, wack, horrible...." pads that are too hard and not as
sensitive as the other MPC's.
I think it's a bunch of B.S.
Yeah I've used the MPC 2000XL and MPC 3000, thinking back are their pads
slightly softer? Yes. Are the pads magically going to make me program fresher
drum lines? NOOOOOOO! Honestly I think underground producers will use any
excuse to why their beats are wack. Look at the other great Hip Hop Hardware that
don't even have "traditional" pads like the ASR-1O, ASR-X and the SP
1200, Did their hard plastic or non-existing pads stop great beats to be bang
out of the units? Nooooo!
Back to the MPK.
I love having a all-in-one unit sitting right in front of me ready for action.
I use this controller with Logic 8. You basically map out your drums to the
piano keys (in Logic using the esx sample editor), from their you can map out
the pads to certain keys(kicks on the right, snares on the left). Since the MPK
is not an MPC you will NOT get the heart and soul of the MPC which is the
quantization, this is OKAY, I repeat this is OKAY! The MPK is meant to provide
the feel of a MPC to use with your DAW. You can find MPC "Grove
Templates" with a little searching on the net. These groove templates with
provide the necessary swing to make a full transition to software based
producing with a hardware "feel".
I haven't programmed the sliders yet so I can't comment on them.
In all this is a great device to transition long time MPC hardware users to
step up their game and jump into software. You can have best of both worlds.
But don't take my word for it, go down to your local music shop and take it for
a test spin, compare the pad sensitivity to the MPC 2500 or 2000xl
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