Korg nanoPad Review... Sort of

I'm not shy about admitting that I am, when it all comes down to it, a mouse-slinger. The notes I "play" are usually just the notes I've painted on to the piano roll view and while I do know a few chords and could likely play them if someone held a gun to my head, I just don't feel comfortable sitting in front of a keyboard. As much as I'd like to say otherwise, I'm just not a musician.

When I first got Reason, all those years ago, I immediately bought a Oxygen 8, which was the hot midi-controller at the time, but I never really used it much. I did most of my composition "on the road," sitting in a coffee shop before work, so nearly everything I did happened in Edit Mode with a mouse or trackpad.

New controllers came out since Reason 1, of course, and I've looked at them with varying degrees of interest, but ultimately knew they'd be joining my Oxygen 8 in the closet, rather than becoming a daily composition tool. Getting another controller would just be a waste of money, once the initial thrill of having a new toy wore off, so there wasn't much reason to get a new controller or keyboard.

Then, I saw the announcement for the Korg nano line, three USB controllers designed to be paired with laptops, small and portable enough that they were perfect for on the go work. The nanoPad immediately jumped out at me, as I had been looking at getting a drum pad style controller for a while now, so I kept a look-out for them during my occasional trips to Guitar Center. I wasn't doing much composition in coffee shops anymore, but these controllers looked to fill a need for me.

You've probably seen the announcements and reviews yourself, so I'll skip the basic descriptions of the nanoPad and get right to how the nanoPad works with Propellerheads Software's Reason 4. In a word: great. I did have some minor issues with it out of the box, which I'll explain, but it's a great little piece of hardware and I cannot recommend it enough.

Check out Sonic State's review, Stray411's review and AudioMidi's review if you're in the dark about this device and want a good introduction.

The nanoPad is essentially plug-and-play in Mac OS X, so you can immediately start using it just by plugging its included USB cable into your computer. However, if you want to use the Korg Kontrol Editor to modify its controls (and you likely will as I'll explain below), you'll need to load its drivers, a painless process, but not immediately obvious considering that it seems to work perfectly without them until you try to communicate with it via the Kontrol Editor. The Kontrol Editor and the nanoPad drivers are all found on Korg's website and are not included in the box.

Why was it necessary to modify the plug-and-play settings? The Korg has four Scene settings that you can toggle through by pressing the Scene key. At its most basic level, the various Scenes serve as octaves, letting you move higher up the octave range with each press. I bought the nanoPad specifically for use with Reason's Redrum, so it was the first instrument I tried, and found the nanoPad sent strange midi messages into Reason. Pad 7 would trigger the first channel in Redrum, Pad 8 would trigger the second channel, and Pad 9 would mute channel 3. Pads 1 and 2 didn't seem to do anything and while these settings might have made sense to someone already experienced with using pad controllers with their Software, I found it confusing. It seemed to work fine with Logic, which was even more odd, but wasn't keyed up the way I wanted in Reason.

Using the Korg Kontrol Editor software, I went back and reprogrammed it so that Pad 1 would trigger Redrum's Channel 1 sample (C2), Pad 2 would trigger Channel 2 (C#2), and so on. I also modified the nanoPad's Scenes 2-4 to build on the new settings on Scene 1, as its Chromatic scale in its factory settings started at C4 in Scene 2, rather than C3, skipping an entire octave.

The rest of the nanoPad's controls, such as its X/Y pad and Hold, Flam, and Roll buttons, all work perfectly in Reason without needing any further tweaking. The X/Y pad, for example, will give you some expression in the Bend and Mod wheels of synthesizers, and is used to help control the Hold, Flam and Roll buttons when using it with Redrum or a sample device like NN19 or NN-XT.

Download my basic nanoPad setup here.

Of course, what's really exciting is that you have quite a bit of flexibility with the nanoPad's control settings. While I have mine set up to be used as a basic midi controller, someone a bit more clever could find a number of interesting possibilities in configuring its "Pad Behavior" settings and modify its Off/On values. For example, by changing the nanoPad's "Assign Type" to "Control Change" you could change the nanoPad into a real-time remixing tool, allowing you to mute and solo tracks on the fly by sending midi messages to Remix or triggering passages in NN-XT.

Interestingly, I find myself "playing" the nanoPad using Reason's synthesizers quite a bit. There is something very pleasant about its rubber pads and I find them really comfortable for triggering long, droning synths, like the Saturn's Rings patches I've been posting. The nanoPad is polyphonic, of course, so you can easily play chords over its twelve pads, assuming you're playing out simple key combinations.

When I picked up the nanoPad, I was trying to decide between it and the M-Audio Trigger Finger controller. I had used the Trigger Finger a few times in stores and really liked it, but I think I made the right decision in getting the nanoPad. First, Reason's Redrum only has 10 channels, which is still two below nanoPad's 12 pad controllers, making the Trigger Finger's 16 pads a bit overkill with Reason. And, the Trigger Finger has a number of sliders and pots I just didn't need for hammering out quick beats and notes. The smaller size of the nanoPad fits my needs a bit better and I actually like the feel of the nanoPad's pads better than the Trigger Finger's harder plastic. At more than one-third the price, it's a great little device.

My experience with the nanoPad has been so good that I'm already looking at picking up the nanoKontrol and the nanoKey units. The nanoKey has a bit of a reputation as being kind of cheesy, but it might be fun, especially on the go.

Polar Elements Refill From New Atlantis Audio

I rarely purchase refills. Its either due to stubbornness or pride, but I often feel that with a little creativity and time, I can come up with my own sounds, rather than surf through someone else's presets. Sure, you can learn a few things by studying a patch that someone else has put together, but with only a few exceptions, I tend to shy away from commercial refills.

However, having said that, the price for New Atlantis Audio's Polar Elements refill makes it hard to beat. At just $5 there are some nice sounds to be found in its 50 combinators. I especially liked Cold Sunrise, Dall's Horn, Dense Descent, Gakkel's Secret, Inupiaq Bells, Sagging Moraine, and Uria Flutter. The combinators for Orca Straight and Welcome To The Top are just beautiful.

Check it out if you're looking for something cheap and fun.

Tutorials: Rolling Your Own Drum Sounds

Tom, at the excellent blog Waveformless, has been running an ongoing series of tutorials aimed at creating your own, custom drum sounds using various synthesis techniques. If drums are a big part of your tracks, and I don't think very many of us go without them, I highly recommend you check out Tom's tutorials and try your hand and building some unique sounds.

• Rolling Your Own Drum Sounds, Pt. 1
  
• Rolling Your Own Drum Sounds, Pt. 2: Attack of the Phaser
  
• Rolling Your Own Drum Sounds, Pt. 3
  
• Rolling Your Own Drum Sounds, Pt. 4: Kicking it With Sine Waves
  
• Rolling Your Own Drum Sounds, Pt. 5: Self-Oscillation - It's Not As Dirty As It Sounds...
  

Tom's tutorials are really great. They're well-written and easy to follow, and while they're never Reason-specific, he explains things so well that you should be able to follow along with the instruments and effects contained inside of Reason. I plan on spending some time with these tutorials myself and building my own custom kit.

One of the first posts on Reason Patch A Day was a recreation of Tom's Tape Flutter Logic effect, which was inspired by the Boards of Canada sound.

Repeat Post: These Patches Are Bragware!

As I mentioned in the FAQ the patches provided on the Patch-A-Day blog are "bragware" meaning that if you use a patch in one of your projects, I want to hear about it. Leave a link to where you've hosted your project in the comments section or send me an e-mail and I'll highlight your project and the patch you used here on the blog.

If you take one of the patches here and tweak it to make a new sound, I'd love to hear about that too. Send me an email at patchaday (at) earthlink.net with your patch file and I'll put it on the blog, giving you credit for your new creation.

Of course, you're also free to submit patches of your design, as Mad Wax did back in October.

.44 Yamaha RX17 Digital Rhythm Programmer

Continuing with sharing drum sounds from the Yamaha drum machines I picked up on eBay, here are some drum hits from the RX17.

Both more modern and more latin, the RX17 seems to come from an entirely different generation of drum machines from the RX11 or RX15, being about half the size and sporting rubberized pads and buttons that give it a much more modern feel. It appears to be related to the RX21, but I haven't had a chance to use a RX21 yet.

Like the RX15, the RX17 has two audio outputs (left and right mono and headphones) and has Midi Out and Midi In. It contains 26 drum hits spread across 13 pads (2 sounds per pad). Like the RX11 and RX15, the RX17 also had limitations regarding which sounds could and could not be reproduced simultaneously. So, for an accurate RX17 kit, avoid using the Conga Muted and Conga Open sounds on the same beat. The same limitation is present for the Cuica High and Cuica Low hits, the Snare Drum and Rim Shot, and the Hi-hat sounds.

The following samples were taken from a RX17, serial number N201530.

• Yamaha RX17 Sample Pack ( Zip File | Combinator Backdrop )
  

.43 Yamaha RX15 Digital Rhythm Programmer

A step down from the more advanced and versatile RX11, the RX15 only has 12 pads for triggering 15 hits, all of which are routed through two audio outputs (left and right mono and headphones). Like the RX11, the RX15 was an 8-bit machine that lacked velocity sensitivity, but had options for accent control, volume, and panning for each onboard sound.

The RX11 and RX15 shared more than a similar design; they also shared their sounds. For example, the RX15's Bass Drum is identical to the RX11's Medium Bass Drum 1. The RX15's Clap hit is identical to the RX11's Hand Claps 1 sample, and so on. If you're just after the sounds from these machines, rather than trying to recreate the machines themselves, you shouldn't need to download the RX15 files in addition to the RX11 files provided yesterday.

• Yamaha RX15 Sample Pack ( Zip File | Combinator Backdrop )
  

The hits included here were sampled from a Yamaha RX15 Digital Rhythm Programmer, Serial Number 14798. For an accurate RX15 experience, do not trigger the Rimshot and Snare Drum (either Medium or Hi Tune) samples on the same beat. Also, the HH Open and HH Closed (Closed or Pedal) samples cannot be used on the same beat.

.42 Yamaha RX11 Digital Rhythm Programmer

About eighteen months ago, I decided that as happy as I was using Reason and Logic to make music, what I really needed was hardware. It's a phase a lot of us go through, I think, where we end up getting stuck for some reason and a new piece of gear or untested software seems like the easy solution for getting out of whatever rut we find ourselves in.

A couple of unsuccessful eBay bids later, I eventually picked up three Yamaha drum machines, the RX15, its big brother the RX11, and the more latin focused RX17. Of course, the first thing I did with the new drum machines was sample their sounds and drop those samples into Reason... which kind of defeated the entire purpose of getting them, but let's be honest, logic doesn't have much sway when you're stuck in this senseless gear lust.

What do I think of the samples? Well, if you take a second to download the samples, you'll hear that they have a lo-fi quality that only seems to get better when you throw additional distortion on top of them. I think they're especially suited for trip-hop, a genre I love to experiment with, but have never actually finished a song in, because of that lo-fi quality. With a little care and processing, you should be able to find a home for them in just about any genre.

Having said all of that, I think their greatest quality is that they aren't a Roland TR-909 or TR-808. Don't get me wrong, there's a reason those machines are considered classics, but if you're looking for something fresh (or maybe a little stale, depending on your perspective) then these cheap Yamaha machines are a great substitute.

• Yamaha RX11 Sample Pack ( Zip File | Combinator Backdrop )
  

An 8-bit drum machine from the early 80s, the following kit was sampled from serial number 19374.

Its built-in 29 drum hits could be triggered using its 16 pads and routed through 12 individual audio outputs 12 audio outputs (either via its 10 mono instrument outs, left and right mono line outs that also double as mono instrument outs, or headphones). The trigger pads are not velocity sensitive, but each drum hit can be tweaked with individual settings for accent level, volume, and panning, to give the hits a little emphasis when needed.

The RX11 could not trigger the Rimshot and Snare Drum samples on the same beat, so for a faithful recreation you should avoid using them together. The same limitation was present on Tom3 and Tom4 pads, the Bass Drum pads (meaning none of the Bass Drum hits could be played simultaneously), and the HH pads. Despite this limitation, any and all of the sounds could be used in the same song.

Additional sounds can be added to the machine via a RAM memory cartridge, but I haven't had much luck finding any of them. If I do manage to track one down, expect to find those samples here.