algorythmusic.com | Kicks and Snares

One of my favorite pieces of equipment right here. Yeah, its small but its got everything I need. 8 rotary knobs for fade ins/outs. 8 drum pads that feel almost exactly like the classic MPC 2000 especially in comparison to most keyboard/drum pad controllers which have little baby pads that are too small to really bang on. It only has 25 keys (Larger versions are also available), but that is all I need to strike a couple of chords here and there. Powerful piece of semi-hardware. It’s also pretty easy to set up in Reason.

BUT!

Once you get it set up in Reason and you think you’re ready to go, you hit that C Sharp Key it sounds off a bit. Or when you press the drum pad you get no reaction at all. It’s not that the product is broken or that you’ve suddenly become def tone. For some reason, the product comes with a completely random configuration that just doesn’t agree with Reason. To fix it, you have to go in and manually route all of the keys and the pads to sync with Reason’s note schema. It’s really annoying and quite tedious considering there’s no real manual that comes with the controller. It took me a while to find some documentation on it but I eventually came across a forum where some dude figured it out. As I said it is very tedious, but once its done, you can save the pre set and go about your musical business. There’s also this program called Enigma that M-Audio lets you download for free (after you fill out a few forms). Supposedly, you can use it to program the pads and stuff, but I haven’t tried it to see how easy it is. Even still, I’de recommend doing it the manual way. It’s just a good piece of otherwise useless know-how to keep stored up in that brain.