What is it?

The nanopad is USB powered and lightweight drum trigger/pad trigger midi controller, featuring 12 pads, an XY pad, three performance modes and 4 groups.

What's in the box?

Straight away when you see the box you can tell how Korg have managed to keep costs down. The box is just big enough to hold the nanopad in like a letter. Inside the box you get the nanopad itself, a usb lead (mini connector) and warranty and licence code cards. No printed manual or CD's, more on this later.

Build quality

Surprisingly enough the nanopad's build quality is quite high. It's made from plastic which although is prone to wear, cracks and splits feels solid and durable. I've had mine for about 6 months now, have gigged with it a few times and dropped it and it's still working with no cracks or splits. The only design weakness i can see is due to its thin but long shape. If it was to say have a large amount of weight on one side it might split in half, similar to breaking a ruler. Overall it's a well built piece of equipment and should take a majority of knocks, drops and crashes before it breaks. Not bad at all for £40.

The pads

The korg nanopad features 12 physical rubber, velocity sensitive assignable drum pads, similar to an mpc's. Although there's only 12 psychical pads, Korg have tripled the amount that can be used by creating banks or groups. There are 4 banks,l which equates to 48 assignable pads. Changing between banks is easy by using the bank select button to the left hand side of the nanopad. To make performing easier an LED indicates which bank is selected.

The pads themselves feel great on the finger tips and are very responsive. They are harder and thicker than Akai's MPC and MPD series. The velocity sensitivity feels natural and the curve can be adjusted using the software.

The pads are fully assignable either by note or CC# which gives the nanopad a lot of flexibility and uses. The pad can also operate as a trigger, e.g. for drums or samples or as a momentary switch, e.g. for switching off effects etc.

The XY pad

One interesting and unexpected feature of the nanopad is the XY pad. I really didn't expect this to be any good at all on such a cheap piece of gear but was pleasantly surprised as it works great. It's responsive and sensitive to my fingers and feels like it could take a bit of a pounding. Some of the outside areas of the pad can be a bit trouble some at times but it just takes a little bit of getting used to.

The cool thing about the inclusion of the XY pad is that it will make controlling Ableton Live's XY effects control a lot easier and fun. It's completely assignable and can control anything. Many other commercial midi controllers have left an XY pad out of the mix which makes the nanopad very useful in conjunction with other midi controllers when performing live. On the fly XY controlling here we come.

Roll, hold and flam

The nanopad features three questionable performance modes, roll, hold and flam. These modes are activated by three LED lit buttons next to the XY pad.

The first one roll works by repeating the sound or pad you hit, the XY pad controls the speed and velocity of the roll. This supposed to emulated a drum roll but only sounds like one if you like 80's sequenced music, dead on timing. You can however create some cool drill 'n' bass fills and noises.

The flam setting works by repeating the pad or sound your playing once. The idea is to emulate a flam drum hit, hitting the drum very quickly after the first hit, but it doesn't really sound realistic. The XY pad again controls the speed and velocity of the hit.

The hold button basically allows you to activate the playing mode, lets say roll, but allows you to let go of the pad. You still have to keep you finger on the XY pad but it's kind of useful.

Although these modes are not very useful for realistic drumming they can do some cool effects when using the nanopad with a sampler of synth. Repeating or drilling sounds.

Korg Kontrol software

The software, manual and drivers for the nanopad have to be downloaded from Korg's website, no cd's are included which obviously lowers the cost. The nanopad comes with Korg's kontrol software which allows the user to edit and manipulate the nanopad's features and parameters. As you can see from the screenshot above there's a lot of parameters and options.

Each pad can have the CC/note, midi channel, performance modes or pad behaviour changed. Even the maximum velocity can be adjusted when the pad is in trigger mode. The XY pad parameters can also be edited, including attack, decay, CC# and and on and off value.

Groups or scenes as Korg calls them can be edited and arranged to your own needs. What makes the nanopad powerful is that you can assign any note or CC# to any pad in of the groups. This means you can make your own custom maps or patches which can be changed or switched easily. Once you've finished editing your patch you send the data to the nanopad using the software.

Conclusion

Overall the Korg nanopad is a versatile, lightweight and well built drum trigger/midi controller. The nanopad screams value for money without cutting corners. If your performing live with Ableton or want to trigger samples or play finger drums then the nanopad is for you. At £40 you can't go wrong. Well done korg.

Zander

Akai MPK25 review

Published: 15. 05. 2008     10 comments

We take a look at the Akai MPK25 midi controller, the smallest of the Akai MPK series of midi controller/keyboard/MPC drum pad/trigger. This is a feature packed controller and promises a lot but does it live up to it's creators repretation?