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Korg reserves the right to amend any such policies from time to time in its absolute discretion. GENERAL The license created by this agreement is personal to you and you may not assign or otherwise transfer your rights or obligations under this agreement without the prior written consent of Korg. If any part of this Agreement is found by a court of competent jurisdiction or other competent authority to be invalid, unlawful or unenforceable then such part shall be severed from the remainder of this Agreement which will continue to be valid and enforceable to the fullest extent permitted by law.

This agreement is governed by and construed under the local law of the country where this product has been purchased. You hereby agree to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the aforementioned territory, without regards to conflicts of law provisions.

Headings have been included for convenience only and shall not be used in construing any provision in this Agreement. All Rights Reserved. Choose Your Location. News Location Social Media. Along with being able to assign individual note numbers, velocity values and MIDI channels to each pad, you can also assign control change numbers, change the switch type between momentary and toggle, and set release values.

Put this together and it means you can use the device to control operations on software synths and computer sequencers. The other main difference between the Pad Kontrol and its rivals is the presence of that X-Y controller pad see overleaf. This type of controller is one of Korg's particular specialities — we've seen it incorporated to particular good effect on their Kaoss range of effects units.

Resembling a control surface version of a joystick, the pad gives you finger-tip control of any two continuous MIDI controllers in real time, one assigned along the horizontal axis and one along the vertical — so as you move your fingertip around the pad, you get a proportional mix of two continuous controller values.

A typical use with a synth patch might be to control filter cutoff and resonance, but by programming two continuous controllers that aren't normally related — like reverb depth and pitch bend — you can achieve some more interesting effects. In their considerable wisdom, Korg have given the X-Y pad a couple of dedicated 'drummy' features in that you can use it to control the timings of flams and rolls.

Depending on how you set it up, moving your finger from left to right increases the speed of a drum roll, or the distance between 'flammed' notes, while moving it up and down changes either the volume of the roll, or the second note in the flam. It doesn't seem such a big deal when you try and describe it in words, but when you start to play around with the effect, you realise just how brilliant it can be.

For example, this makes it easy to create realistic-sounding drum and percussion rolls with very precise control of swells in volume and the 'microtiming' of the roll. Basically, if you want to recreate those dramatic drum rolls that you always get as the hero is led to the gallows, then the Pad Kontrol provides you with the perfect execution ouch! This feature of the Pad Kontrol also enables you to easily add those little grace notes that real drummers put in as they play — thereby making it a doddle to create very human-sounding performances.

Editing the Pad Kontrol is pretty simple and straightforward thanks mainly to the generous helping of function buttons, and despite the limitations of the three-digit LED display which does its best to inform you what's going on.

This shows what message or value is being sent whenever you strike a pad or move a controller. One of the Scenes is also designed to work out of the box with the accompanying special version of Toontrack's DFH for more on this, see the box above. However, while you can do all the editing via the buttons on the front panel, this seems a bit of a long-winded way to go about things given that the Pad Kontrol's accompanying software includes a rather excellent — and very free of charge — editor and librarian program.

This provides you with a neat visual representation of the Pad Kontrol's surface, allowing you to click on the various pads and assigning values through the corresponding pop-up windows. Once a Scene is assembled, another click of the mouse squirts it down the USB connection into the Pad Kontrol's memory. Or conversely, if you've done your programming directly via the Pad Kontrol, a click of a button sends the information back up the wire to be stored in the computer.

With the Pad Kontrol, Korg have done some out of the beatbox thinking and come up with a device with lots of creative potential. Naturally, your excitement about this product or lack of it will depend on how important real-time drum programming is to your musical modus operandi. If that's your bag, then I can state uncategorically that the Pad Kontrol is the best of the bunch — although admittedly, it's not a very big bunch! At the same time, though, Korg have given the Pad Kontrol a range of features which means it is going to be useful for general control of other MIDI devices too.

I do have one moan, and it's the same as I had about M-Audio's Trigger Finger — you can't program more than one MIDI note per pad, thereby allowing you to layer and crossfade sounds. But the flam and roll functions help to make up for this omission. And on a visual note, the Pad Kontrol looks pretty cool too, especially with all those pretty lights.

I wouldn't quite go as far as Korg's web site, which claims that the 'great feel of the trigger pads and the Illumination mode work together synergistically to catapult your performance to a higher intensity level than ever before', but if this sentence is the result of some copywriter's enthusiasm for the product, then that enthusiasm, at least, is entirely justified!