Does anyone use the Korg nanoKEY Studio with Renoise?Any problem with the MIDI Input mapping?
The Korg nanoKEY Studio costs around 120€.It would be worth it if all your controls are mappable with Renoise.Please, if someone has used it, could you detail your opinion?
Do you know other MIDI controllers that are similar?I am interested in having 12 + 12 touch-sensitive pads (with this distribution and form) and some wheels or control sliders.
vestas pad one - built as a tank (market price was over 200 eu). best sensitive pads I ever used on a controller, midi out and usb, sadly without wheels
akai218 - use especially for renoise for a short time, in comparisonn to the old akai scrap (mpd-16, mpc-2500) i m positively surprised, sadly square shape built
arturia beatstep 1 - get next week one second hand, if interesting for you, i do compare
I had the Nanokey 2 keyboard (not studio) for a short while but couldn`t stand the feel of the keys. Felt cheap plasticy and wobbled around a lot so I sent it back.
I`ve now got a Keith McMillen K-Board which I much prefer the feel of the keys, they are more like drum pads and have LED visual feedback as bonus.
My advice is to make sure you buy with a one month return policy.
I like Korg gear and I have the Triton Taktile midi keys controller, Nano Keys and Nanopad lying around somewhere…
The pads on Triton Taktile and Nanopad are quite different. The nano Keys setup is exactly what you will have on the NanoKey Studio. It’s good enough to play and feel keys and is velocity sensitive as well, feels more like pressing buttons but better than your computer keyboard. The XY pad on both Taktile and Nanopad are basically identical in feel and function, and both axes can be individually mapped to CC parameters or used internally to trigger Touch Scale feature available in all these products. You can also control pitch bend and modulation from this pad. The Korg Kontrol editor software let’s you change the mappings for CC control to any thing you want.
Knobs are not exactly tough built but kept with care it will last. The backlighting on Taktile pads is Red/Blue and Nanopad does not have any. So this feature can be useful and it’s available in the nanoKey studio.
Korg pads are never that inspiring to my tastes and feels rather stiff and can ghost note on occasion.
If NanoKey is attractive to you, you can also try Alesis VI25, Maudio Code 25 and the 25 key version of Korg Triton Taktile. The benefit of using Taktile is that they have the sound bank of Triton keys so that it can function as a standalone unit as well giving playability over line out or phones and it runs on 5v usb power. They all have some amount of knobs and pads and the Alesis and Code version have a full 16 pad midi setup.
NanoKey Studio is a combination of the nano series products so ideally if you purchased the nanoKey, nanoPad and nanoStudio you already have a modular nanoKey Studio.
If squishy feel is important and various midi expression control then a Roli product would be more up you alley.
@Raul I always wanted to ask you about your orchestral music setup and would like to listen to your released stuff Maybe you can provide some links I can visit. Also what orchestral books would you recommend or that you learn from. I find the Alexander publishing series of orchestration tutorials quite well organised. Art of Orchestration by Adler is another one which I can never seem to find the time to finish. Rimski Korsakov wrote his seminal manual Principles of Orchestration which is a little too old world and involved for me especially since many years back as I was reading it I had a strange experience that scared me: after 4 days of continuous reading and deciphering his slower string passages and working out their voicings, I took a break and had a cup of coffee and very eerily some orchestral music started playing my head that sounded like some old world symphonic piece, I started to go with the flow and I found that I could change the tempo and mood of the music I was hearing and even though I could not intellectually make sense of anything it was as if I was listening to a very complicated piece of music way beyond my orchestral skill level and somehow I was participating in it by guiding it’s pace and emotion, this happened for about 3-4 minutes the music started taking a very dark tone and I freaked out and stopped immediately after that. I find it difficult to open that book and feel it has has some sort of occult magic to it or something.
I find all of the Korg nano controllers that include pads / knobs / sliders / buttons etc. to feel very cheap and plastic-y. Apparently people like them but I don’t get it – to me they epitomize CHEAP production.
However, I really like the microKEY line of mini-key controllers. They, quite unlike the knob/slider stuff, actually have very nice semi-weighted keys that really respond well to playing and don’t feel cheap at all. Go figure! I have a three-octave microKey that I’ve used for over 6 or 7 years now, and I still love it. The mini keys on it feel better than the full-size keys of many controllers! (M Audio, Nektar, etc). My main controller for keys is a Novation SL-mkII, but I always have the microKey around as well for quick & easy playing…
but none of that helps you, as you obviously want the pads and knobs, etc… in which case, I’d look at other brands, or at least try out the Korg in a shop…I think you’ll see just how cheap and flimsy they feel.
I have a nanopad2 + akai midimix at the moment, and still miss a proper controller to play synth pads.
The nanopad works to some extent but it not very sensitive and the pads lack visual feedback, and I don’t have much space for a proper master keyboard.
I need something portable.
The nanokey studio looks too much like a bastardish design, and wouldn’t fit in the very limited space in front of my notebook.
@Ledger - Question about that K-Board: Does it respond to midi feedback (= can you light up the pads/keys remotely)?
@Ledger - Question about that K-Board: Does it respond to midi feedback (= can you light up the pads/keys remotely)?
When setting the K-board as the output from a renoise instrument, then the keys do light up what is played on the track. However the octaves dont seem to be always correct. Higher notes can show up below lower notes so not quite sure what is going on with it. I dont generally use this feature so afraid I can`t comment any more than that…
When setting the K-board as the output from a renoise instrument, then the keys do light up what is played on the track. However the octaves dont seem to be always correct. Higher notes can show up below lower notes so not quite sure what is going on with it. I dont generally use this feature so afraid I can`t comment any more than that…
@Ledger: Cool, thanks for the feedback. The user manual was not very clear on this point.
That octave issue doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I’m not 100% decided yet.
I like also encryptedmind’s approach to have a controller that doubles as a rompler when away from a computer.
This however brings additional requirements, like ideally having integrated speakers and being able to run on batteries - so actually any beginner keyboard with USB midi would do as well if they were not so bulky.
The closest I found so far would be something like the Yamaha Reface DX (which doesn’t sounds half bad).
@Ledger: Cool, thanks for the feedback. The user manual was not very clear on this point.
That octave issue doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I’m not 100% decided yet.
I will say that it doesn`t seem like great behaviour in use. If I was inclined to need it I would likely try and bug hunt in renoise/ get in contact with K-board manufacturer to see what is going on.
At least in principle it does have some working feedback though…
I will say that it doesn`t seem like great behaviour in use. If I was inclined to need it I would likely try and bug hunt in renoise/ get in contact with K-board manufacturer to see what is going on.
At least in principle it does have some working feedback though…
I just did a quick test on this today and it seems for the LED feedback the K-board simply loops the octaves/ layers the octaves around. So roughly:
C-0 to C-1 plays on left octave, C-1 to C-2 on the right
C-2 to C-3 left…C-3 to C-4 on the right etc.
the anomaly in this seems to be the high C will also start the octave once the looping starts, so the C-2 starts at the very right hand C on the keyboard but C#2 is then played on the low end of the keyboard with the low C being skipped altogether.
This looks like it is intentional, and is useful in the sense that you will get all pitches shown back to you. You just lose the interval spacing which annoyingly for renoise use is the most visually hidden variable…
You cant have it all` in a two octave keyboard I guess!
Hi.…i use but can’t set midi channel from the device itself, have to connect to a computer to program the scenes. The knobs limit sending CC data in steps of 2 (0,2,4,8 etc). So you only get 64 steps instead of 128.
Finally I opted for a second-hand Arturia KeyLabs mkII 49. I had to build a tool on purpose to control it. The tool is still in development. Here I told a little history:
That said, if I did not know how to build tools, I would have resold this MIDI keyboard, because with Renoise most controls do not work, and the Duplex tool only does the minimum.
Yes the Korg NanoKey Studio is the best combination of features and capability in the under $400 (us) range. If you are a piano player, it’s probably not your style, but if you are a synth player and like advanced midi control (arp, scales, chords, etc.) it’s FANTASTIC. The X/Y Pad adds a unique control surface. Plus the bluetooth wireless is the clincher. Works flawlessly. Fit’s in a slip case with my IPAD and I have a portable, wireless production and performance capability.
Thanks for the feedback. Finally I not acquired this MIDI controller because it does not include rotating knobs without limits.
Most MIDI controllers with limited rotary knobs (range 0-127 values) are somewhat useless for Renoise, who handles a lot of ranges. It is impossible to obtain precision.
Maybe you can provide some links I can visit. Also what orchestral books would you recommend or that you learn from. I find the Alexander publishing series of orchestration tutorials quite well organised. Art of Orchestration by Adler is another one which I can never seem to find the time to finish. Rimski Korsakov wrote his seminal manual Principles of Orchestration which is a little too old world and involved for me especially since many years back as I was reading it I had a strange experience that scared me: after 4 days of continuous reading and deciphering his slower string passages and working out their voicings, I took a break and had a cup of coffee and very eerily some orchestral music started playing my head that sounded like some old world symphonic piece, I started to go with the flow and I found that I could change the tempo and mood of the music I was hearing and even though I could not intellectually make sense of anything it was as if I was listening to a very complicated piece of music way beyond my orchestral skill level and somehow I was participating in it by guiding it’s pace and emotion, this happened for about 3-4 minutes the music started taking a very dark tone and I freaked out and stopped immediately after that. I find it difficult to open that book and feel it has has some sort of occult magic to it or something.
