Midi keyboard for Reaper

MartinBush

Hi all

I've touched on this elsewhere, but I just want to get a few things clear before I jump in.

I have started recording using Reaper, and it seems to be quite easy for now. I am treating it like tape really - nothing fancy, just record one bit, then the next.

At this stage I would like to try to programme some drums and I think that the way to do this would be using a midi keyboard. I hope that's right?

I have looked at two options so far:

Akai LPK 25 
Akai MPK 25II mini

I am running Reaper on a Windows 7 machine and I have no plans to change the operating system.

Would either of these keyboards work? Apologies if this seems like a question with an obvious answer, but I've never used midi before and am not up to speed with what works with what.

I am not wedded to Akai, and would welcome suggestions for other models, but I am very much looking at that price range and size. I can't play keyboard as such so I don't think I need a full sized one (I don't have the space either). I may decide to try a few basic keyboard parts in future, but it will almost certainly be one finger stuff or possibly very basic chords.

I have done quite well so far, with much help from this forum, putting bits of kit together and getting it working and I hope when I do get a keyboard I can do the same.

Martin

andy_k

I have a couple, an Akai MPK mini, and an Xkey.
I bought the Akai, because it had a few nice features, the pads are good for beating out a rough rhythm, but the keyboard is a bit small and cheap feeling. It has a load of assignable knobs, which is useful. I installed the software it came with-which was a bit old school, but a lot of sounds, I never really dug into it.
I bought the Xkey for some full sized keys, and again it is far from perfect, size is the only thing it has in common with a proper keyboard, but I prefer to 'play' on it.
Neither can be considered serious keyboards, more like note input devices, but the Akai has more than enough features to fill that job well. Hitting pads for drum input feels a bit more natural than hitting piano keys, but either gets the job done.
I recently started using a plugin called Unify, which uses samplers. synths and effects, and all are real time controllable via midi, it was super easy to get the Akai to work, and Reapers ability to map to controllers is supposedly really easy too-- I haven't tried it yet, but using the Akai to control Unify, within Reaper was simple.

MartinBush

Thanks Andy. That all makes sense to me.

It seems that the MPK mini would suit me best as I do like to hit things  

Once I get going I may have questions about Unify too I expect.

andy_k

No worries mate, bash away.

jmf1928

Big fan of the arturia minilab which comes with analog lab as well

fatherchewielewie

I use Reaper and for programming drums, I use a Korg Padkontrol and EZ Drummer. The Padkontrol has really good pads. I used to draw in every beat with the mouse and nearly went for the Akai MPD218 until I found out about the Padkontrol. I haven't looked back.

pintspiller

I use an M-Audio Keystation Mini 32. But i don't use it for drums, just keyboard parts. I use the note to chord thing in Reaper. Worked ok. Bit of lag, but I wasn't too worried.

Downloaded Obelisk for free as part of registering my Focusrite 18i20. Didn't seem to lag as much as the JS thing. 

I still prefer to use Chordgun in Reaper. There's a couple of other scripts but I can't remember names, but I don't use them so much.

PolarityMan

fatherchewielewie said:

I use Reaper and for programming drums, I use a Korg Padkontrol and EZ Drummer. The Padkontrol has really good pads. I used to draw in every beat with the mouse and nearly went for the Akai MPD218 until I found out about the Padkontrol. I haven't looked back.

Do you actually play in the beats live or do you jsut use it as a keyboard to kinda insert the right sound at a marker? The reason I can program with a mouse pretty quick and def more accurately than i can tap in so interested in possible workflow improvements that dont involve performing the whole thing.