Korg Forums

bought a korg nano kontrol yesterday, as I wanted to record some synth and piano parts for some songs yesterday. I know with Abelton Live 8, I can already play the parts with my laptop keyboard, but wanted more control over it, so went for the korg nano kontrol.

However, I can't get any of the buttons to play any notes. I mean I can assign the knobs on the korg to the virtual knobs on Abelton live fine, and they communicate fine. But I'm wanting to have the piano keys play when I press the buttons on my korg, which isn't happening, only works when I select the pc midi input to use the pc keyboard



Is this possible to do or should I hve gotten the nano keys instead, guy i the shop said this one was their best selling midi controller. I've got Korg Kontrol Editor but not sure what the settings need to be. Any help would be appreciated.

thanks

Didn't look around the Kontrol Editor much, did you? Or read the one-page instruction sheet that came with it?

Each of the buttons can be assigned to one of three types of things: No Assign (i.e. it's disabled and will do nothing), Control Change, and Note.

If you were wanting a controller to play notes, you should've said so, and you should've gone for the nanoKey or, more ideally, a better (although more expensive) controller - the nanoKey is good for quick-and-dirty playing, but I wouldn't try to use it for recording parts for a song if you're a keyboard player. I have a nanoKey, and I use it either for sending MIDI control messages to my software when I perform live (I use a couple normal keyboards for playing the actual notes) or for an easy way to try out sounds on my laptop without having to stand at my keyboard rig - it makes things more mobile, which is why I like it. As something to play on in general though, I'd pass - you have to know what you're using it for.

There are two good reasons why you don't want to use the nanoKontrol to record a part. Firstly, the buttons aren't positioned anything like a normal keyboard. You're not gaining anything here that you don't already have with playing on your laptop keyboard. Secondly, the buttons aren't velocity sensitive - no matter how hard or soft you press one of those buttons, it'll always send a MIDI message at the velocity value you set in the Kontrol Editor. This won't give you a realistic-sounding performance; you'll have to manually adjust velocities for all the notes. If you're going to have to do that, you might as well just use your laptop keyboard or click all the notes in with your mouse. The nanoKey, on the other hand, *is* velocity sensitive (although, it's still not a great keyboard, as I mentioned).