Percussion pad or keyboard

[Torray654]

Hello All,

Need some advice on a percussion pad or keyboard. Right now I have an Axiom Air 25 it works ok but, doesn’t seem to be a great fit. I’m looking for something that works a lot better. Is there something that Toontrack recommends? Either device would be nice. I like the Air 25 because it has both a keyboard and a percussion pad just finding it hard to assign the different drums to either the keyboard or percussion pad. I will be honest I am a guitar player =P so I’m looking for something easy to use to trigger the different drums and cymbals. I have both EZ Drummer and Superior drummer so something that works with both would be awesome. Please be kind, I admit all this stuff is new to me. Ask me how to run a signal chain through an amp, which effects should go through the effects loop and which should not, how to get a great tone I’m there. Ask me how to run EZ Drummer or how midi stuff all looks and I look like a deer caught in the headlights. If you want to get a good laugh you should see me working with pro-tools. Anyways I would like to keep the price range under $300.00 the less the better.

Thanks in advance,
Shayne

Topic

[Brad]

Shayne,
No worries we’ve all been there at one time or another, for the most part Toonies are a pretty friendly group. The Air 25 is actually a pretty nice unit, the only thing I would say is limiting is the keyboard size. I am not a piano player and therefore full weighted piano actioned keys are not a priority for me. I do use a Nektar LX88 MIDI controller, as the name suggests, it’s an 88 key device, it also has some decent sized rubber percussion pads. It is equipped with a bunch of other options that I have at times used, but I prefer my control surfaces to have motorized faders. Comes in at just over $300 (USD) at Sweetwater. So far I have been pretty happy with it, with 88 keys I pretty much don’t have to remap anything as I believe everything (or at least most everything) currently maps within the 88 keys (drum wise).

If you do want to remap a drum articulation in SD2 to a different key or drum pad go into the mapping tab, CTRL (or right click) on a drum and you will see all the articulations. Select the articulation you want, click MIDI learn and press the key or drum pad you want to trigger it.
Hope this helps…

Mac Studio M1 Max, RAM 64 GB, 1TB Drive, OSX 12.x/13.x and Windows 10 (VM)
DAW: Studio One Pro (always up to date)
DTX Express III (Extreme triggers), Nektar LX88
OWC Thunderbay Mini (4 X 1TB Sata SSD), Express 4M2 (4 X 2TB M.2 SSD), Envoy Express (1TB M.2 SSD)
Presonus Quantum, Faderport & Faderport 8
Black Lion Sparrow Mk2 A/D, FMR-RNP-RNC, MIDI Xpress 128, BM5A, KRK VXT4, Equator D5
2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

[Torray654]

Thanks Brad, I’ll give that a try. Most of the time I am just trying to find a decent drum pattern using EZdrummer but, sometimes I can’t find what I want and go to Superior Drummer 2. Thanks for the help in setting it up in the MIDI learn, if I can do that things will be awesome. 🙂

Shayne

[Author]

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