Let me start this out by saying that before I bought this I barely did any real effect processing or anything using midi. This has turned me onto a whole new set of ideas for music production but what is there to say about the Kaoss pad? What does it do? As some say... those who know, know. The 3 most important features of this are as follows:
- An effects processor (including 128 effects including a nice pack of synthesizers and drum machines.)
- A midi controller. It can be uses with virtually ANY program that accepts midi input or puts out midi signals to synthesize any instrument, control any effect or even crazy things like graphic controls and video games!
- A sampler. It has a 4 bank sampler that uses powerful Korg technology to sample things by the beat. Only smooth sailing (or sampling you could say) from here on out.
The amazing bit of all of this is that it is all controlled with a square (x,y) pad. Yes, your vague memory of high school math class is correct. Everything is controlled by the placement of your finger (or fingers) on the pad which is all kept exactly on time with a beat-lock syncing system that allows you to either tap your desired tempo, use auto-bpm to have it find the tempo itself or set the tempo manually. This is achieved by pressing down on the knob used to change effects and spinning it the same way. This is all beautifully back-lit with red LED's which trail behind your finger in a mesmerizing display.
The effects processor is one of the best and most revolutionary in the industry. It contains everything from haunting reverbs and delays to mesmerizing filters. It has flangers, phasers, granulators (my personal favorite), tons of random modulation effects, many effects used to change all aspects of the samples in the banks and last but not least.. even vocoders! This means you can plug a mic (or anything else really) and change the pitch and sound with the pad as well! This is how D.J.'s achieve the "robot voice" effect. This also includes 12 synthesizers and 6 drum beat synthesizers. These are admittedly not extremely varied BUT I will get to the solution to this very soon. There are so many options to choose from that it is extremely hard to ever get bored with this. Either alone or with a whole party of people this provides plenty of entertainment while still being a powerful tool when used in the right hands.
What I was getting to earlier was that sometimes the synthesizers and drum loops do get old so what is the solution? Just hook it up to a computer! It has a U.S.B. out port on it that is easily configured with the included program called the "kp3 editor." This lets you control how it shows up as a midi device. With this technology you can control an infinite amount of different effects, synthesizers or anything else you can find to use it for! My personal favorite midi use is as a scratcher (with the program fl studio 8.) Yes, you can even use it to do fluid D.J. scratching! Another great feature is the sd card slot. When you put an S.D. card into the bottom of this you can save samples onto the card from the Kaoss pad OR from the computer. This means you can load them from the computer or the Kaoss pad as well (it actually shows up as a hard drive as well as a midi controller on the computer.) This way you will never lose your favorite samples and you can transfer drum/bass loops or anything else to the kaoss pad in a matter of seconds.
The sampler can sample just from the input (microphone, instrument, Ipod, synthesizer, computer) or do "resampling" the same way to record everything going to the output. Resampling can be done infinitely over each bank. The possibilities of effects are limitless because you can just keep changing and adding the effects until satisfied. You can sample anything dynamically and loop it endlessely if you want or create one shot samples. The beatlock feature keeps all loops in sync with everything else!
I have managed to use this powerful tool as an effects processor for a synthesizer, a guitar, vocals and for remixing many types of music. I have had it for a long time now and I would still give it a 9/10 overall and I would recommend it to anybody interested in effects or any music production in general. The possibilities are endless.
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