Ableton Forum

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Pushing the keys all the way down requires to much effort....

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Drum pads respond to velocity but have no movement on them. Many people prefer this to using keyboards. If you like using keys for beats, don't worry about it. Apcs and launchpads don't have drum pads, they have buttons and are for a completely different purpose. Although you can use them this way if you're not worried about velocity.

Mixikyr wrote: Maybe it makes sense if they're not using purely as a midi controller for something like Ableton.

This is a big part of it IMO. I think the workflow adds to the MPC and Maschine experience in addition to the pads over keys.

So far, I much prefer keys to pads for drums.

In my pre-DAW days, I had a Roland SP-808ex and I used that to trigger sound-bites and sound effects, samples from CD's and vinyl. In my ultimate setup, there would be at least 8 pads to do so.

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I prefer pads to keys for finger-drumming because of the action.

When you hit a key, there's a brief moment between when you actually hit the key and when the note sounds, due to the motion of the key. The same 'motion' of a pad like on a PadKontrol is effectively nil, so it feels a lot more like the actual percussive impact of your finger on the pad is creating the sound, rather than pushing a key to trigger the sound.

It's a subtle thing, and I could see someone preferring keys to pads for exactly the same reason, but that's just my preference.

Although that said, I'll take a keyboard with good action over crappy pads (MPK, Trigger Finger, etc.) any day of the week.

pads are more easy for to to play, not beeing trained at keyboard. i have set up my mpd32 to play different scales for the 4 different pad banks, makes playing in one scale way more easy with pads than with keys for my. i don't accidentely hit non-scale notes, and playing/building chords is easy and obvious. good example for this workflow is the scale mode in the lpc software for launchpad. ->http://www.nativekontrol.com/LPC-Live.html

greetz
revA

agent314 wrote:When you hit a key, there's a brief moment between when you actually hit the key and when the note sounds, due to the motion of the key. The same 'motion' of a pad like on a PadKontrol is effectively nil, so it feels a lot more like the actual percussive impact of your finger on the pad is creating the sound, rather than pushing a key to trigger the sound.

It's a subtle thing, and I could see someone preferring keys to pads for exactly the same reason, but that's just my preference.

+1

For me it's both the bounce back percussion pads give you when you hit them, which makes playing quick rolls easy, and the fact that all pads are equal, unlike the piano keyboard where the black and white keys are positioned differently and feel different. There's an extra effort involved in moving between them that doesn't exist when using pads.

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Mixikyr wrote:

razorblade wrote:Pushing the keys all the way down requires to much effort....

Velocity settings are available with most of keyboards...

apparently my snark was too subtle....

Also:

* 4x4 pads like those on the MPDs will auto-map to the pads currently shown in a drum rack, making it very easy to look and see or remember which pads map to which samples. With keys you have to memorize your mapping.

* It's much harder to hit the wrong pad than it is the wrong key.

I have the padKontrol and picked up an Akai LPD8 for the pads/knobs which I mapped to the stuff in Live and use it for fleshing out ideas for midi clips and then re-arrange them in copies of original in order to make different progressions. I can also use it with Impulse for easy 8 pad drum setup. I am also not a drummer. The padKontrol can map to drumrack as well with a certain selection via its editor and is fine for that. Again, different feel on pad vs keyboard. I play keys but am not a master And at least with MIDI you can fix yer flubs and massage things a bit to make it not sound quite as static. That's about all I use either of the pads for, basic drum stuff (orchestral types, not metal/rock).

Mike