Korg Nano Series Review
I saw these back in November, but back then I was swimming in MIDI controllers and couldn’t justify another batch. But what drew me to these were their extremely small size and portability. I own a M-Audio Ozone 25 key controller, and that was considered fairly small, but it was still too big to be comfortably thrown into my laptop bag. The Korg Nano series are smaller than my computer keyboard.
I received the nanoPad from a friend for my birthday. I was surprised by the feel of the pads. They are vastly different in feel and action from my Akai MPD24. The pads are made from a solid clear rubber, unlike the MPD24′s hollow grey rubber. The action is far more sensitive, although the velocity of the strikes is narrower – soft strikes are near impossible to achieve. I like the Flam and Roll functions as well at the touch pad. The touch pad works in Reason as a nice Kaoss pad alternative (and far cheaper).
Since I now had the nanoPad, I went ahead and purchased the nanoKey. The nanoKey is kinda weird. The keys are more like computer keyboard keys, yet have some velocity sensitivity to it. Sometimes the keys do get caught on each other, and pressing the keys near the back will sometimes not register the note. My other other issue with it is the lack of a sustain pedal jack, but that’s small potatoes. I do wish the USB jack could be rotated on both so I could place them side by side, instead back and front. I do dig the portability. Since I have both now, I’ll probably finish off the series by buying the nanoKontrol – just because I could use the transport controls (and extra knobs and sliders never hurt). Best of all, all three fit nicely on my desk or in my laptop bag with room to spare.
