Korg Pad Kontrol or Alesis Control Pad?

[dickiefunk]

Hi. I'm looking for something to play/program drum tracks into Cubase SX3.1. I have EzDrummer and the Vintage Rock EZX.
So far I've been using midi keyboards (Roland A33 and RD700) but keep breaking the contacts for the snare key!
I would like something to enable me to program more realistic drum tracks.
After doing a bit of searching and reading reviews I have reduced my list to the Korg Pad Kontrol and Alesis Control Pad. I like both of these because it gives me the option of using a kick drum pedal. I'm mainly a keyboard player but play drums also.

I like the look of the Alesis Control Pad but I would need to buy the kick drum pad, hi hat pedal, Roland APC-33 stand adapter + snare stand. I would also prefer to have and minimum of 10 pads but could scrape by with 8.
I like the Korg Pad Kontrol because it has 16 pads, snare roll X/Y function and the ability to add a kick drum.

Looking at the options if I wanted the Alesis to be as playable as possible I'd have to spend £200+
The Korg Pad Kontrol doesn't offer the realism of sticks but the roll X/Y feature looks cool and I could still use a kick drum pedal.

What would you suggest? Is there anything better for £150?

[psrock]

Drum pads are not my forte, but I use the Korg padKONTROL, and I really like it. The xy touchpad is a really cool feature. I haven't used the Alesis, but my one cent (this opinion is not worth both cents because I am not an expert with these) is that I think you will really like the Korg.

[stammearu]

I've been using the Korg for a while now. The pads on it are simply flawless.
The sensivity can actually help you out (depending on how good you are with MIDI addressing) when applying certain parameters to emulate a tone with more life to it.

You might also want to try BFD.

[blaugruen7]

can i make my avatar 1024*768 pixels?

[taktheride]

i love my padKontrol. The x-y is awesome. Its fun to load a synth vst and use the x-y on that too.
you can do some crazy stuff with the flam and roll features too. it's pretty easy to get around on as well..not TOO many functions and you can assign the knobs at the top to a few diff parameters.

[andrewsc]

My guess is the padKontrol has better pad performance and that's what counts. I haven't compared it to the Alesis, but have to some of the other major brands (akai, m-audio, etc) and the padKontrol wins in that department easily. Also the thing is super easy to use and set up, changing note #, cc#, etc takes no brain-power whatsoever.

[Hulk]

I recently bought the Padkontrol and I love it. I have EZ too and it works great.

I thought about the alesis too but with the padkontrol you can drum with 3 or more fingers at the same time - but with the Alesis and with a set of sticks you can only hit 2 pads at a time so need to have a bass drum pedal/trigger to make it sound realistic....

You don't need a bass drum pedal with the padkontrol, the pads a super sensitive and eazy try youtube

[dickiefunk]

Thanks for your replies! The Korg Pad Kontrol does indeed look really sweet and out of all the midi pad controllers of this type it is my favorite by far!
The reason why I like the idea of the Alesis Control Pad is when programming drums I like the ability to play grooves in real time with all the nuances of snare drags, rolls etc.
I'm guessing it would be easier and more realistic to do this with the Alesis?
However as hulk pointed out I can only trigger 8 sounds as it is and would need to buy the kick drum pedal and other pads to get what I want from it.
With EzDrummer there are a few closed/semi closed hi hat samples and I would like to use a few of these when programming drums. EzDrummer also has snare, rim shot and cross stick samples which I would like to be able to use all of.

Both options have advantages and disadvantages so I'm trying to decide which I could do without the most. Ideally if I wasn't limited in funds I would get a V-Drums or DTXpress IV but realistically that's never going to happen.

Should I go for the more realistic stick surface but be limited in sounds and have to build the drum track up or get the less realistic finger surface but be able to play a complete kit with nuances?

[andrewsc]

You can do snare drags and rolls with the XY pad on the padKontrol. I'm a drummer too so let me explain how I think the padKontrol can be good for bashing out beats. The padKontrol is a finger-based triggering device whereas the Alesis is stick based. You can sketch out all the important elements of a drumkit on padKontrol and in fact learn to play in some ways more quickly and accurately (less editing after the fact) with the fingers than with a real kit because the distances are short and the pads very sensitive (and therefore won't hurt your fingers or hands much from repetitive motion!).

If you set up the 16 pads like this :
closed HH, bottom row, far left and right corners (mutes open HH sample)
open HH, the 2 pads just above closed HH
kick, bottom row center-left, center-right
snare , the 2 pads above the kicks
toms and sidestick across row second to top
crashes, ride, top row.

This way you have 2 pads setup to trigger 1 sample for each the major drumkit elements, and you can do stuff like funky hi hit stabs by hitting the kick and open HH with 2 fingers at once and then quickly closing the open HH with the closed HH immediately after. Also you can to 32nd note bits on the kick or snare since there are 2 pads to accommodate it. It seems very unlikely that you'd be triggering 8 sounds at once, what's important is just getting the major elements down in a workable way.

Anyway you can really learn to play this thing pretty well with a bit of practice. You can plug in a kick trigger as well but it won't respond to velocity I think. It's alot less of a hassle not to be forced to sit down to play the thing as well IMO

The thing is, there is no good substitute for a real drumset, except maybe v-drums, so don't try to force a pad-controller to be a drumset, or try but don't get your hopes up. I think you are better off triggering the kick with the fingers in this case. I tried doing that with a handsonic as well and in the end I felt better not trying to believe it was anything besides it's own instrument IE its not really a good drumset substitute OR djembe OR conga substitute but it's cool in it's own right, and needs to be learned in its own way, and you can get good results while having some fun at the end of the day. That being said I think the padKontrol is the highest performace option and an art unto itself, also the very popular and generic 16 pad layout means the skills you develop to play it well will not become irrelevant in the future.

[dickiefunk]

Thanks for the replies guys! I've ordered the Korg Pad Kontrol!