Akai Professional MPK Mini review: specs and price

Buttons will light up when pressed, resulting in better visibility to users.

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The octave buttons are used to shift the keyboard up or down in one octave increments. This extends the range of the keyboard in either direction, which lets you play notes that lie outside the number of keys available.

A feature on some MIDI devices that allows to adjust tempo in real time based on an external input or by “tapping” a button on the device itself. It is used to allow musicians the flexibility of playing at any desired tempo based on their musical input.

The more buttons the device has, the more complex the input can be.

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The arpeggiator is the main tool used by computer musicians to generate looped material. An arpeggiator is simply a generator of signals that controls the tempo, pitch, velocity, gate, and other parameters of the sound.

The button is used to select independent banks of continuous controllers. Effectively, this allows you to control more independent parameters with the knobs, faders and buttons. The bank selector button is used to switch among the available banks.

A sustain button works in the same manner as a traditional sustain pedal. Pressing the sustain button and playing a note causes it to sustain. However, the sound will not stop until the button is pressed again.

Velocity sensitive keys are just spring loaded keys that sound out louder the harder you hit them. If you "lightly" press a key, the sound will be quiet; the harder you press, the louder it gets.

The amount of keys the controller has on the keyboard.

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The pads section is ideal to trigger loops and samples, using your finger drum skills.

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Devices can communicate in both directions with each other without any additional MIDI interface. The biggest advantage is that the USB connection can be used for everything; power supply, MIDI-in and MIDI-out. This means you need less cables.

Users can map, set and regulate the entire midi controller giving different functionalities to all different buttons, knobs and faders. The device could be also set up with different softwares.

More memory locations allow users to save their preset/setup and have them ready to use again and again.

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It is compatible with PCs and laptops running the Windows operating system.

It is compatible with Mac OS X devices such as MacBooks and iMacs.