PADS VS KEYS

There have been times when it looked like pad-based controllers were primed to take over the world, but that hasn’t happened yet. Go to any gig or jam session, and you’ll still see more keyboards than pads! These offerings from Novation strike a perfect balance – providing a choice of keyboard size and range, but also with two rows of pads. And the design is such that the pads are highly functional even if you don’t want to use them to play beats or other sounds (though you can even view a little virtual MIDI keyboard on them, which is kind of weird when there’s a real keyboard right there). They’re part of the navigation interface, and are used to select functions on the keyboard, to preview sounds, and so on.