Midi questions
I was wondering does beatmaker 2 work with irig midi?
I know the camera connection kit works with beat maker 2 but what I really wanna know is which one is better?
I also was wondering which midi keyboard should I invest in? I'm not really trying to pay over 120 dollars? I looked at the mpk mini and wanna get that since it also has pads on it to for the drum machine.
Last but not least I was wondering what are the benefits of having an iPad with beatmaker 2 connect to a daw like ableton? Which daws could be connected and can this be done on a windows daw as well.
I know the camera connection kit works with beat maker 2 but what I really wanna know is which one is better?
I also was wondering which midi keyboard should I invest in? I'm not really trying to pay over 120 dollars? I looked at the mpk mini and wanna get that since it also has pads on it to for the drum machine.
Last but not least I was wondering what are the benefits of having an iPad with beatmaker 2 connect to a daw like ableton? Which daws could be connected and can this be done on a windows daw as well.
Comments
As far as inexpensive MIDI controllers go, the MPK Mini is pretty popular and gets pretty good reviews. Some people think the drum pads aren't sensitive enough but you can actually mod them to make the sensitivity better. There are videos on YouTube that show how to do it.
The irig does work with BM2. I haven't used it but the benefit of using the irig over using the camera connection kit is that you can charge your iPad while your midi keyboard is connected. I still would recommend the camera connection kit because there is a lot you can do with it like use the USB port for file transfers with a flash drive. If your into jailbreaking you can actually use it on your phone too which is something else irig has over the CCK if you want to used midi apps on your phone.
The irig also won't need a USB hub to operate a midi keyboard where the CCK may need one depending on the keyboard your using. The mpk mini does not need a USB hub but the mpk25 does.
As far as a keyboard I can't reccomend anything less than 49 keys. I started with 25 and it def got the job done but I purchased an akai mpk61 and being able to play with two hands on full size keys makes a big difference. The mpk mini is good but the keys are smaller than average so it takes getting used to. I own one but I rarely use it because if I'm going to do something mobile I would rather just use the touch screen. The mpk 25 has regular size keys but it's bigger and costs more. If you don't care so much about the pads look into a keyboard with just keys. To play your drum sounds with keys you have to put your keyboard two octaves down. The lowest note on BM2's keyboard is the first pad on the drum machine
Connecting BM2 to a daw has many uses. My main use for using pc daws are for sounds. I either play the sounds in the daw itself so I can edit the midi notes then send the wav to BM2 to use with pads, play the sound directly into BM2 and play the sample with pads which is the easiest, or I create new presets with the keyboard mapper which is definitely the best method in my opinion.
Another way I use it is to control BM2 with my daw. I have a few vsts that play midi notes in different ways. I have a vst that strums keyboard notes like a guitar. I have another one that maps different musical scales and chords to all the white keys on a keyboard so your always in key even if you don't fully understand music theory.
I'm sure there are many other uses but I use BM2 as my main daw so I haven't needed anything else. Hope this long ass post was of some use.
I think it actually starts at 000. So the the drum pad for bank A would be 000-015, bank B 016-31, etc. If you don't have drum pads or you prefer to use keys instead, it's the lowest "C" on the keyboard. If you have problems getting it to work just keep lowering the octaves until a note triggers.