An Edirol PCR-500 keyboard came in over the weekend. I spent a day improvising with it and realised there are two main things which make this a great controller.
MIDI Merge.
Drum Pads.
The drum pads aren't fantastic for drum programming - way better than keys but need a lot of force to turn on (and sometimes off). However for what I use them for, triggering drum loops and arpeggios, they are fantastic. You can set them to any note and channel, and what's more they blink. I would never have thought how brilliant this is - you get instant feedback on what is currently playing (invaluable if you have many pads sending on the same channel), it's easy to figure out chord changes with the current chords blinking away at you, turning everything off is quick and it looks cool. Very cool.
I've been taking a look at a few other controllers which offer similar capabilities (but are smaller). The problem is that they all lack MIDI merge capabilities, which immediately increases the price by about €50. And they lack one thing.
They don't flash.
I think I'll be sticking with my PCR...
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