Making music

The amount of near gear that is being produced on a daily basis is mind boggling – its damn near impossible for one person to know about all the gear that is out there, and which one performs the best in their individual categories.  Review websites and other helpful DJs might be able to lead you in the right direction by suggesting what might be best for you, but by the time you have gotten what you think you need – something new has already been produced.  One of the driving factors in the increased amount of gear like controllers is not the steady consumer demand for new products – it is the ease at which they can be manufactured. Products, especially electronic products, can be designed and built with a quick turnaround.  Most of these devices are made from plastics when can be produced in record numbers with very little human intervention.  Companies can afford to make millions of factory produced controllers compared to objects that require a little more human touch.  Hand built units like synthesizers will naturally cost much more to produce and sell.  One the bright side, the creation of newer products also means that the cost of older ones will decrease. http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2013/02/06/traktor-kontrol-s4-price-dropped-to-899-new-controller-on-the-way  

While AKAI may no longer dominate the field of production pads and instruments, they have certainly given the rest of the industry a clue as to what works and what doesn’t work.  Sixteen pads on a square base will never go out of style, but it can be expanded to be much more useful – especially if you are limited in how much gear you can stack in once place.  Keyboard style controllers have a usefulness that many take for granted.  The black and white key layout is easy to recognize and it doesn’t take much thought to assign functions to them. There is also the idea that you are getting many keys out of only a small area – yet these keys do not require nearly as much force as a pad to activate.  One can also choose how much force is required by simply pressing the key on a specific spot.  When you take this idea and add a few necessary features, like a rotary pot or an assign key – you have just created something very useful in only a small amount of space.  Reloop’s Keyfadr hopes to break into this market for all of the Ableton producers who need a compact solution. http://www.djtechtools.com/2014/07/01/reviewed-reloop-keyfadr-mini-keyboard-for-ableton-live/