Which MIDI Controller For Using Reason 8 Live?

[ionly]

Hello.
Put myself through a new adventure last night by plunging into a local jam with R8 on a crappy laptop, alongside a small Akai midi keyboard as the weapon of choice. Normally, when I can be arsed, it would be my beaten dreadnought acoustic attached to a homemade pedalboard. A very impulsive, last minute kind of thing, but a blast of an experience, and on a narrowboat as well - I don't think I'll ever play guitar live again There was nothing orchestrated beforehand, just complete improvisation with an object that normally lurks at home in a corner. I'm hooked now and want to do it again, but need some advice from you good folks regarding a midi controller that will better fit my purpose: mainly portable and affordable. Any recommendations on what works best with R8?

Cheers

[Benedict]

Hi 

Congrats on the live thing. 

I think that keep the Akai you have and look at adding a Nektar P1 knob box as the Nektar stuff started life as dedicated to Reason so integration is deeper than anyone else. That said if you want to get into the ReMote maps yourself then you can get very custom on any applicable controller.

One thing that may or may not be an is that I wanted to give you a link but the Nektar links were all down - anyone?

[PGR]

www.nektartech.com

[ionly]

Cool, thanks for the tip Benedict, and the link PGR. I've digested lots of tutorials this weekend on building Combinators for live use, and mapping them to my M-Audio Oxygen 61 - made the decision to try that first before investing in anything else. I really like the idea of splitting octaves on the Oxygen between various instruments, but obviously at the expense of portability. Nevertheless, I'm very excited about experimenting with the various possibilities.

Cheers

[ionly]

For anyone interested in setting up for live use, I found these great articles from the SOS archive to be very useful:

Part 1: Replacing A Live Keyboard Rig...
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov06/a ... h_1106.htm

Part 2: Live Electronic Performance...
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec06/a ... h_1206.htm

Part 3: Live Looping With Dr:Rex
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb07/a ... h_0207.htm

I'm going to post them in a new thread also. 

Cheers.