Time For A Change

As a traveling musician/composer its important to keep the weight down on your equipment so I decided it was time to lighten my load and get a smaller midi keyboard. I was using M-Audio‘s Oxygen 8 (replaced by the Oxygen 25), 25 key midi keyboard. It has been great, its built very well for a keyboard in this price range and has all the usual assignable knobs and controllers and weight’s in at 1.4 kg’s.

After a bit of research and some user feedback I decided to go for the Akai MPK Mini. At 0.9 kg’s its VERY light, and takes up half the space of my trusty Oxygen 8. So far so good, keys are velocity sensitive and I like the MPC style drum pads. Another great feature is some of the controls are backlit so if your sitting on a dark airplane or bus you can see your way around it.

I live in the UK and the price at the moment seems to be around £69, I used decks.co.uk, they were really helpful and a good bunch of guys.

I’ll keep you posted on its performance.