eight pads 25 velocity sensitive slim keys 16 multi-function encoders an excellent selection
of included software which we're going to look at in a bit plus more is the Arturia Minilab MK2
the best mini midi keyboard for you well let's find out i'm Zane welcome to Audio Tech TV i've included links down in the description to the Arturia Minilab m2 in case you want
the latest pricing or more information at the time of recording it is going for $120
over on Sweetwater and on Amazon plus there's another color variation as well but right now
let's open up this box and check out the build quality so here it is we have our usb cable there
and the first thing you notice is how solid this is built this thing is really solid
like that's metal on the back there that's really nice
this is a solid plastic on the top you got these cool faux wood panels on the side
the keys feel nice they're not weighted or anything like that but they do feel good
pads feel good and the encoders feel nice and tight
you can see on the back we have our usb port and a sustain pedal port
if you were to purchase one of those extra and that's about it for connectivity
you can change your octaves with these buttons here so the build quality of this thing is
really really nice if you're taking this on the go with you you're not gonna have to worry about so
we should be able to just plug this thing in and use it right away but if we want to take
more control over this like the color of the pads when they light up and that sort of thing
then we should install the arturia midi control center so we can change the color of these pads
when they light up and we can even have them so they're lit up all the time let's just quickly
look at that right now so we can click on this pad here say pad one says color red and you
can see when we press the pad it turns red now what if we want to change this to let's say blue
turn that one to blue let's say we turn this one to blue as well maybe want this one to be green
and the one next to it to be green and we'll just leave it like this for now and say we want these
on all the time so not just when we press them so we just go up to device settings and then we can
go to pad off backlight and we'll turn it on then we can go down here and save as and we'll just
call this new to so we'll save it as new to and then what we want to do is store these settings
onto the minilab mkii so we could just go to one of these memories say this one say store two
and now it's loaded onto the keyboard and you can see here each of these pads is actually like
two pads in one because you can click on this pad button here and it switches it to the second set
of pads so one is either pad one or pad nine and each of these is like that so if you switch this
then the pads would start from nine ten eleven twelve if you put it back to the
regular way the pads would be one two three four five and you can have different colors for
each one so if you want to know which set you're on if you're playing live maybe and
you just want to quickly look and okay i'm on that set of pads maybe you change the colors for
the second set now let's look at the bundled software that you get with this the first
instrument we're going to look at is the analog lab now with the Arturia Minilab mk2 you get
analog lab light and analog lab intro now i think they're both kind of the same i think intro
is kind of taking over the light version but with the intro and the light option you get 500 classic
synth sounds that are taken from arturia's flagship v collection which is amongst the
best sounding virtual instruments out there so you have a lot of sounds in here right off the bat
and the minilab is mapped to this by default so you can control various things on the screen
using your rotary knobs here of course your keys will work your pads if you need them and all of
that is pre-mapped for you there's an excellent selection of instruments in here lots of sounds to
get you started now let's look at the daw that's included with this you get ableton live light
and a cool thing about ableton live light is it's basically the full version of ableton live but it
has an eight track limitation and you can always update it so if they release the next version and
you have a license for ableton live lite you automatically get that next version for free
so you could work with the eight tracks and it might be good for you to start with you're going
to get used to that workflow of ableton live so if this is a piece of software that you've heard
of and you want to get used to it ableton live light is an excellent introduction to it and then
if you outgrow those eight tracks you can always upgrade to the full version once you're ready and
you also get the uvi model d and now this gives you the sound of the steinway model d grand piano
if you're looking for an authentic grand piano sound this one can deliver if you want a mini
midi keyboard that's going to last you for a long time because it's built very solid has excellent
features built in and is just an all-around great instrument to have in your studio then the arturia
minilab mk2 might be the one for you now if you're interested in learning more about ableton
live light and maybe want to get started using it click the video on the screen right now and if you
liked this video please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more videos like this
thank you so much for watching for Audio Tech TV i'm Zane keep creating and we'll talk soon