Hey guys, in this video we’re going to talk about the Akai MPK249.
This is a USB MIDI controller that you can use to control a lot of features in your digital
audio workstation.
In this video, we’ll go over what this controller is capable of, and how you can set it up and
use it.
I chose this controller because I found 49 keys to be a decently large range, but also
not too big that it’s taking up too much space, since I would like the keyboard to
fit on my desk with the rest of my equipment.
This controller also has all the features I need for it to be the only MIDI controller
I use from now on.
If you’re interested in getting an Akai MPK249, I’ll leave links in the video description
down below.
Let’s get started with the unboxing.
The MPK249 comes packaged securely with foam for protection, and we’ll also get a USB
cable to connect it to the computer, and a manual.
There is no included power connector, but the MPK249 can be powered over USB.
First impressions of the MPK249 are pretty decent.
It is entirely made out of plastic, but that’s to be expected for all the features it has
and the price.
The keys have a nice semi-weighted feel to them, and all the knobs, sliders, and wheels
are smooth and easy to operate.
To get the MPK249 working, just plug it into your computer over USB, and use the power
button on the back to power it on.
There’s no drivers necessary; it’s just plug and play.
The MPK249 does come with additional synthesizer plugins you can get from Akai’s website
when you register your device, but those will be covered in a future video.
The back of the MIDI controller also has a few other connections.
We can connect a sustain and expression pedal if we’ll be using those.
We can also connect regular MIDI cables if we’re using it with a MIDI device that supports
that.
Finally, we have the power input if we’re not using USB.
If we connect it to a digital audio workstation, like Reaper, and set it as an input on our
virtual instrument track, we can start making music and going over the various controls.
The main feature of this MIDI controller is the 49 semi-weighted keys, which gives us
4 octaves of range to input notes.
Right in the middle of the controller, we have up and down buttons that are used to
change the range of the keyboard by one octave at a time.
That way we can increase our range.
Obviously, we won’t be able to expand the range above 4 octaves at once, but we will
be able to play higher or lower notes than the default.
We can also hold down these two keys and press the keys on the keyboard to transpose by an
amount between octaves, so if there’s something we want to play in a different key that’s
easier to play in C, we can do that.
The one thing to keep in mind is this is a MIDI controller that’s best to use with
computer software, and it’s not really meant for live performances.
What that means is that if we have to, we can do separate MIDI recordings if we need
lower or higher notes, or we can add the odd high or low note in on our piano roll later.
On the far left, we have the pitch wheel.
This sends a continuous controller message to our software to bend the pitch of the note
we’re playing.
A lot of times, it will bend up or down by two semitones, but some synthesizers allow
you to change the response.
The modulation wheel is to the right.
Some synthesizers have a modulation control that allows you to change the sound on the
fly, and record those changes as a MIDI signal from this control input.
The DAW controls act like the arrow keys on the keyboard, and the enter key.
This lets us control some buttons, such as popups, without having to grab the keyboard
or mouse.
You can’t do everything with it, but a good example of it being useful is when recording
with Reaper.
After making a recording, you get options to save or discard a recording.
You can use the arrows and the enter key here to make a selection.
The tap tempo can be pressed to tap out the tempo we want the MIDI controller to lock
to.
We use this when we’re doing a note repeat, or for an arpeggiator.
The tempo can also be set to be controlled by our DAW, and that’s better for recording
modes, but we’ll cover that later in the video when we change Global settings.
Note repeat is used to repeat a note we hold down on the drum pad, such as repeating a
hi hat note every 8th or 16th note.
This is helpful when we can’t hit the note fast enough, or it’s interfering with our
ability to play other notes.
This is set to either latch or momentary mode, and we’ll switch between them in the settings
later.
Latch leaves note repeat on by pressing the button, and in momentary mode, we have to
be holding the note repeat and the pad down at the same time.
The arpeggiator is used to arpeggiate notes we hold down in a chord.
The pattern and timing of the arpeggiator will be adjusted in the settings later, but
it basically just repeats and cycles through notes really quickly, potentially faster and
more accurately than we could do manually.
This is great for electronic music when we need a more interesting chord sound that just
all the notes at once, and I use it a lot when I’m making music.
The arpeggiator also has a latch mode that will keep it playing once we hit a chord,
until we hit other notes.
In addition to the keyboard tools, the MPK249 is great for percussion with drum plugins.
It has 16 programmable drum pads with velocity sensitivity and aftertouch, and there are
4 banks to switch between, giving us control of 64 MIDI input notes, or allowing us to
change the position of each note.
The full level button to the left turns on full level mode, which basically makes every
pad output at the maximum velocity of 127.
This is good for when you want all the sounds produced to be exactly the same, and there
definitely are situations where you would want to use that.
16 level works a little different.
It sets every pad to the same note, which is the last pressed note.
Then it sets each pad to a different velocity.
The middle of the controller has the tools to adjust the mode between preset, edit, global
and program change.
The screen at the top lets us adjust the options.
We scroll through the options with the arrow keys to the right of the screen, and make
changes with the scroll wheel to the right.
We can save these changes by pressing the enter button, which is done by pressing down
on the scroll knob.
One thing I really like about this controller is the transport options.
This gives us tools to rewind, fastforward, play, stop, record, and turn on looping.
All these tools are accessible from a regular keyboard and mouse, but having them on the
MIDI controller makes it easier, especially if the MIDI controller takes up most of the
desk.
Another button we have here is the preview button.
The preview button allows us to change settings, for example, the faders or the switches to
the right, without sending a signal to our software.
That way if it’s different from where we left it last, we can change it back without
changing the control input.
This can also tell us what continuous controller number we are working with.
The right site of the MPK249 is the control bank.
The top has 8 knobs for controlling settings like knobs in a plugin, or panning.
Below we have faders, which are often used for volume level.
At the bottom there are switches.
These buttons also act as continuous controllers, and you can program your software to use them
for different purposes, such as arming a track for recording, muting, and soloing.
The last thing is, these can also be used to change the time division for the note repeat
and arpeggiator by pressing the time division button.
Let’s talk about how we can create new presets with the MPK249.
First, we need to save our preset to a new slot.
There are 30 slots by default, and we can overwrite some of them.
Don’t worry about this too much, since there is a way to reset everything to factory defaults
if it gets messed up.
First make sure we’re in preset mode by pressing the PRESET button for the modes in
the middle.
It will be lit up when in that mode.
We’ll choose a preset, and start with “25 Generic”.
Scroll to that preset and press the scroll knob to select it.
Then we’ll start by saving it to a new slot.
To enter save mode, press the right button below the scroll wheel.
We’ll see “Save To” is flashing.
Use the scroll wheel to change what slot it’s saved to.
I’m changing it to slot 1 so it’s the default when we start up the MIDI controller.
Just scroll to that slot with the knob.
Now we’ll rename it.
I’ll mostly use this controller with Reaper, and I want a setup for that, so I’ll rename
it to Reaper.
To start renaming, press the down button.
Now we can use the left and right arrows to select the active letter.
We’ll use the scroll wheel to select the character for each active letter.
We’ll find our blank space all the way to the left, followed by numbers, capitalized
letters and small letters.
When we’re done renaming, we’ll press the knob to save everything.
With our preset saved, we can work on editing it some more, so customize it to our needs.
To edit, we just need to enter EDIT mode.
The EDIT button is found just to the right of the preset mode button.
When we’re in EDIT mode, we can press any button, pad, key, fader, or knob on the controller
and it will become active.
This means that now we can use the controls on the screen to change the data that the
control is sending.
Starting on the far left, we have our pitch wheel.
All we have here, it’s that it’s sent over the Common MIDI channel instead of an
individual channel.
The MIDI to DIN being off tells us it’s not being sent out over our traditional MIDI
cables, and that it’s only going over USB.
Next we have the modulation wheel.
Once again, it’s set to MIDI common.
This time we have the type of control, and it’s set as a continuous controller.
Continuous controllers allow us to make changes to controls in our DAW, whereas a note is
used to input MIDI notes.
At the bottom we have the continuous control number, which is basically a mapping number
for MIDI that this continuous controller is sent to.
We can see it’s set to CC 1, which is the MIDI standard number for a modulation wheel.
There are others that have these standards as well, such as volume, pan, expression,
and sustain.
At the bottom we have our Min and Max.
MIDI controls are sent our as a signal from 0 to 127, and this is showing that it’s
sending out the full range.
At the top we can see we have a Page 1 indicator, telling us there’s more options on the next
page.
We’ll see this will other controls as we go along.
To change pages, use the left and right arrows.
The arrows we used earlier to control the MPK249, not the DAW control arrows.
On the second page, we must have the option to send it over the MIDI cables.
The next set of options are for the DAW controls.
These are set to keyboard inputs, and we can choose what keyboard inputs they are if we
need to remap them, such as to a tab key.
The default is the arrow keys and the middle being the enter button, which I find works
well so I’m keeping it like that, but you can change it just like the others if you
need to.
Next is the tap tempo button.
This allows us to manually set the tempo, time division, gate, and swing.
We’ll talk more about the tempo later when we work with the global settings.
With note repeat, we get the same time division, gate, and swing controls.
We also get the option to change between momentary and toggle.
In momentary mode, the note repeat is enabled when we’re holding down the note repeat
button and the pad on the controller.
In toggle mode, pressing the note repeat button turns it on and off.
For the arpeggiator, we can change the pattern of the notes it will use, the octave range,
gate and the swing.
On the next page, we can control the timing pattern for the arpeggiator.
First we can choose to have the pattern on, then below we choose the pattern length that
it will repeat.
At the bottom, we use the arrows to scroll back and forth through the time values and
set it to a note or a rest.
The star indicates a note, and the underscore indicates a rest, so we don’t need to have
constant notes from the arpeggiator, we have a lot of control over the pattern.
Now we’ll get into working with the pads.
The pads are all set as notes, to USB channel 10, which is the standard for percussion.
Below we can change the note, and whether or not we have aftertouch on.
Aftertouch is a control we get with pads.
It’s a pressure measurement that is sent with the MIDI after the initial note press.
We can use this with some digital audio workstations to map it to a certain control to change it
as we vary the pressure.
The second page gives us the option to send it over our MIDI cables and adjust the pad
color.
Both the on and off colors for each pad can be changed.
The Akai MPK249 has 16 drum pads, but we can switch between 4 banks of pads.
Each pad from each bank has separate controls that can be changed.
In some cases, I like to set each bank to one of my most used VST instruments, based
on its MIDI mapping.
This allows you to rearrange the notes on the pads so that you’re hitting a certain
part of the drum kit on each pad, even when different plugins can have a different mapping.
Of course, there are some plugins as well that allow you to remap what MIDI inputs they
respond to for each part of the kit, but not all of them do this.
Next up are the transport buttons.
This includes the loop, backwards, forwards, stop, play, and record buttons.
They’re all set to MMC/MIDI which is a Midi Machine Control message.
This just basically means that it controls core functions of our software, whereas notes
as notes to a piano roll, and continuous controllers affect mixer and plugin controls.
These are used to control essential functions like playback and recording.
That doesn’t mean they’ll be ready to go just like this though.
In some software, you’ll have to go to your key shortcuts and tell it to respond to this
signal.
On the far right, we have our knobs, faders, and switches.
All of these are set as continuous controllers and the options are pretty standard for those
as well.
The keyboard at the bottom is on the common channel, and it doesn’t really have much
for us to change, except that we can transpose notes and change the aftertouch.
Setting up the MPK249 can change depending on your digital audio workstation, but we
can’t cover how to set it up in every program available.
We’ll do this for some of our favorite digital audio workstations on this channel in future
videos.
The global controls give us options for the entire MIDI controller instead of just the
individual presets.
First we set our common channel, which is 1 by default.
Use the arrows to switch between pages.
The note display can be set to its numerical value for the MIDI event, or to the note value.
I prefer to leave it as note.
Next are the keyboard curve controls.
A high number makes it easy to reach the highest velocity and a low number makes it harder.
This can be used if you find you’re constantly maxing out your velocity and want to change
that so that only really hard presses max the velocity.
Gain and Black/White change the key sensitivities.
The next screen is for the overall pad sensitivities.
So if you play light, make them more sensitive so notes aren’t missed, but also you can
make them less sensitive so you don’t max them out if you play hard.
The tempo screen gives us more controls for tempo and the number of taps it takes the
average from.
I also like to turn off the Tempo LED, since the flashing light can be annoying.
The clock screen is something I wanted to talk about earlier when we were setting the
preset tempo.
Here, we can set it to an internal or external tempo.
If you’re just playing with the controller, internal is fine.
External is used when you need it to lock to the tempo in your project, and this is
what I use most of the time.
That allows it to sync with programs like Reaper, if we have that feature turned on
to send the clock to our MIDI device, so that the note repeat and arpeggiator lock to the
project tempo instead of being offset or out of time.
SysEx is for program changes but we won’t be covering that in this video.
Utilities can change the display contrast.
Save Globals is used to save our global settings after we’ve changed them.
The last page just shows our MIDI controllers version.
So before we finish off this video, I just want to talk about why it’s important to
have a MIDI controller for working with electronic music.
These controllers allow you to work a lot more efficiently with MIDI, instead of programming
drums and melodies in the keyboard.
Even if you’re not good at playing keyboard, you can press the notes a lot quicker and
get a rough idea of the timing and note relationships this way, then go back and edit them in the
piano roll after.
When looking for a MIDI controller, there’s a few reasons I picked this one over a few
others.
First, I found the keyboard range of 4 octaves to be long enough for most purposes, but not
so large that the controller takes up too much space.
I also wanted a controller with sensitive drum pads built in, so I could work with percussion,
without needing a separate MIDI controller like I had before.
Finally, the transport controls and continuous controllers will allow me to show you how
to use automation and continuous controller inputs with a lot of different digital audio
workstations in future videos.
Thanks for checking out this video on the Akai MPK249.
If this video helped you out and you’re interested in getting one for yourself, check
out the link in the video description down below.
You can also give the video a like, subscribe to the channel, and press the bell icon to
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