Electronic musicians, here’s another new gadget you might just have to add to your arsenal of music-making toys. The Maschine Mikro is a moderately priced, but professional-grade music composition tool, designed for use in the studio or in live performances.
Based on Native Instruments’ Maschine groove composer, the Mikro is its new little brother. Running the same acclaimed sequencer, effect and sampler software as its older sibling, the Maschine Mikro lets you easily access the vast majority of the software’s capabilities using the hardware controller itself. It also includes a massive 6GB sample library for you to play with, and works with both Windows 7 and Mac OS X (10.6 or greater) computers.
The compact box offers 16 backlit performance pads, each sporting velocity and after-touch sensitivity, along with a variety of smaller buttons for controlling software functions remotely over a USB connection. Here’s a couple of videos showing off the Maschine Mikro in action.
The second clip is defnitely worth watching if for nothing more than watching the prowess of the fleet fingers of Jeremy Ellis.
The best thing about the Maschine Mikro is its price. While the original model sells for $669, the Mikro will sell for $399 (USD)/349 € just including both hardware and software. It’s expected to launch on October 1, and you can find more information and demo videos here.
