Pinnacle Trigger Finger
Contents
1. pads makes programming really should say performing drum and percussion parts fun No more hours slaving over a grid or typing in data Hit the record button and play It s a blast and it makes a real difference in the sound and feel of your MIDI drum and per cussion tracks Just avoid he urge to click the quantize button in your software Is It Cool Yes it s cool In fact at under 200 street price the Trigger Finger is an easy EQ Exceptional Quality award winner there isn t anything in its price range that comes close It s very easy to use has a free soft ware editor and includes a Lite version of Ableton s Live 4 Just plug it in and go was making tracks in Reason within seconds of connecting the USB cable The pads feel good they re dynamic in their response and the eight sliders and four faders are incredibly handy Basic pro gramming from the Trigger Finger itself is not a problem and for more in depth program ming Enigma takes you as far as you want to go About the only thing wish it had was a power switch I ve been waiting for someone to come out with something like the Trigger Finger for a while and at this price M Audio has made me and my drum and percussion parts very happy Trigger Finger is staying in my studio Strengths M 16 velocity and pressure sensitive pads E Can be powered from USB E Easy installation E Comprehensive MIDI support E Easy pad2. M AUDIO KEY RIG with modeled options several filter types envelopes for the fil ter and amp multiple modulation options and a surprisingly com plete collection of effects The SP 1 could have stopped at just playing back a nice piano but you can layer or split two pianos chosen from a bunch of presets And yes there are a bunch of effects too There s no sample playback module a la EXS24 but the GM mod ule includes a good General MIDI set and should cover your uh gen eral needs The organ holds its own against the world of Beethreewannabes with virtual drawbars and a decent rotary sim ulation All the instruments let you assign controllers to the vari ous parameters for realtime control with a simple learn option so you don t have to think about assignments too much either The GM module and organ don t have a bunch of effects but there is a master effects section with one effect chosen from a relatively extensive menu and each instrument has a send control for driving it A few other welcome touches include the ease of setting up splits you can set each instrument to its own keyrange pan gain trim level and MIDI channel l d give Key Rig very high marks for striking a near perfect balance of ease of use cost and editability It takes a bit of a hit on your CPU but hey it s four instruments and you might not need to load a bunch of other stuff anyway Yes it s a scratch pad but with fine vel
3. and controller programming E Free Enigma editor for Mac and PC Limitations E No power switch
4. are excellent if you re a drummer or are handy with sticks But I m not want something can bang on with my fingers 52 EQ JANUARY 2006 www eqmag com by Mitch Gallagher That s where the M Audio Trigger Finger comes in This affordable box has 16 veloc ity and pressure sensitive pads that you can use for playing sampled drums trig gering loops sending MIDI messages or doing whatever you want to use MIDI events to trigger or control As a bonus there are eight assignable control knobs and four assignable sliders for controller parameters mixer settings or anything else You can create 16 preset maps for accessing your drum layouts loops or control needs and quickly switch among them as you move from application to application It doesn t get much simpler than the Trigger Finger Install the driver on your Mac or PC then connect the Trigger Finger to your computer using the supplied USB cable Launch Reason Live or a host DAW running a plug in instrument such as Battery Kontakt or MachFive whatever you re using for your sounds and start smacking the pads cranking knobs and flick ing sliders Alternatively con nect Trigger Finger s MIDI out to your keyboard or sound module and start playing As the annoying TV ad guy says It s really that easy The Trigger Finger can draw power over the USB connection or you can use it with an optional 9 volt power supply The MIDI out can
5. either send MIDI messages generated inside the Trigger Finger to another MIDI device or it can serve as a MIDI output for a computer that s connected via USB turning the Trigger Finger into a 1 out MIDI interface Enigma Trigger Finger can send out a very wide variety of MIDI messages from notes to E MK 451c Defaults A G2 Defaults J zonic Detawlts a 0 33 Gatautts E K Seccipn Details Present 1 Gm Brum ER CM Ferus on E Bass men gread Velociny i GM Hybrid k E KE Hyb Kir r T Mie Dairbaka plains b Wahio Attach G Walder Attach Dobwgu ID Ablkion Lee impprit RZ 11 Ableton Live Seb LE Arkaos 13 Rebith Drum Prien Ld bebieth Sprit Panem LE kemot Reb um LB Unassigned ust for MIH eam Librarias Teigge i agate EAE as z DAE nae hy k a E Bn Aes Transpose Prena The free Enigma Editor Librarian allows complete access to every programmable control in the Trigger Finger control surface controllers to pitch bend to aftertouch The pads can all be on one MIDI channel or each can send on its own channel In short this thing has far more MIDI capability than you d think from looking at it in reality it has more MIDI capability than most if not all of us will ever use To harness all that power M Audio provides a free downloadable editor called Enigma which actually supports a variety of M Audio control devices With Enigma you can address every programmable parameter in
6. hers It also worked great for simply play ing sounds FM7 Pro 53 Korg s Wavestation plug in on and on anything that could be played by MIDI was cool with Trigger Finger PRODUCT SUMMARY Type Pad knob and sliderbased MIDI controller Price 249 95 Contact M Audio m audio com Connections USB out MIDI out 9 volt DC input USB Support Mac OS X 10 2 8 or higher Windows XP Compatibility MME DirectX Core MIDI Presets 16 Pre programmed maps Live Reason GM Drum XG Drum iDrum Assignable Controls Pads 16 velocity and pressure sensitive Sliders 4 Knobs 8 Dimensions 11 w x 10 d x 2 1 4 h Power USB or optional 9 volt DC adapter Software Bundle includes Drivers Ableton Live 4 Lite Enigma editor www eqmag com JANUARY 2006 EQ 53 54 EQ JANUARY 2006 www eqmag com for more than just percussion Bass lines were easy to do with Trigger Finger and the fact that the pads are both velocity and pres sure sensitive was nice You can assign any MIDI controller to be sent when you apply pressure to each pad so you can have a very broad range of expressive possibilities available to you this worked great with synths like Arturia s Minimoog V Of course you can also use the knobs and sliders to send MIDI controllers which is great But being able to dynamically apply pressure from the pads can really bring a performance to life Above all the Trigger Finger and its soft rub ber
7. lum paper along with a pen that doesn t run and offers a choice of inks Key Rig is an ideal stocking stuffer that offers exceptional value for money PS And if you still have some disposable income there s an equally cost effective Drum and Bass Rig with a step sequencer bassline synth drum module loop creator and electric bass guitar module Craig Anderton Audio Got an itchy trigger finger for great rhythm programming Of course you do EXCEPTIONAL QUALITA A Bar AWARE Programming drums can be a pain in the ass Plunking in little dots on a grid with a mouse is painfully tedious and often results in lame rigid rhythms which is fine if you re into that sort of thing But if you re after feel mousing in drum and percussion parts isn t going to cut it Yes you can use a MIDI keyboard to play in parts But the black and whites aren t exactly designed for the task It works but it s not natural especially for non keyboard players For great feeling drums and percussion my opinion says that pad controllers are the way to go High priced boxes like the MPC60 and its progeny do the job but they re well high priced And they do way more than just serve as pad con trollers That s wonderful if your MPC is the main instrument you build your tracks around But if you re like me and you just want some pads for playing in drum parts with some feel then an MPC is overkill MIDI drum pads
8. the Trigger Finger and build up a library of presets Enigma is compatible with both Mac and Windows Install it on your computer launch and it will automatically find Trigger Finger and be ready for action The user interface is sim ple click on the control you want to change and make whatever settings you need Or you can drag parameters to Trigger Finger pads and controls There are parameter lists included for a number of common instruments which makes it easy Select Gmedia s Oddity for example from the library and all the Oddity s controllable parameters are listed Just drag a parameter from the list to the pad knob or slider you want to use and you re done For quick changes especially of the notes assigned to the pads you can program Trigger Finger from the front panel just hold the Memory Recall and Prog Bank Change buttons to enter Edit mode Then to change the note assigned to a pad for example hit the desired pad then turn the first control knob The LCD readout will change to display the note assigned to the pad Easy But if you really want to use Trigger Finger to its fullest and you need to create highly customized pro grams Enigma is definitely the way to go Using It Trigger Finger is excellent for the obvious application playing drum sounds It worked great with Reason for playing ReDrum and other samples and for programming MIDI tracks in Digital Performer Pro Tools Logic Pro and ot
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