Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

Hi all, I'm looking to get a small, desktop midi controller for VST controlling and note input. While I am a pianist, I don't need a large amount of keys at all as this is solely for note entry and not performance. In fact, I'm looking for something quite small, that would fit in a foot and a half of length and probably less than 6 inches tall (i have a small empty pull-out slot on my computer desk that I would like to place it in). Basically, something with 37 keys or less I suppose. Features can be minimal as long as it gets the job done and won't fall apart. Knobs and sliders are cool, but not too important to me - I'm trying to keep the price low as I have other equipment to purchase as well. I looked into the Korg microKONTROL, which was very cool and small enough, but it's discontinued and the prices everywhere are far too high (over 500 everywhere I look). Between the 100-200 range is what I'm looking for.

Thanks in advance!

If you don't need much tactile feel you could go with a korg nanokey. I have it and a netbook running reason (which it does quite well) as my new mobile writing rig

If you need a bit more than that, m-audio has a whole slew of different midi keyboards with more or less knobs, weighted feel, etc. i have an oxygen49 for live use and while it's programming onboard sucks its easy with the computer program to do program all the knobs and faders.

Oxygen 8 v2. Right around $100 (give or take). Measurements; 16" x 10" x 2.5". Vince Clarke (Yazoo, Erasure) uses one with his MacBook pro. Good enough for Vince...good enough for the rest of us!

That Oxygen 8 is exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks! Heading to guitar center tomorrow.

You're welcome. Glad I could help out.

So, I actually ended up getting the M-audio Keyrig 25. It is slightly thinner (which is good because i'm limited on space) and 40 dollars cheaper. also came with Ableton Live lite, and a Keyrig virtual synth rack VST. pretty cool. Assignable midi learn knobs, several buttons, modulation/pitchbend/octave controllers and a slider. not bad for 80 bucks!

Excellent! Have fun!