General
The Akai Professional MPK Mini MK3 is an insanely compact little USB/MIDI keyboard that still somehow manages to offer everything you're going to need to start producing. This pocket-sized production tool will slot comfortably into your backpack with your laptop and is home to 25 mini-keys and a new and improved key-bed, eight endless rotary encoders, and eight pads. A mini-joystick has even been fitted so that you can tweak the pitch and modulation with nothing more than your left thumb, while a bank of controls can be used to adjust parameters like an octaver. You can even hook up a sustain pedal to this fully USB powered keyboard.
The Akai Professional MPK Mini MK3 and a Fistful of Software
These days, it's an unwritten rule that a tasty stack of software always has to come included with any MIDI keyboard. Akai have in no way skimped in this regard since they've thrown in a copy of MPC Beats: a DAW that uses a method not unfamiliar to current Akai fans. You also get MPC Beats Academy that teaches you how everything works, as well as a mass of samples from developers like F9, Decap, Sample Tools by CR2, and MSX Sound Design. On top of that, you get AIR Hybrid, Mini Grand, Velvet and a bunch of MPC Expansion Packs. Seriously? At this price?!
