KA Mini Percussions

What it does

A sampled collection of Chinese percussion, big drums, drum sides, gongs, cymbals and rattles, laid across the keyboard rather than onto pads. The control set is deliberately small: volume, a low and high tone tilt, and reverb. Rolls sustain for as long as a key is held, and a key map screen lists what sits on every note. It runs standalone or as an AUv3, and unlike Kong Audio’s other instruments it opens in keyboard view by default.

In the demo

Jade plays through the range note by note, then builds a track in AUM with four instances on separate MIDI channels, fed by Harmony Bloom and Octron and sent through different reverbs, using the sounds well outside a traditional Chinese context.

Worth knowing

There is almost nothing to tweak beyond tone and reverb, so shaping happens outside the app. Anyone wanting velocity layers or per-hit editing will want a full sampler instead.