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malletKAT Quick Start Guide
WELCOME to the malletKAT Quick–Start Guide!
Congratulations! You have purchased the world’s most powerful MIDI mallet percussion
Controller. This guide is designed to get you started as quickly as possible. We are leaving
most of the technical programming material out of this guide. There’s the full manual for
that. We don’t want to scare you, but want you to start having FUN right away. So please,
sit back and take a few moments to read this info so that your experience will become
more meaningful. First impressions are the most powerful and we want you to start on the
right foot.
We have also included a VIDEO HELP DESK in this guide. These are a series of short video
clips that cover the basics on the malletKAT. For those of you just getting started, watch the
“Connections” Video and the “malletKAT for Drummies” videos as well.
WHAT IS THE malletKAT? WHAT IS A MIDI CONTROLLER?
When you look at the malletKAT, it becomes obvious that the pads closely resemble a
standard mallet percussion layout. Yes, the pads are made out of neoprene, and it feels a
little different than a marimba or vibraphone and yes, the bars are all symmetric, BUT after
just a few minutes of playing on it, you will discover that playing is easy and natural. As a
mallet percussionist, you often jump from bells, to xylophone etc. When you think about it,
each one of them has different size bars, different ranges and feels. Think of the malletKAT
as another mallet instrument with its own distinct characteristics.
We didn’t just make the malletKAT so that you could emulate a vibraphone or marimba. No,
the malletKAT was designed to offer you a whole new vocabulary of expression that is just
not possible on an acoustic mallet instrument. Let me give you some examples.
SOUNDS
Now you can sound like any instrument, thanks to MIDI. The malletKAT KS has a built in
sound card powered by Kurzweil, with over 1000 instruments like pianos, basses, guitars,
strings, drums and percussion and more. You can use headphones to practice or you can
plug the malletKAT right into an amplifier so that the world can hear you.
Because it is a mallet controller, there are over 15 vibraphone and 15 marimba sounds. The
Kurweil DM sound card has 256 drum and percussion setups. If you own a malletKAT with
out sounds, the built in factory kits are designed for any General MIDI (GM) sound module.
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