Korg MPS-10

Korg’s MPS‑10 is a compact percussion instrument with hidden depths.

Korg may not be the first name that springs to mind when it comes to electronic drums and percussion, but they actually have a great history of creating innovative and interesting percussion instruments, such as the classic DDD‑1 from the 1980s, the Electribe R Analogue Modelling Rhythm Synthesizer and, of course, the iconic Wavedrum.

It’s not exactly a prolific output, but Korg have often been thought‑provoking and challenging of the status quo, and their entry into the sampling multi‑pad market, the MPS‑10, is no exception. Boasting an impressive 32GB of RAM, 2350 assignable instruments and more than 3000 high‑quality samples, the MPS‑10 also features ground‑breaking Continuous Controller Pads that give you real‑time control over internal effects, depending on where the pads are struck. A powerful four‑track looper also adds to a package that is an intriguing and slightly different proposition from the usual suspects.

If Looks Could Kill

At first glance, the MPS‑10 has a familiar look, with its six square pads and a further four ‘shoulder’ pads placed across the top of the unit. A rubber covering extends across the whole of the top surface of the unit, almost as if each of the individual pads have been carved out of it. The covering wraps around the edges of the unit, giving it a rugged feel and creating the impression that you could safely hit the MPS‑10 anywhere without damaging it — although, ironically, Korg have chosen to locate the control panel and screen between two of the pads. While hardly radical, this placement does set the MPS‑10 apart and reduces the overall footprint of the unit but, depending on how many times you end up hitting the screen while playing, it could either be a stroke of genius or a design disaster. Only time will tell...

In a nod to the new Roland SPD‑SX Pro and the Alesis Strike MultiPad, coloured LEDs sit below each of the pads, but there is no option for setting your own colour configuration. Three preset colours are offered, depending on the sound type that’s assigned to the pad: red for a one‑shot sound, blue for a repeating sound or loop, and green if no sound is assigned to the pad.

Boasting an impressive 32GB of RAM, 2350 assignable instruments and more than 3000 high‑quality samples, the MPS‑10 also features ground‑breaking Continuous Controller Pads that give you real‑time control over internal effects, depending on where the pads are struck.

As I mentioned above, the control panel sits neatly between pads one and two, and stretches the width of the two pads above it, making it smaller in terms of real estate than its competitors. This results in a slightly smaller colour LCD display than I would have hoped for.

To the left of this LCD are Main Volume and Phones Volume controls, along with a knob to alter metronome tempo, which incorporates push‑button on/off functionality and two small LEDS either side, as visual tempo indicators. To the right is a large data‑entry knob, alongside dedicated Edit, Write and Exit buttons.

Two large +/‑ buttons are provided to advance through the kit presets (pressing the data‑entry knob also ‘engages’ it as an alternative way to quickly scroll kits), and an equally large Sound Off button offers an immediate way to silence the unit. This can come in very handy when using loops and long samples.

Dedicated buttons that take you directly to the Kit, Instrument, Sample and Utility screens are located beneath the LCD, along with a second row of buttons that control the looper functions: Looper FX, Record and Erase. The SW Mode button switches the functionality of the four large Track buttons between controlling the looper tracks and enabling the CC Pads. All the buttons are clearly backlit, making it very easy to read their labels on a dark stage. However, none of the knobs offer the same visual assistance.

At the rear of the unit are a single quarter‑inch stereo headphone socket, a left and right Main output, and an additional stereo Sub output pair, both on quarter‑inch mono jacks. A stereo quarter‑inch line input and mono quarter‑inch mic input are provided to connect external signals, which can be processed by the MPS‑10’s effects engine or used as a source for the sampler and looper. The mic input features a preamp and can be configured as a balanced or unbalanced connection, but it is worth noting that you can’t use the line and mic inputs simultaneously.

Round the back we find a host of quarter‑inch jack sockets for headphones, main and sub audio outputs, line and mic input, trigger inputs and footswitch and expression inputs. There’s also a MIDI out port and USB ports for an external drive and connection to a computer.

Two ‘dual’ triggers are provided on stereo quarter‑inch jacks, so four individual trigger inputs can be achieved using Y‑splitter cables. While you could use two dual‑zone pads with these inputs, there’s no option to select combination ‘Head & Rim’ triggers within the MPS‑10, so you’d have to assign samples to both head and rim individually if you were using this type of trigger.

Alongside the triggers are two footswitch inputs, which can be used to control various functions of the MPS‑10, such as kit advance and looper start/stop, and an expression pedal input that can be assigned to looper volume, filter cutoff, reverb mix, pad decay and pad pitch. I had hoped that the expression pedal would allow for open and closed hi‑hat control, but it appears that this is not possible.

Two USB ports are provided: one for connection to a USB flash drive for backing up data or importing samples, and a second that allows both MIDI and audio information to be sent to and from a connected computer. Four channels of audio can be sent from the MPS‑10, that correspond to the physical main outputs (1+2) and sub outs (3+4).

A little surprisingly, the MPS‑10 only has a MIDI Out socket and no MIDI In. While many people these days will use USB MIDI communication, in my own hybrid drum setup I send MIDI Program Changes and MIDI Clock to my SPD‑SX Pro via a good old‑fashioned 5-pin MIDI cable, something I couldn’t do with the MPS‑10.

Play For Today

The MPS‑10 includes 100 preset kits and a further 100 user locations to store your own creations. The presets cover a very wide range of genres and styles, combining one‑shot drum samples, loops, tuned percussion and sound effects that demonstrate the MPS‑10 very well.

The Funk Kit is a great example of a regular acoustic kit, and many of the instruments in this preset utilise both round‑robin samples and velocity switching to great effect, giving the kit a natural and realistic sound. As you play the 14 x 5‑inch steel snare harder, it opens up with a wonderful metallic rim shot. One particularly nice touch is that Korg have added a bass drum sample to some of the cymbal and hi‑hat instruments, which is triggered at a specific velocity. You can easily play a bass drum with a crash or, with careful dynamics, add a kick‑drum pattern to a hi‑hat part using a single pad.

As you might expect, electronic styles are well catered for with a host of hip‑hop, trap, dubstep and techno kits, many of them featuring percussion loops and musical phrases alongside 808‑style kicks and EDM snares. Percussion presets span everything from traditional cajons, bongos and congas through to more exotic Middle Eastern and melodic instruments and, again, use round‑robin and velocity‑switching samples that enhance realism.

...the MPS‑10 employs SST (Smooth Sound Transition), which allows instruments, loops and effects to continue playing when you switch to a new preset.

As you switch between kits, the MPS‑10 employs SST (Smooth Sound Transition), which allows instruments, loops and effects to continue playing when you switch to a new preset. This enables seamless transitions and allows you to access different kits while loops, samples and effect tails continue to play in the background.

The only small criticism I have from a playing point of view would be the sensitivity of the pads. Even with sensitivity set at maximum, some lighter hits weren’t picked up. In general, percussion pads don’t deliver the same subtlety that's offered by mesh pads on an electronic drum kit, so you won’t be doing any snare buzz rolls, but even so, compared to other percussion pads I’ve used, the MPS‑10 doesn’t offer quite the same lightness of touch. In fairness, I am looking at it from a subtle drumming point of view, and in most real‑world playing situations I doubt it would be a major issue.

Shoulder Pads (In 2024)?

One of the features that sets the MPS‑10 apart from its contemporaries is the unique functionality of the four shoulder pads (or CC Pads, as Korg call them). In addition to working as regular triggers, Korg have enabled each of these pads, either individually or in combination, to control transposition, note delay, multi‑effects and filtering, depending on where you strike the pad. This feature has been put to great use on many of the preset kits, and exploring one of them offers probably the best way to discover its potential.

In addition to displaying the kit name and number, the four rectangles across the top of the LCD screen represent the CC Pads and offer useful visual feedback by showing where each pad is struck.Any kit that utilises the CC Pads displays a line of four rectangles (representing the CC Pads) at the top of the LCD screen. In the case of preset 10 (CC PAD:FILTER kit), each pad plays a tambourine sound when struck, but the fun begins as you work your way from left to right across the CC Pads. This action progressively imposes a low‑pass filter across the whole output. Each CC Pad has 32 possible locations along its length (a total of 128 across all four pads) where it can be struck. As you hit each pad, the location of the strike is shown in the four rectangles at the top of the LCD and also transmitted as a MIDI CC4 message. Think of it as the percussive equivalent of turning a value knob or fader on a synth.

You can set a number of different filter types (low‑pass, band‑pass, high‑pass), along with cutoff and resonance, and also change the way in which the pads respond by selecting one of nine different preset patterns.

Preset 72, Reggae Loop, makes use of the CC Pads to control the MPS‑10’s internal multi‑effects, by increasing delay feedback as you move from left to right across the four pads, but you can assign any of the internal effects and control any available parameter, such as the speed and depth of a chorus, the gain of a distortion or the reverb time of a classic plate.

Another neat trick the CC Pads have up their sleeve is the ability to apply transposition to other pads. This is most effective when using tuned percussion such as marimbas, or pitched samples such as bass notes or keyboard stabs.

Another neat trick the CC Pads have up their sleeve is the ability to apply transposition to other pads. This is most effective when using tuned percussion such as marimbas, or pitched samples such as bass notes or keyboard stabs. Preset 85, Poly Pipe, puts this facility to good use. The preset itself features pitched samples of plastic pipes being struck (in the style of the Blue Man Group), spread across eight of the pads. The two centre CC Pads, when struck, will either raise or lower the pitch of all the pads by a tone, thus doubling the number of available pitches. A transposition value from ‑24 to +12 (in semitone steps) can be assigned to each of the four CC Pads and this in turn can be applied to any of the 10 main pads. So, as an example, hitting CC Pad 1 could lower the pitch by three semitones of any instruments assigned to say, pads 3, 4 and 5, and hitting CC Pad 2 could raise the pitch by 12 semitones of instruments assigned to pads 3, 6 and 9 — and so on. It’s a great feature that really expands the flexibility of pitched instrument samples.

The way the CC Pads respond can be dictated by assigning one of nine preset patterns. The corners of the triangles represent the minimum parameter level, the long sides of the triangles represent the maximum level and pads represented by a grey line revert the parameters to their default value. Pattern 1 will increase the assigned parameter value as you play from left to right across the CC Pads, and Pattern 3 will decrease the parameter value as you move toward the centre of the four pads and is ideal for playing with two sticks simultaneously.The final, and simplest, CC Pad function is Note — or, more accurately, Note Delay. This allows you to apply a repeating pattern to any instrument assigned to the four CC Pads. The repeat can be set to eighth, 16th, 32nd or 64th note resolution, may be up to four bars in length and follows one of four simple rhythmic patterns. Typically, you could use this to create dance‑style snare rolls of increasing speed across the four CC Pads.

You could potentially use all four functions (Transpose, Note Delay, MFX and Filter) simultaneously. To make this easier to manage, when the SW Mode button is pressed to display CC Pad mode, the four large track buttons become on/off switches, so you can quickly enable or disable each CC Pad function individually.

I’m really only scratching the surface of what it’s possible to achieve using the CC Pads in various combinations, and this feature adds a huge amount of fun, creativity and uniqueness to the Korg MPS‑10.

Digging In

The MPS‑10 offers a comprehensive range of editing options. Pressing the Edit button selects the Kit and Pad edit pages, where you can adjust overall kit settings including level, footswitch control and CC Pad assignment. You can also select which effects are assigned to the kit: Master FX, which includes everything from overdrive and chorus through to ring modulation and BPM delays; a separate reverb that has halls, plates and early reflections settings; low‑pass and high‑pass filters that can be applied to the overall output; and two Insert FX that can be assigned to each pad individually.

The Tempo knob doubles as a ‘page select’ button, and turning it switches from Kit Edit to Pad Edit, where you can select which instrument is assigned to each pad. The 2350 onboard instruments are sorted into individual Drum, Percussion, SFX and Loop categories, to make selection easier, and they sit alongside user folders for your own creations. You can also adjust individual instrument levels, pan, pitch and which of the two Insert FX are assigned to a specific pad.

The final parameter here is Pad Mode, which has five settings: Normal, Exclusive, Series, Random and Latest. Groups of pads can be configured to play exclusively (as one pad is struck, other pads are muted) or concurrently. For example, striking pad 1 repeatedly can play the instruments assigned to pads 3, 4, 7 and 9, either in order or randomly. This is similar to the sequence option on the new SPD‑SX Pro and is a great way to play complex patterns by only striking a single pad.

The sounds assigned to each pad are referred to as instruments, and in‑depth editing is available via the Inst button. MPS‑10 instruments have quite a complex structure. Each instrument can have up to two oscillators, which can play simultaneously. Each oscillator can have up to eight blocks, each of which contains a sample, adding up to, potentially, 16 samples per instrument.

Each sample can be configured in up to eight velocity layers or eight round‑robin samples, so you could, for example, have four velocity layers, each with two round‑robin samples, on both oscillators. As you can probably gather from just the explanation, it’s quite an involved process, and I found some of the terminology Korg have chosen to use, such as oscillators and blocks, a little confusing, giving more of a feel of synthesizer programming than other sample pads and percussion instruments I’ve used.

Although I didn’t find the process particularly user‑friendly, the complexity on offer does ultimately allow for the creation of very realistic‑sounding and articulate instruments, and once you’ve got to grips with the concepts it starts to make sense.

The sounds assigned to each pad are referred to as instruments. Although complex, the instrument architecture, which comprises two oscillators and up to 16 individual samples, does allow for the creation of very realistic‑sounding and articulate instruments.

How Well Does It Sample?

A major feature of a ‘Drum, Percussion & Sampler Pad’ is, of course, the ability to sample, and the MPS‑10 doesn’t disappoint on that score. It can sample internally generated sounds or audio via the line, mic or USB inputs, and the 32GB of onboard storage offers plenty of space for samples, which are all recorded as 16‑bit/44.1kHz WAV files, with a maximum record length of 60 minutes.

Pressing the Sample button presents two options: Recorder and Sample. Recorder, as you might expect, is the option you select to record a sample, while Sample, perhaps less obviously, takes you to the waveform display and editing tools.

The Recorder page offers three options:

• Change Sample in Inst: record a sample that replaces one in an existing instrument.
• New Sample & Inst: record a brand‑new sample and create a new instrument.
• Only new Sample: simply record and save a basic sample.

If you’re creating a new sample and instrument, the next step is to set a name for the instrument, and once you’ve done this you can finally get down to recording the audio! The whole process struck me as a little over‑complicated but, again, familiarity and regular use might change my opinion.

The recorder can be set to automatically start when it detects audio above a set threshold, and can also auto stop after a set number of beats. I was able to record by playing the pads or routing audio via the mic, line and USB inputs. Unusually (to me, at least), you can set a tempo and click that plays while you’re recording, which is a nice feature and useful to play against when creating loops.

Once recording is completed, the Sample screen automatically appears, displaying the audio waveform, and the four large track buttons can now be used as transport controls to stop, play, fast‑forward and rewind. Start and end points can be created, using the data‑entry knob, and vertical and horizontal zoom allows you to edit with accuracy. You can also normalise and truncate the recorded sample, as well as adjusting pitch and time‑stretch. Each function offers a preview option before you Execute.

It’s also possible to import samples via USB, although you will need to save them to the MPS‑10 before you can edit them in the sample editor. Both WAV and AIF file formats are supported, at 44.1 or 48 kHz and in 16‑bit resolution.

The MPS‑10 is both powerful and fun to play. The instruments and samples sound fantastic.

Hit The Spot?

The MPS‑10 is both powerful and fun to play. The instruments and samples sound fantastic, and are put to excellent use in the preset kits, which are all very usable in real‑world playing situations. The CC Pads can add a real twist to a live performance and the looper is both flexible and easy to use. I particularly liked being able to use the CC Pad effects on external audio sources and incorporate live audio into loops.

On the negative side, I found the MPS‑10’s LCD screen a little small compared to those of its competitors, and the information it offered felt limited. Both the Alesis Strike MultiPad and the Roland SPD‑SX Pro offer an overview of the pad layout and sound assignment, which I find very useful and which the MPS‑10 doesn’t have. I also found it odd that the LEDs beneath each pad could only display three colours preset to specific pad functions. The MPS‑10 offers so much functionality that a larger and more informative LCD, along with user‑definable pad LED colours, would be a huge benefit, as would a MIDI input.

The MPS‑10’s Instrument editing is very powerful, and I’m not aware of other sample pads that include round robins (which enables dynamic, natural sounds), but the process didn’t feel particularly intuitive. The same could be said for the sampling options, which, again, are very powerful but felt a little over‑complicated to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the manual particularly helpful, as it seems to feature lots of descriptions of functions but not quite enough detail on exactly how to use them.

That said, the MPS‑10 is still a great performance tool that offers a different slant on the usual ‘percussion pad’ routine. It isn’t cheap, but it has a lot of power and potential under the hood if you’re prepared to invest the time in getting familiar with the editing and sampling processes. Oh, and I didn’t hit the screen while playing, so... stroke of genius!