Nektar Aura Beat Composer

AURA’s 16 RGB-illuminated pads are great for finger drumming and trigger at the lightest touch. Even better, everything is set up for you already when running AURA with Nektarine – including mapping for many VST®, VST3® and AU™ drum instruments.

The pads are also highly customizable: Tweak pad sensitivity to your needs and playing style by choosing one of 4 different velocity curves with adjustable bias parameter. Pad pressure is assignable to Aftertouch, Pitch Bend or other MIDI CCs. And you can not only set a dedicated MIDI channel for each pad, you can even route the MIDI In note to a different MIDI note (eg. when playing a multi-sound plugin, and wanting to browse the sounds in that patch from one pad).

AURA’s on-board Pad Repeat engine is directly accessible, offering a dedicated on/off button and settings menu. Use Repeat to create rolls or other percussive lines, that would be hard to play by hand. The repeat settings are highly customizable with realtime parameters for groove and speed control – all right under your fingertips on AURA’s 8 potentiometers.

Looking for some instant Trap-style hihat lines? The first 6 RGB LED buttons right above the display switch repeat rates in realtime. Create truly dynamic rolls by using pad pressure to control velocity while changing the repeat rates with the LED buttons. Other parameters include Repeat Rate, Gate, Accent Interval, Accent Velocity Offset, Swing, Trigger Mode and Clock Source.

The on-board hardware step sequencer is a great tool for creative beat composition. Press AURA’s ‘SEQ’ button and the 16 LED buttons below the pots become the much loved classic 16-step programming interface.

16 Collections of 16 patterns each provide plenty of room for your groove ideas. Each pattern (one per pad) has a total of up to 64 steps split across 4 parts.

AURA’s sequencer is all about interaction and performance: Parts may be triggered in any combination at any time, so you can create new variations very intuitively. Each pattern, and even each part in a pattern, can have a different length – massively simplifying the creation of poly-rhythms.

Reassigning patterns to new sounds is also easy: As there is one pattern per pad, it is just a matter of adding a slot in Nektarine with a new plugin – and the new sound is playing for that pad and pattern. You don’t even have to stop the sequencer to do this.

Realtime editing: Change the Play Rate, dial in a fixed Velocity and Accent Level Offset, set a Length for the events or add Swing for an extra-helping of groove. Many of these features go all the way down to step level. Last Step allows you to adjust the step length for each of a pattern’s parts independently.

Power user features: Dive as deep as you like – many parameters can be edited with up to step level precision. Simply select the pattern, part and steps you want and change the values for one or multiple selections at the same time. Group editing of Velocity, Play Rate or Gate Length across 4 parts or patterns in groups of 8 patterns at the same time is also possible. A great way to check and edit values across multiple steps without having to select them first.

Synchronization: Internal and external clock modes ensure perfect sync with the outside world. AURA and the sequencer may also be used stand-alone with external MIDI instruments connected directly to the MIDI Out jack.