My Keystep pro is great for jamming on melodic sequence ideas and using as a sketchpad
But I feel there’s a few parts that would aid in my goal of an intuitive improvisational synth workstation setup / live performance tool
- It would be excellent if there were external control messages that could change different tracks to different patterns.
Either, a control channel of a users choice that accepts simpler midi controls like notes or CC values to switch Track 1 to pattern 4 or all Tracks to pattern 10 for a drop/chorus/breakdown or other dramatic change in a song.
Even if it was sysex commands, and not simple midi commands, I could find ways to translate that. But it would be excellent to have options somehow.
Just basic things like - sequence numbers, sequence up, sequence down, sequence mute, drum mutes, perhaps shift or some of the shift functions you think might be useful. Eg. I imagine a user mapping a pad controller like a Launchpad pro to trigger different patterns on the keystep… wouldn’t that be cool?
Or a midi footpedal to advance all patterns to the next one…
- It would be excellent if there were a message sent out when you switch active parts on the keyboard.
eg. I often drive 3 sequences to my multi-timbral virus TI, it would be amazing if when I switched between Tracks 1,2,3 on the keystep, it could switch between active parts 1,2,3 on the virus - it gets quite tedious and easy to make mistakes when I record a sequence and want to tweak knobs on my synth, and I’m turning knobs on the wrong part…
If there was a message sent out when I switched parts, I could convert that to the required sysex message for switching active parts on that synth.
Even better would be the option to send a custom system command on part change… but I could make do using bomes midi translator, maxforlive or an equivalent if I have to.
Maybe that’s best demonstrated in a video.
But I’m seriously considering wiring up some kind of other buttons to the track select buttons on my unit, that can send out some kind of midi command for this task, but this feels rather extreme.
- In addition to having your choice of midi channel per track per song.
I’d love the ability to assign a track’s output to midi output 1, midi output 2, USB or all 3 at once (for convenient layering options)
eg. I’d love to dedicate one output just to my multi-timbral synth and have
the other output for mono-timbral synths… Maybe the USB could be dedicated to software synths?
Instead I’m having to deactivate midi channels, route more stuff through software or really over think things. It also means I have different requirements when producing at my PC, where I want access to all layers of all synths. It would be great to have things set up in a way that’s useful for both computer based sequencing as well as more hands on jamming and experimenting.
I feel midi routing could be simplified in many peoples setups if we could assign tracks to individual outputs, and I don’t feel that would take that much code or system resources to achieve that. Does that sound plausible? What do you think?
- CC & notes passthrough - I’ve noticed an issue where the KSP does not give the user control over what messages are passed from it’s midi input to it’s midi output.
Notes are automatically passed, as are the 5 (in total over all tracks) predefined CC’s that are available for sequencing.
This causes problems even in modest setups.
eg. I have an analog mono synth
it has a built in keyboard
I can feed notes from that keyboard, into the input of the ksp and I can record sequences from it, even when the KSP has a different track active - This is awesome!
It can feel great to record a riff on this synth, sequence it with the KSP and control the knobs on that synth once the notes are down. It’s intuitive, it’s fun, it visually makes sense for anyone watching.
however, if I’m sending the notes back to this synth, I get note duplication and this can cause notes to glitch out sometimes, you get stuck notes or notes cut off early and other weird behaviours… When this happens, it sounds bad and it feels annoying. If I turn “local control off” on that synth, the notes can be passed back to it, but the knob CC’s aren’t (or only up to 5 pre-assigned knobs can be)
The ability to either disable the notes passthrough for a track
or enable all CC’s to pass through (regardless if they’re a sequenced CC)
Would make this all work so much better - no complex midi filtering with outside computer software or programmable midi hardware, just plug in the synth and start having fun with it… which is really what this whole thing is about (isn’t it?)
A few options internally would simplify things a great deal!
eg. I know there’s some people that would love to output melodic information out of midi port 1, and leave midi port 2 purely for midi clock syncronising other drum machines and sequencer gear. For them, stray notes and CC data going down their midi path to their other gear can cause nothing but confusion.
Anyways, here’s just a few main things for me that I think would really expand the scope of this machine and take away some awkward parts
I may have posted some of these ideas on the old forum a while back, but diving into this again recently, and encountering these same friction points…
Keen to hear what others think,
Do you think such features could be possible in a future update?