Good morning everyone,
I’m using ChatGPT to help fix my terrible “Italo-English.” I recently bought a Arturia KeyStep MKII and I absolutely love it. It’s very easy to use, and working with sequences is really fun. I’m not a keyboard player but a drummer, so I need some help with scales.
The issue I’m encountering (which I’ve already seen in Scale mode in Native Instruments products and in the “scale mapped” mode of Scaler 2) is that when the same note is played on two different keys due to remapping, you don’t get a legato effect, but instead a note-off. The real problem is that this behavior also affects patterns when they are quantized to a scale: the sequence gets cut off abruptly, making it difficult to use the KeyStep live.
Ideally, you would need to memorize which keys not to press for each scale. I work with VSTs and Ableton Live, and the effect can be partially mitigated by adjusting the ADSR release of the VST being used. It doesn’t happen with all presets, and polyphony doesn’t affect the behavior.
The workaround I found is to enable Chord mode and reduce the voices to a single voice. This removes polyphony, but the notes are no longer cut off.
I mentioned Scaler because it has a second mode that maps the scale only to the white keys. I don’t think this solution can be implemented on the KeyStep, but Scaler 3 has solved the issue: when using a mapped scale like on the MKII, playing the same note on two different keys produces a legato instead of a note-off.
The new Windows MIDI system makes everything easier: I’m using Scaler 3 in standalone mode, sending the played MIDI (I don’t use Scaler’s arranger, I play live) to a port created in the new Windows MIDI Service. This way, I can control VSTs from the same MIDI port in Ableton. Still, it would be fantastic to be able to use only the KeyStep without having to open Scaler or use Ableton’s scale mode.
Thank you very much, and have a great day!