Arturia Keylab 61 MKII - The Most Integrated Midi Keyboard Ever?

[Music] ah [Music] hello and welcome to the Anton's TV my name is Jack and today I'm joined by the lovely tallix Mayer brain work expect we are gonna be checking out the key lab controllers whose mark - right like - yes friend this is your flagship offering in terms of that's right in the right terms that I'm a flagship looks sleek as hell got out we've got it set up and today we wanted to just show and listen to the sounds of it mess around see what it is and like hear it because it's like okay so this is a keyboard controller and you know who is this for this is basically for anyone who writes music using a computer so the key lab is obviously what it looks like it's a MIDI control you've got lovely keys this actually interesting Lee the key bed that's used in The Matrix brute like big sort of neat Enix have a little twinkle on it and it and it sounded it felt really good yeah that's right as it got all after touch ya know it's like very very high quality key bed and obviously really what you don't really get from a video is like a chess feels really nice it's an extremely well yes and no you our objective is but it's a very posh bit okay I've got like this nice light in set kind of wood cheeks on the ends yeah and these are solid it comes in a black color this is white there is a black version and the black very it's like a matte black it looks very like Batman yeah exactly and so it's a keyboard controller and so you can obviously you've got these faders you've got these sliders or faders are sliders faders and in north and you've got banks of these so we can use these to control other synths but we can also control our DOW our digital audio workstation and we have transport controls and you've got pads and there's actually some really nice stuff that this does where it auto maps to like Ableton Live to get able to live with it but we'll come to that and in fact you get these little like these little doofus and these are basically so you see this you basically these are magnetic they stick on and there's one for all major do double use like Logic Pro Tools Reaper and studio on persona the I even Cubase as well so you stick these on and these give you the proper namings and even in line you actually see the clips here it's so it's a very very nice these are multicolored dude like RGB path so you've got like a complete door control you've got a sort of knobby control this is very elegant yeah before I used to think I was a bit of a cop-out but this is not well yeah because you couldn't label it you'd have to make a model for every deal a button but it's fact that you've covered all the all the other ones with it so guys okay so it's a MIDI really really nicely engineered MIDI controller knobby thing but the kind of the main point is that this also comes with a piece of software which is is I think kind of like a main event with this and why this is unique because I see there's lots of different keyboard controls here why would you consider this and well the key lab comes with analog lab and so what analog lab is is a kind of it's a compendium of every preset from all of our serious software instrument library you know now Cheerios this company that got started making like amazingly authentic really amazingly like beautiful sounding recreations of classic vintage synth so you had like originally it was the mo modular was like the company that the product that launched their whole business yeah and then they sort of grew it from there and you've got things like jupiter-8 the SEM they're behind matrix-12 yeah maja CSA II and then things like the dx7 they've got a fair light and then if you started doing like pianos like really nice physical modeling pianos and Farfisa Vox continental Rhodes piano and basically long story short all kind of 21 of those instruments basically come with this I say basically because it it's you get access to all of the sounds in them and it's the full engines running on this piece of software which is what we have here this is analog lab and so it's like a yeah all of those I haven't seen it for a few years yeah yeah and basically then what you have is a really nicely integrated system where you see here you can actually browse so if you see I'm twiddling the little dial yeah and on the the GUI it's actually updating so you can sit in front of your computer this is kind of for me like the whole beauty of this you see it for your computer and as part of the writing process I think I love since I love messing around with since obviously we've messed around since together before and it's like it's great but I think it's really important to like recognize that sound design and the writing process of creating music could and probably should be separate I know that's not always the case because in an electronic music obviously sound design is partly composition it's part of the sound YZ is the song as well but I think for I think we all do really well ii think a lot all the separate those processes and that's what makes this really strong because you've got the ability to sort of you can we pick and we don't have to look behind you know yeah it's like and so you pick a type of sound like a bass sound and then you've got bass sound so if I go here to nice so you've dug the sound here it's running on the computer yeah we didn't actually need to look at the computer to do it but I didn't like looking at the computer when it said because you it's you can see it's literally just giving you fingertip control so in the point point being you can load up as many instances of this software as you like in your da W and so you can be like the point is like I need a bass sound so yeah it's a really good point base and then you go bass you can also do it by category so and if i go here i can cut clear all the sound so i'll go like synth and actually what you can do you can hide or expand these i'm gonna expand them out so you can see all the software you've got the option of picking types of instruments that's like it here and then look PCC you have our twenties eternal or if I say I just want a bass sound and then if I want to pick the style like as in I don't know the name of the preset I want but I want a cut this time here on the screen as well it is yeah anyway it's just I find this easier in a way so yeah just literally just look and then you see I pick like dark bass sounds or maybe I'll say funky dark funky and you've got so many presets there exactly there's like a system we didn't say the six and a half thousand sounds you've got all these sounds and I go look for up base on the dx7 tone so then you picking you picking via category which is very musical way of doing a very musical way and chest mate yes I was picking sounds and then just getting the idea down so it's like fine to sound quickly get the idea down and I know that this there's almost like I kind of establish elitism in the whole like presets thing what people like no you know I I create all my own sounds and it's and that's fine yes I think what's really cool about this is just when it comes to the like the guts of getting the song down it's like get a sound quickly play it and then you obviously you then have control here where the the sound designer is basically mapped some of the key parameters of that sound to these faders and you can actually click the drop-down and change what they do if I come over here but they're on your you go to one's already all the kind of obvious stuff and actually know my cutoff which is known to brilliance on their si si you know so they you you can make some changes but you're not digging too deeply into the interface at the point which you should be writing music and then so then you would load up another instance of analog lab and go basically and actually what is cool if you just getting back to that thing about when you're writing music get the idea down actually if you do own V collection which is the name of them you know that's all the first incredibly good value yeah and actually now and it's why is it's coming now so if you buy a key lab you get a Archer will do you a special price for the equation too so it's kind of an extra incentive if you if your own vehicle action and you can actually click here and open up the GUI the full full full engine is just saying he's the full engine running in the background it's not like a lite version it's like you're for the price of the keyboard you're also getting access to the full engines of all of those and and and the presets that come with it but you just you can't physically grab the Navi control you can physically grab the ones they've given you which which for a lot of people is gonna be enough but for the guys that want to delve in maybe having that thought process at the beginning cause like you said you saved them yeah it's just I just think it's not face like so important just get music exactly that's really and I think the thing I wanted let's do this now into a hardware synthesizer at the moment yeah because I that's what I felt since you plugged this in it's this integration this simplicity I like the simplicity of the screen it's given me all the information stead of yeah I've seen some other people trying to approach it by giving you more and more at the screen on the keyboard as an old-school dude I like the fact that well I think and they they what they're sort of thinking here is that you know we are actually turned away from the screen we can still use it I actually think that they think that you're you know you are going to be looking at I'd prefer doing that I like just doing it cuz I then point is I don't have to I've got hands on the keyboard I don't have to go over the key yeah I can literally just keep your hands where you are and then right and it really is a beautiful keyboard yeah it's really nice I mean the private you know to get your hands on an action like this and a refined bit of hardware there's just nothing comparable in the hardware side of things yeah and when I say hard way you know with inbuilt sounds what are like super classic sounds in there as well and I think that's what we should do is mess around with some sounds like yes we hear we hear the thing yeah so I've got I basically been playing around very instant response that was always my thing to put me off going for full software yes the latency no worse things have been overcome yeah now we're in a beautiful golden age just like you said it just works you don't have to do anything to set up the analog lab thing no and if you want we did what you and surf is going in and creating your own user banks of control so for example it's got proper MIDI outs you could connect like you know any sort of MIDI CC or bull hardware since and set up your own little map and you've actually named all of the parts so that this will control like cutoff for that stuff you can do that but if you're using the analog lab stuff it's all just done for you and so I was thinking like yeah like what to play a little fiddle and I go to strings with your company from the objective world of keyboard players it's so highly regarded the anterior stuff well any place where I go of any worth in our studios or live guys using software they're all using the stuff you'll be able to get in there is a at this price point is amazing cool this is there it's called air strings it's actually a pop Salina but with the fact that obviously effects in this you can also mail up the sound so really it just sounds like sequence of cinematic for the really haunting a beautiful sound is just a natural and the effects how much you're getting a kind of polished sounds that I've done that sort of that's a gandhi or the point is like you know yeah you could use this as part of the writing process but quite honestly I would almost write using these sounds and just keep them as they are yeah but you can completely go around and edit them and redo them and I know that a lot of folks work that way so DXM and glacial strings we've got pads on the d7 my D active pads just always rule and you can actually hear like the fuzz because it's bottle on the the original DX 17 actually you get like the hiss in the background whatever you love so I'm sort of playing chords here and I'll show you the chord function yes this is you know as I'm like messing around with this thing inevitably I'm just not very good at playing the keyboard I'm not like have the kind of I can hear ideas and I need the keyboard to help me out and so try to to sort of sections here they're really good for that first one is transpose here yeah trams well that literally does is just transpose the whole keyboard by an offset that you create the way that it works is you just literally hold trans and then you push a key to create oh sorry whole transpose and and push a key like this so it creates a like a four semitone offset nice middle C so it's now shifted the whole keyboard by four semitones so now I can just kind of play just white notes and it's a completely different scale mm-hmm yeah a really nice so for people like me not very very like keyboard choppy because I can still like explore different things and now use it all the time when you're singing wants to change key yeah yeah it's actually like the Judah Juno 60 that's the same sort of okay and then cord is and like a cord node and you basically hold the cord button and create intervals see it's actually showing the cords on the screen start so at Lego well can I give it a go yeah so you pulled it down and create the intervals that you want six nights basically and then so try yeah it sounds like a la state house records survived which I yeah I'm a sucker for that stuff so Claude mode and then you've got these pads here actually interesting the pad send MIDI like MIDI information and you can remap what they do yeah really the pads are their ferocity playing drums through something enough and I just ignored you clips maybe yes yeah exactly right but that is called memory thing you don't unfortunately no no no drums stuff they have their own drum they do this is instead of like doing that thing when we train the chord it's actually kind of stalled a chord for each one of the pads yeah and if you hold and chord and then the pad you can I can sort of remap it so I just played that one yeah what you then do is set up a stack of like maybe yeah your four chord progression and then it's gonna go to church on there are they so just if you want to like play a chord sequence what kind of like for me I'm all these sounds yeah and you're still getting that functionality just a really nice way of looking at the computer in there like I'm feeling out or call it progression yeah yeah and I think core transpose is kind of the same thing except when you push a button you access a chord and then you play it on here so you have to basically go chord like this create an interval and then [Music] well then you can do the same thing on another pad probably off now program the same chord I dig it that makes sense yeah so you basically create a store record and then you're playing it and then you have another one then you're playing it so it's it's a way of like exploring chords for people who maybe aren't really keyboardist and does that relate as well to where you are amazing and I've got every time you come in I've got a plug it because I am an avid watcher and listener alex has his own channel my love melodies yeah you've got a podcast why we bleep why we bleep merrily when's it out wins what monthly if it if possible yeah really he covered loads of grand new and it's yeah well it's about yeah the writing process is sort of what we were that's kind of one of the things I'm most fascinated by was like ways to write music more easily and for you as a modular dude yeah fortunately not no but yeah you have got CV outs so you can use this as a modular controller so you could stick this in front your modular and play it properly the keyboard plus you've got like aftertouch that's in CV but very very interesting leave for us monster nerds is the opposite is also possible you've got inputs on this too so you can actually send CV into the key lab and convert it into MIDI so you can have like an a sequence or in the modular yeah controlling a piece of software like controlling software or like a weird LFO complex envelope generator or something coming in and going to software so it's I which I think in many ways is much more a much more interesting thing is like what are the wonderful ways that I can control the computer using the stuff that modular can do and yeah the keynotes like recently because I'm trying to figure out more about modulo you've got some software alternatives to module module yeah would that work so you could like control a digital version of a module you maybe can't afford yet yeah absolutely see if yeah you can looking mix and match all these so like yeah usually like reactor blocks and stuff like that you can generate control voltages which will come out of this so you could use this as a kind of bridge to your modular and kind of doing some of the modular stuff into computer but coming out through here yeah definitely I don't think so let's do more sounds kind of we talked a lot and I think I really I think it's just very important like they said let's start this sounds really obvious I'll be playing what was the other one so let's go like since I've been sick really I will go like booklet easel and and then there's this one which is techno not what I want which I think sounds like a sort of kid a li side so this is the Brooklyn music easel which is like amazing very expensive little modulus in [Music] little like little sequins and I'm going to use this as an opportunity to mention the whole layering thing so this is part one if I go to part two I can load another preset at the same time and so let's load the same sort of same instrument [Music] I said let's layering a string I'm talking about like just coming up with ideas well I'm just like [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] really like completely does as well go back out clear [Music] come over here [Music] okay so this is the encounter pad for the matrix-12 transpose [Music] [Applause] [Music] my amazing love is faithful playing you ever said whenever you come in front of yeah when if you come in you've had a sound to your plane and the stuff and you've found that really quickly yeah and it has the same depth to it yeah it's like okay ladies he's far find it very inspiring there's a lot of times like messing around with this and I just have ideas for tracks like that just happens pick anything really you can do that can I have a look at some of the so we got loads of synth in there we've also got like you alluded to they do really good electric pianos and pianos well yeah I think that's especially there's been a lot of hubbub recently guys in like the clive keyboard world looking at things like key scape and things and replacing their noise yeah I think maybe people have overlooked how advanced archery our area and you're getting a lot of that sound with this right yeah yeah band that's I think totally their own to is to this should appeal to everyone this should be sound in here that we find interesting and yeah exactly right like in fact actually if you look at these buttons here these are kind of you maybe can't read this but it says piano electric piano organ pad use the design basically so that it's still having to go to the category selector there I can literally ask our electric piano and it just instantly [Music] [Music] nice and and then yeah you've got organs as well so yeah probably use primary school course on Farfisa every time exactly Vox continental yeah [Music] go down you can go down octaves I'm gonna get a bit more bass register business [Laughter] [Music] I wanna have a little little fiddle so if I hit organ here yeah so that's then going to drill down to all the organ presets no it's sort of mirrored on the screen and then there is or keys as well that takes all like dx7 vibes as well and all the roms [Music] it's like 90s this is so rinse like I kind of disneys yes the functional oh I know why that's doing that is that you change the carpets change the pictures because they've maps they're like keyboard - yeah but it did something yeah I said polyphonic funnymen evoke like the same with the blue color like music he's always a lot of those patches like the strings were for a polyphonic that's what this song is so accuracy yeah you're getting exists there it goes beyond the origination yeah the bow flow is especially fascinating I think to play around with and it's it's it's a one of the funnest to mess around with the sliders as well because I but because it's frankly because I kind of don't understand a lot of what it's doing it's like it's a really really sort of like compact fun instrument to mess around with and it very much becomes a case of like when I was playing with the software I almost immediately was like I wish I had a real one because I realized that if like messing with that one fader is actually part of the performance so it becomes all the more relevant that you've actually got some faders so you get hands-on you can interact with the instrument in a way that you can't when it's just software and that tight integration with the fact that you're making that every other controller company falls down them for me firstly I know you can't sag them off but maybe I can I've tried every other one and what's nice is I know native is just to do their thing where they're trying to put it together but isn't yeah present but for me this this is really concise but and really based around the sounds I love the fact that I'm getting I know that we keep look at the screen yeah yeah yeah you don't have to it's just I find it useful for like this is like coffee at home at some pizza it's the hummus pizza I miss my place angly like I always play my kind of thing like it's just hurting I got fits [Music] I just want to have like this oh yeah really like really desolate sort of like icy i yeah I just like in a weird way like that I know that's exactly the person that can do that I always want to just use like I would love to do just a project with just this in fact I'm right he's the music at the moment so I'm going to be doing where it's just like get a sound do it get a sound just because it's just all in the aid of writing music more quickly like not fog around with sound design at a point where you should be writing music because lately you can go back and either redo it like redo the sounds once you've written the parts or just like open up the GUI and some of those effects are really you can play into them yeah just touch on it so this is 61-key bush and they do as a 49:49 yeah it's the 88 not yet no yeah yeah and I use that every day in this yeah basically 49 in us 61 that we have here and then there's actually also the key lab essential which we should mention it is the gear essential is basically like not metal and slightly different build different things as well it doesn't have as many pads but a lot of the core functionality is the same main point is the software and this kind of browsing it's the same is the same exactly the same software so if you kind of like I'm not I don't need like the build quality like necessarily that this will feel the metal it's really nice it's very luxurious thing yeah lovely to have and interact with on a daily basis but still very much you've got a more affordable option if that's what you want preset yeah so I call them out because I love some of these name that's so give me a sec so I'm gonna go to sense and I'm gonna go see SAT and you know the old feel feet in that little chestnut the thought of that the thought of that you just called that up and something that remotely even if it was remotely but it's bang on isn't know you've got a CSI really is evocative things this is like weird it's got like Scott so like energy let's fizzy solve em John Hopkins Evo sound and then like I want to layer that with another si si Dupree so I'm going to go house in the sky one day gig is a preset name [Music] [Music] and then I was just swapping this for like it's just amazing wait what you get is it really is fill in the room here and the the speed of response to the playing is gone I'm feeling like I've got maybe I've been stuck in my mindset about ten years ago I had the churros dealing with a laptop and I was just it didn't feel right it didn't feel like it had the responsive yeah now we've got like a DC Thunderbolt yes looks like much much faster as well as computers are faster it also there's like lower latency so maybe like the dyes that I it really may become we've got these in the store this one we're gonna be putting out on display yeah coming here by this actual this actual one yeah you exhale soiled it I just changed the one that sounds this Mini Moke soft bells [Music] [Applause] because I can only play the right keys again coming up at the semitone [Music] [Music] think I'm gonna write an electron album with this basically like we just need that anyway as well with one more preset and then I'd love to have a little play on just a random yellow on a random bar actually can I just hear the piano yep of course so then basically you could push preset breathes there and push this button to drill down yes so it's saying these are the sound I want to hit Kara sounds or electric time and then if you go through you'll get all you now only see the piano sounds if you squiggle with American so the German one's gonna be I reckon a Steinway they if I want to reset I countries there and then you just turn and push it's Japanese so I reckon it would be a Yamaha oh yeah and then it so these are all running with it yeah push the button push the big button in Bruce Lee oh yeah yeah their piano which you get a full version of as well as able to live light yeah which you know live light you can load VST instruments into very I got the UVI one free with it yeah and I remember I had loads of mileage out the stuff so this is a new sort of point one yeah if you have base if you buy one of these and you don't have any software you don't literally don't write music at that point all you need is a computer because you yeah the point that you get able to lies you get analog love and you get a piano so it's like and obviously there's six more halfway to your input upgrade to the sounds greatest which is like like a complete library of sound and a really nice way of interacting with it so dad you might be getting one of these for Christmas thanks for having me again as ever would just we play us out which can we set off like a sequence sound so we can ask it let's do it oh yeah then let's go category and I definitely what it has to know I always want to escape under the carbonaria bowler either a demo or a sequence to beat techno for Dom no boot [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Andertons Synths, Keys and Tech

Views: 246,758

Keywords: Keyboard corner, Andertons tv, Andertons Music, Arturia, Analog Labs, Software, Keys, MIDI, Keyboard, Midi DAW Controller, DAW Controller, Best Midi Keyboard, Jack Duxbury, Should I buy a Midi Controller?, Should I buy a midi keyboard?

Id: kGPEaeGSArM

Length: 37min 18sec (2238 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 07 2018