Keystep PRO review: midi keyboard & sequencer GREAT for DAWLESS hardware synth setups

hello there and welcome to another bow beats review today we're taking a look at this highly anticipated highly appreciated follow-up to the key step namely the key step pro [Music] [Music] I don't think it's an exaggeration that a lot of people have been wanting a follow-up to the key step it's probably one of the most beloved and iconic MIDI keyboards in its price segment and I'm super excited to see arturia come out with the pro version saying today's review we're gonna go over what the keister Pro is via make some music with it and I'll give you some pros and cons and alternatives at the end of the video and this review is sponsored by district kid dot-com if you want to release your music on Spotify iTunes Apple music and other stores it's a great place it's affordable I've been with them for many years I have actually released a new song called frankly using district kid so go check out district kid my link is in the description and you can also check out my new song if you want to now let's get into the key step pro so let me start with an overview of this setup that I have hooked up here for this video so here I have 7 out of 8 drum gates going into the black noir drum module I'm also using the 2 MIDI out so one goes to the XT module and one goes to with MC 101 that I'm using as a sound module for this setup here mainly because I don't have that much space on the table I've also hooked up CV gate and mode outputs here from one of the CV Urich voices controlling this red box module here and using this mode output here I'm actually controlling the filter here using CV so the harder I hit a key the more it effects the filter so track number one is drums track number two is controlling that minilogue XD track number three is controlling the MC 101 and track number four is controlling the eurorack voice [Music] so let me start off with my favorite feature it's not the sequencers it's definitely not the keypad but it's actually something which is very rare on a MIDI keyboard it has a built-in metronome with a little speaker now you might call me crazy for being so happy about this particular feature but it's actually something that I have been longing for on many other sequencers and MIDI keyboards and the metronome has its own little level control for the speaker and you can output it into your mixer as well so it's a small thing but I really like that conclusion so let's start by talking about the sequencer we have four tracks and all of them can be polyphonic but it's actually more than four tracks because track number one can be a drum track which means that you have 24 individual drum tracks on track number 1 which can have different lengths so you can actually do poly meter stuff track 2 3 & 4 can either sequence something or be an arpeggio so you selected here using this buttons so it's either/or so I can have R running here instead [Music] or I guess widget to the sequencer playing whatever is recorded into the sequencer the arpeggiator czar independent of each other so you can set all three tracks to our page ater and use them yeah do different settings for each of them per track there are sixteen patterns and each of the patterns can be 64 steps you can chain them together if you want to you can also save scenes which are like saved states of what's going on currently with the all of the sequencers and arpeggios and each step of the sequencer it can hold up to sixteen notes so you can do pretty big chords per step you can also change the length per notes in a chord we'll look at that a little later so you can actually do pretty advanced stuff and if we go to the drum track here you can see that it lights up this are the 24 tracks or channels that you can use for drums so when I hit the key you can see that we're changing channels or tracks for the drum track so let's create something we're holding it on pattern we can select an empty pattern here let's go to the kick place down the steps you want [Music] now we have this button here called step at it let's hit it so now we can select any step and we can now change gate velocity time shift and randomness values per step because this is hooked up to the drum gates it's actually only the time shift and randomness that are applicable here so we can time shift something back and forth a little bit or we could put down this two notes here going going to step at it and change the randomness so the they actually don't trigger us frequently now let's go to track number three let's add some base hit shift hit extend here let's make a 64 step and now we can utilize the metronome and there is a pre count as well I'm surprised about this hit record hit play there we go now if I'm not happy we have a lot of secondary controls you can see it under here and it shift you need clear steps they use shifting tempo to turn the metronome on and off it's actually quite handy now let's play the Euro rack [Music] [Applause] [Music] now if I'm not happy with the timing here for example of CERN notes or maybe I'm not happy with the amount of velocity on certain notes because as you hear the velocity controls the filter cutoff here if I'm not happy I'll press stop at it and I can change the velocity here per note a bit [Music] [Music] so the sequencers have three modes of recording you saw me do live recording you just hit record and play and it should also be noted that the sequencers can either be poly or mono if I use the second way of recording into the sequencer is holding down a step I'm making a chord so you could have a chord progression going and switching it to mono while you're playing to get some kind of variation and of course the third way of recording into the sequencer is just hitting record and [Music] [Music] just plain whatever you want patting wrists would break from the overview I thought you might want to see the back of it what kind of connections we have so first we have the four eurorack voices all of them have pitch and gate as well as a mod output that you could use for example to control the filter of a you rack module or something else this mod output can be assigned to respond to for example the velocity of the keyboard or say the after touch we have eight drum gates designed for triggering you rack drum modules we have clock in and out as well as reset out one MIDI import as well as two MIDI out ports metronome audio output as well as the level for the speaker input for a sustain pedal we have the USB the power and the on and off switch here and yes you can power it using USB only or the DC power if you don't want to use a computer now let's talk about secondary functions there's plenty of shift-command we have pattern control over here and down here we have some stuff that is related to the arpeggiator and we also have this one here so you can have a pattern running forward randomize it or walking walking is especially interesting so I'm a player [Music] so with walking goes a few steps then I think there's a random chance that it goes back a few steps giving me this sort of yeah interesting back and forth now we can clear pattern we can clear steps we can also nudge the entire pattern now we can use all this functions while we're playing some save the pattern and Houston shift and save function you have to reload the pattern so let me mess it up a bit because we can change the order of notes here we can do random octave yeah let me just let me show you [Music] [Music] [Music] see when we reload they're at the end so we can do a bunch of things and also if you have set it up to a scale when you do random notes and you actually get them in scale which is really nice you can randomize melodic content and stuff like that [Music] so they're around our minds just a little pattern that excuse us up as a variation if I want to now drum tracks can also be poly or mono it basically means that in mono all of the 24 tracks on the one drum track up it's not too confusing one drum track it actually has 24 tracks on it each of the 24 tracks can have different lengths so for example have this sound here now if I select poly [Music] so I can set the length of each drum track individually now some of the secondary functions are for the Pidgey ater so just play something here we can change the pattern here octave range and ocean changing the scale and we can of course just like on the old key step press hold here you use this controls here to make changes to door pgo while we were playing [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] now let's talk about the keyboard a lot of people asking me is it similar to the key Stepan answer is yes so if you enjoyed the key steps keyboard you'll enjoy this if you thought that the key step was way too small for you this is probably still way too small for you but it does feel good it's a nice mini key keyboard just like on the original key step it's velocity sensitive and it has after touch on the side here we have the touch strips so one for pitch and one for mod and we have the roller / looper [Music] which is actually a really good performance tool to be using and the pitch strip has the center zone where nothing like a dead zone where nothing happens now earlier in the video I did say that only individual steps you can actually place down multiple notes making a chord and edit individual notes in the chord so to do this yet step at it hit overdub now you can select the individual note you can change the gait of that note the velocity of that note and as you can see here the values change so it's not that difficult to create this movement within a chord [Music] [Music] and also I'll mention that you can set up the five encoders senses see messages using the controller mode this five controls can then also be recorded either alive or by a step recording into its own dedicated track but it's important for me to note that this is not something that works per track instead control mode is its own dedicated thing [Music] last in this video let me mention a few pros and cons overall very pleased with this MIDI keyboard I think it's a good successor to the key step but just like with the key step it's it's not a one-size-fits-all all MIDI sequencers have limitations and I think that the primary one for the kiss the pro is the amount of tracks there's just the four tracks or 24 on the drum track if you will but four tracks makes it less competitive compared to something like the SL mark 3 which has 8 tracks and speaking of the SL mark 3 daesil mark 3 actually can do step sequencing of all its controls so you can set up each of the controls to different Z values and step sequence these changes which is really cool and that is something where the case the pro really lacks it doesn't really have that much hands-on control in terms of knobs and faders but what it does have is a ton of interesting functions here for generating melodies and sequences and changing the sequences which is a big plus it's very hands-on it's very much meant for performances which I dig a lot another unique selling point is of course the metronome is the small thing I joked about the early an individual but for me personally it can be a deal-breaker because it's actually super useful with the count in having the metronome so that's something you won't find on most MIDI sequencers especially in this price category I think that the form factor is actually a lot better than it might look on camera it's actually small and it doesn't feel big at all feels like something you could actually throw in a bag a slightly larger bag maybe but still it's not super cumbersome the SL mark 3 which is one of the main competitors to this mini keyboard is much larger so the size is both a pro and a con if you want full-sized keys this is not it but if you want something more compact this is it now speaking of A+ I love the IO and IO sets it apart from a lot of the competition because it's actually a really good MIDI sequencer and you rack sequence a modular sequencer with the drum gaze with the four possible four voices for your rack but also you have the MIDI out so this was my little review of the he's the pro I hope you enjoyed it and yeah let me know in the comment section what other videos you want to see here on this channel and as always big thank you to today's sponsor district it comm if you wanna upload your music to Spotify Apple music iTunes and so on go check out district 8 I have a link in the description you get a bit of a discount and I'm using this service to publish my own music really like the service so go check it out if you want to and I've also just released my son frankly it's available on all stores basically linked in the description so hope to see you in another video talk to you later [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: BoBeats

Views: 65,145

Keywords: arturia keystep pro, arturia keystep, novation sl mkIII, novation sl mk3, midi keyboard, keyboard, midi controller, midi sequencer, midi, sequencer, hardware sequencer, synth, synthesizer, best midi keyboard, best midi keyboard under 500, best midi sequencer, dawless jamming, dawless music production setup, making music without a computer, Beatstep Pro, Beatstep, digital piano, digital synthesizer, analog synthesizer

Id: HEgllJAQ5A8

Length: 20min 56sec (1256 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/UFOgheddaboudit]

Yo, yo... This ain't no VST that was written in Java, 

Watch my homie play the keystep like its buttons were lava!

And if you can't comprehend why this dawless is jammin', 

Pay attention to the boops and the bleeps he be crammin'

In a one bar space - his sequence: melodic, "Aleatoric," and even borderline quixotic.

So by cactus and by crystal I'mma make the admission:

Bo straight up beats me into synth submission...

Bo straight up beats me into synth submission.

[u/KevinGrahamMusic]

So like legit question are the buttons on the keystep pro like super hot to the touch or something

[u/vivian-oblivion]

I hate this guy

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_MUSIC4FB]

Is it time for another BoBeats hate thread already?

[u/MrMCarlson]

I love how this guy will play a few chords, and then stop, and lift his hands off the keyboard like a kid wrappin up their piano recital with the ol fur elise. Oooooohhh

[u/Hambone98201]

Aww i think hes fine. hes a gateway drug for future jerkers. once they watch enough of his synth videos for ruhtards they will come here to the dark side...