I really like the Keylab 61 mkii. I love the keyboard feel for playing synth parts, but it is not ideal for piano parts since it is only semi-weighted. And I love all the assignable knobs, buttons and sliders.
The only caveat I have is that I (and others) have experienced the occasional stuck notes behavior, especially when doing a lot of organ-style glissandos. There was another thread on this forum specifically discussing that, and there are a couple posts about this on Arturia’s own forum.
Thanks for the feedback! I have a light touch and play 90% synth stuff, so light is better for me. I have a Keylab Essentials 61 and I’ve enjoyed it. I’m really attracted to all of the ports on the Keylab MKII. I just might give it a try.
I like synth action too. But this one is too soft. Problem of stuck note playing organ style makes me very angry. I can sell it to everyone interested. Good price. Bag and all accessories included.
No one interested to buy? It is a real bargain. Box and cables, sw licence, bag that I bought for it and perfectly protects.
Come on guys… Black version
I’ve had one a while, nice feel, but stuck notes on solos/gliss probably means I won’t get another. John
I messaged you.
Hi guys,
Just got this document from Arturia about the lights and stuff. Thought some of you might find it useful, as the MKI pad light sysex would only light up the pads in full white. This gives you full control of them and all the other lights on the board (including the transport buttons)
Cheers,
P
Hey toaster, do you have working binding in a Cantabile file for me to see? I’ve never managed to do any of this. But I have not seen this document before either so I’ll play with this info - hopefully better luck this time :).
Hi Tom.
Here’s what I’ve worked out…
works perfectly, using the adresses and whatnot from the file I posted. It’ll take you some time to work out what different RGB values you need to make the various colours (unless you only want Red, Green or Blue!) but other than that, I think it’s fairly straighforward…
Let me know I can help any more.
P
Hi guys,
If you fancy it, here’s my rack for pad 1, with a list of states for different colours, you can create your own for the different pads just by changing the 70 in all the sysex messages for whatever pad address you want. I’ve made a rack that these individual pad racks go in (as embedded racks), so I can create a state with whichever colour combination I want selected.
I’m enjoying working this out!
Cheers,
P
Pad 1.cantabileRack (77.2 KB)
I’m definitely playing with that tonight! Thanks so much!
I just tested my system and Keylab mkII.
With all my surprise I was not able to get only one stuck note in 3 hours of wild playing!
I have a new much more powerful notebook, so I had to install everything new: all my hosts (Reaper and Cantabile) and Arturia USB driver which is quite new.
To me this seems the most important piece of software, it was already getting better, this last one seems perfect.
Then I upgraded firmware of Keylab mkII 61 (1.2.4).
Now everything seems extremely solid, I tried in every way to make my system fail: no way.
C3 version is the last stable known (3653): it drove Zenology Pro and Sampletank 4: no problem!
I am so happy!!!
Hey @Toaster - you rack works as intendend, tx for that. But I’m trying to get the buttons to change color and turn them on/off - for hte love of me I can’t get that to work. Form what I read in the arturia forums the buttons should be x12 (instead of the 70 for pad 1 in your rack) and up. Tried lots of things but no luck. Did you by any chance get that working?
Or by any chance do you have the second page of that Arturia document you posted?
Ha! Some experimenting helped. Button 1 is x22; it moves upward from there so button 9 is 2A!
I finally got something done that I had wanted for over a year. Thought I’d share (example rack can be downloaded at bottom of this post).
I use my own Topiary plugins a lot. These plugins have 8 “variations” (which might refer to 8 variations on a drum track in Topiary Beatz, * different “mix” settings in Topiary Presetz or 8 different types of melodic (midi) patterns that track what is being played on the keyboard in Topiary Riffz). You can see those buttons top/right in the image below. They behave like a group of radio buttons - if I hit button one, variation 1 is selected and all other variations are deselected. If I then call up variation 2, variation 1 gets deselected. In the image below you’ll see variation 1 selected.
I have been using the buttons on a Keylab88 and a KeyLab MKII 61 to call up those variations. Works great. BUT - on a dark stage it it hard to see those buttons, and as a group of course, the KeyLab does not (cannot) know that I want them to behave as radio buttons.
On a side note, I use button 9 as a sort of “get me home” button and it calls up a standard piano patch - it’s a shortcut to my bread&butter-goes-with-anything sound. Ideally I want that button to be illuminated at all times. Keylab can’t do that - it’s either a toggle button (on/off) or a latch (that is, lit up on only and as long as you press it).
The rack attached does the following:
Here’s what that looks like with button 6 selected (bright white) - works great on a dark stage!
Want to see how that is done, feel free to dissect the rack attached.
Keylab mkII Topiary radiobuttons.cantabileRack (511.7 KB) .
Thx to @Toaster for getting me on the right track!
Hi Tom,
Sorry, just seen these posts! Glad you got it sorted!
I’ve not finished mine yet, as it goes, so I may well pinch your rack…
Cheers
P
Go ahead and pinch!
Hi - apologies for digging this thread up, but it’s got me so close to doing what I want, but I think I’m missing a fundamental bit of information/setting.
I’m trying to use the Piano/Elec Piano/Organ… buttons to trigger specific song states, and the radio button rack above has helped me get on the right track (thanks @Tom_Tollenaere) .
However, I’m also trying to relay the state information to the Keylab’s Display, which I kind of got to work through the use of the rack from @oktogon
Trouble is, I can only control what’s on the display in analogLab or DAW modes, and I’ve only got the buttons to work in User mode (they seem non functional in DAW, and all the same CC in analogLab). In User mode the display just wants to show what buttons you’ve pressed.
I’m on the latest firmware downloaded from the Arturia website. Is there something I’m missing? Selecting a specific DAW mode? User mode? So close!
For sake of anyone who is doing similar research and stumbles on this topic, the SysEx IDs for Keylab MK2 buttons can be found here:
