Key Control Updated With New Features & Lower Price

Artificial Noise let us know that they’ve relaunched the Key Control MIDI note quantizer, with a new OS and a lower price.

The Key Control is a MIDI desktop device that maps your keyboard controller, synthesizer or sequencer to a chosen Key and Scale. In a nutshell, it lets you instantly map what you play on your keyboard to any 11 scales and 12 keys.

Here’s what they have to say about it:

“The Key Control is easy to operate, simply hook up the Key Control between your keyboard controller (or other MIDI output equipped gear) and your desired MIDI destination ( ie. computer, synthesizer, sequencer, etc) via standard 5-Pin MIDI DIN cables. Or put your synthesizer in “Local OFF” mode and send the MIDI out from your synth through the Key Control and back into the synth, to always play ‘in key.’

With a fast and easy 2 knob interface, you can quickly dial in one of a possible 132 possible key and scale combinations and get down to making music fast and with no fuss.

In “Chromatic” mode, all 127 MIDI notes are passed through unchanged, while the “Key” knob will transpose the incoming MIDI notes up to 11 semi-tones.

MIDI notes are changed depending on the Key & Scale chosen, but all other MIDI data passes through unchanged, with low latency and fast operation.”

Scales options include:

Major
Minor
Harmonic Minor
Melodic Minor
Dorian
Locrian
Lydian
Blues
Major Pentatonic
Minor Pentatonic
Augmented
Chromatic / Thru Mode

Pricing and Availability

The Key Control is available now for $179 USD.

14 thoughts on “Key Control Updated With New Features & Lower Price”

  1. They wasted four of their scale slots. Major, Minor, Dorian, Locrian, Lydian are all offspring (modes) of the major, and can all be gotten with Major key shift.

    I can understand they are trying to make it simple– so they sacrificed four cool scales to give you that simplicity.

    Why not give you some back-door way to use sysex to change the built-in scales to your liking? Seems reasonable for that price tag.

  3. I don’t see why people can’t just learn a bit of music theory. Acquiring knowledge and developing your skill set can actually be quite rewarding. Some people just wanna bash their head on the keyboard and pretend they’re making music I guess.

    1. People struggle with music theory for lots of reasons beyond just “wanting to bash their head on the keyboard”. Your comment is uninformed and rude.

      1. Quite right myself. I was only having a joke, parodying the kind of ‘uninformed and rude’ comments I often see under articles about products like this. I don’t struggle much with music theory myself cos I mostly don’t bother with it. I love set scales and consider myself quite daring when I pick the notes on my own.

  4. Some areas of theory make people shut down. E.g., for some people, reading notation is a total deal-breaker– not that they don’t try, it’s more like, even after as much effort as they can muster, they just feel drained. For many, it is just a matter of how they want to spend their time and mental energy (i.e., their life). Yes, they could spend weeks/months/years practicing scales, but that’s just not where their passion is. There are so many different ways to learn and play music– not one right way. That’s how we can get so much delightful variety.

    This device and its functions could be a useful (though not cost-effective) learning opportunity, as well as a helpful tool/toy for accessing sounds that might not otherwise have been available. I just wish it was more thoughtfully designed.

    Going back to my previous point, I’ll add that Major Pentatonic and Minor Pentatonic are the same pattern– and both are already easily available by playing only the black notes. So that’s 6 wasted slots. And, the Blues scale only adds a b5 to the minor pentatonic, so the minor pentatonic alone might have been just fine, let’s call that 6.5 wasted slots.

    In any case, a chart could show how to access various modes/keys as combinations of knob positions.

    The developer could have made this a more versatile “Scale Remapper” by adding an external configuration option. This way, the user could create 11 tables of input notes to output notes. It could ship with the default set being what is on the units imprinted names (but hopefully making better use of those wasted slots). Then with a software editor (using sysex) any user could replace any or all scales. It could even let you print a custom overlay for the left knob.

  5. Surprised that no-one else has mentioned it yet, but you can get a Blokas Midihub at pretty much this same price point. That device will, I believe, do everything that this box can do, plus whole *worlds* more in terms of MIDI manipulation.

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