Novation today introduced FLkey Mini and FLkey 37 – the first MIDI keyboard controllers designed to be fully integrated with FL Studio.
The FLkey range puts FL Studio’s mixer at your fingertips, and lets you take control of FL Studio’s Step Sequencer straight from the keyboard. You can also can program beats with FLkey’s Channel rack straight from the pads.
Other features include support for Scale and Fixed Chord modes, control over instruments and automation, preset browsing and support for Custom Modes for creating custom workflows with FL Studio.
FLkey Mini is a compact 25-mini-key MIDI keyboard, designed to combine a portable keyboard with essential FL Studio control.
FLkey 37 expands on its Mini counterpart, giving creators a full-size keyboard for a larger octave range. FLkey 37 also has extra features including Channel rack control, Fixed Chord mode and User Chord mode, which lets you play custom chords with just one finger, and Scale Chord mode, which lets you play pre-made chords in eight different scales straight from FLkey’s pads.
Novation’s FLkey is the ideal keyboard and MIDI controller for high quality music production in FL Studio. FLkey’s intuitive features help producers to amplify their creativity, finish tracks fast, and keep on creating. The perfect tool to help aspiring producers develop skills and learn while they create, FLkey brings artists closer to their music and lets them create with no limits.
Here are the official video demos:
Features:
- Seamless Integration with FL Studio
- Volume and pan control
- Step sequencer
- Channel Rack playability
- Scale mode
- Instrument control – Trigger FPC, SliceX and Fruity Slicer with the pads for more expressive beats and melodies.
- Plug-in control – Control Image Line plug-ins and record natural-sounding automation with FLkey’s eight pots.
- Preset browsin – Browse presets in Image Line plug-ins directly from FLkey.
- Fixed Chord mode – Play custom chords with one finger (FLkey 37 only).
- User Chord mode – Assign 16 custom chords and play them with just one finger. Store chord progressions for rapid song building and performance (FLkey 37 only).
- Scale Chord mode – Play 32 pre-made chords in eight different scales straight from the pads (FLkey 37 only).
- Custom modes – Assign custom controls to the pads and pots to tailor your music production workflow.
Pricing and Availability:
FLkey Mini and FLkey 37 are available now, priced at $109.99 and $199.99 USD.
A long time coming that this has been a need
no aftertouch
Looks singularly uninspired and way late to the party. No displays. Many competing products offer way more.
Sadly, all software companies are finding the need to diversify into hardware.
It’s the only keyboard with native FL studio support, so it is actually first to the party
Technically, Akai Fire can be used as a keyboard.
>no displays
there’s a display
>software companies
what?! novation has been hardware-oriented for basically ever?
what’s going on here, Rich?
I don’t even use FL but this unit integrates so tightly with it for such a good price i could totally see this being useful even for advanced users with other keyboards.
Nothing integrates more tightly than a mouse and keyboard. Lets keep it 100. They slapped some paint on the Launchkey and gave it the same integration that the launch key already has since FL Studio 20. So…Launchkey MK3 + scripts = FL Key. Its marketing, keywords “seamless integration”. Its not a Push 2 which is the most integrated hardware device for a DAW, and it keeps evolving. This here gices you scales and chords and a play button. No one is going to be adding devices and editing the piano roll from this thing. What about the playlist window? The mixer and adding FX. What about sliceX or all the other FL studio functionality that this thing so “tightly integrates” with. Its a joke at this point since you can probably do about 3% of what you’d do in FL studio. The akai fire does more without keys.
Akai and Novation are owned by Focusrite, so, same church, different pew.
Actually AKAI is owned by InMusic/Numark! But maybe they use the same factories and designers for their products.
Image-Line does not make any of this hardware. They don’t make any hardware. That’s Arturia’s gig.
Worst product novation has released. They’re stuff usually seems pretty well thought out but I don’t get this.
It has less features than the launchkey, and there’s no reason to make a new product when they could just release a midi script for FL for the launchkey.
Anyone who uses FL knows that the best integration is a mouse and keyboard. FL just doesn’t lend itself to hardware midi controller integration that well. The way windows are managed in FL makes it tough to do. It’s much easier to just manually map the parameters you want to control.
I’m still waiting on them to add note hold to these devices. It’s a shame they haven’t yet. They did add strum to the launchkey but it doesn’t look like this FL version does that?
According to their rep on youtube, there is a midi script for FL studio 20 and up. Someone asked if they could already do this with the launch key mk3.
i remember the days when fruity loops was a very simplistic sort of thing and then some years ago i checked in to see how much it had advanced and i was really shocked by all the stuff thats in there now
but yeh i still cant get down with the workflow at all, which seems largely the same – just expanded
Does anyone know if the chord/scale and other functions can work via 5-pin MIDI with other hardware synths directly?
The ASM hydrasynth has scales mode and a chord mode, only works internal, doesn’t get sent out. So I doubt that this will work outside of FL studio.
Yes it does. This has been covered before in the loopop video for the launchkey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7HHgKXA-UU
How about don’t knock it till you try it for yourself
This guy seems to like the product