Review: Arturia Keylab Essential

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Oh, did I fail to mention, I added an Arturia Keylab Essential 49 to my iPad rig. I wanted a super light-weight MIDI controller with knobs, sliders, and a minimum of 49 keys with good action. The Keylab Essential 49 fits the bill at 6.6 pounds (3kg), eight pads, nine encoders and nine faders (sliders). The street price is attractive, too: $229 USD. I had a good experience with the Arturia Keystep 32 and decided to give the Keylab Essential a go.

I use the Keystep mainly for control voltage (CV) and gate with littleBits synth modules. Mini-keys are OK for experiments, but not for real playing. If your Keystep keys get dirty, here’s a guide to Keystep teardown and cleaning.

Why the Keylab Essential after Korg Microkey Air joy? I gave the Air’s mini-keys the old college try and then some. First off, most mini-key instruments are three octaves and too short for two-fisted playing. The Microkey Air 49 has four octaves, making it much easier to play most tunes without finger gymnastics. [If you’re a pianist, we’re not even having this conversation!] Although the Microkey Air has Bluetooth MIDI built-in and is battery-powered — genuine plusses — it doesn’t have knobs/sliders for VST control. And, well, it still has those mini-keys.

Arturia Keylab Essential 61

The Keylab Essential 49 is only three inches longer than the Microkey Air: 30.9″ versus 27.9″. Sure, the Keylab Essential is twice as deep, but them encoders and 30mm faders have to go somewhere! I will admit, the Keylab Essential is not a “lap board” like the Air; it needs a proper stand and power source.

The Keylab Essential key action is decent enough. Like the Keystep, it feels a bit soft. If you want a fast, crisp action, this isn’t the droid you’re looking for. Even though the Keylab Essentials are Arturia’s budget line, the encoders and faders feel sturdy with a reasonable amount of resistance.

I’m happy with the Keylab Essential and, yes, I’ll be keeping the Microkey Air, too. Here’s my short Keylab Essential wish list:

  • Battery power
  • Bluetooth MIDI
  • Expression input, not simply sustain (on/off)

Then again, the price would be higher and/or the build quality would be lower. No free lunch.

Analog Lab

I’m mainly interested in iPad (IK BX-3) and hardware (YC and Skulpt SE) control, not PC-based VSTs. However, Analog Lab is a fun leisure destination. Analog Lab and its integration with Keylab Essential are simply brilliant. Prepare to waste long hours jamming away with the best sounds of yester-year with lots of knob twisting and fader slamming.

Controlling Yamaha Reface YC

Yamaha Reface YC is one of my keeper keyboards. It’s been a handy companion at rehearsals and even a few church services. You’ve already heard my gripe about three octave mini-keyboards and Reface YC occupies that doghouse. No need to repeat.

Fortunately, Keylab Essential is almost made for Reface YC. [Dreamers, Yamaha has a full-size YC; forget a Reface re-issue.] Keylab Essential has a 5-pin MIDI OUT which links to the Reface YC dongle MIDI IN. Thank heavens for 5-pin MIDI.

Arturia provide their MIDI Control Center (MCC) app for configuration. The Keylab Essential has eight configuration slots: Analog Lab, DAW and six user slots. MCC communicates with Keylab Essential over USB. Fortunately, the 5-pin MIDI OUT operates concurrently with a USB connection back — no either/or.

Obviously, the faders map to the YC drawbars. Fortunately, the Keylab Essential faders have a drawbar mode, flipping low and high values. The Reface YC drawbars are controlled by MIDI continuous controller (CC) messages CC#102 to CC#110. It’s all right there in the Reface Data List PDF available on the Yamaha Web site.

Amazing how many people will ask a forum for such info. Please RTFM.

The rest of the front panel controls — waveform, rotary speed, vibrato/chorus, percussion, and effects — are under MIDI CC control, too. Keylab Essential has three switches (Part 1, Part 2, Live) which are mapped in the following way:

  • Vibrato/chorus select (CC#79)
  • Percussion on/off (CC#77)
  • Percussion harmonic (CC#112)

The switches are configured as toggles, so that the switch LEDs indicate individual switch state.

Rotary speed is interesting because Reface YC has four states: OFF, STOP, SLOW and FAST. By default, Reface YC modulation (CC#0) switches between SLOW and FAST. As an alternative to the wheel, I assigned OFF, STOP, SLOW and FAST to pads 5 through 8. It’s a shame that Keylab Essential doesn’t support radio buttons. If it did, one could make each pad in the group a toggle showing the current rotary speed state.

As I mentioned, Keylab Essential does not have an expression pedal input. Thus, I route a Yamaha FC-7 expression pedal to Reface YC directly. The Keylab Essential sustain input is still useful, however. I attach a sustain pedal and assign the sustain input to rotary speed (CC#19: SLOW and FAST). Momentary switch mode allows quick changes and speed bumps.

It’s worth noting here that rotary speed has four settings:

     CC#19       Value 
     ----------  ----- 
     0 - OFF         0 
     1 - STOP       42 
     2 - SLOW       85 
     3 - FAST      127

Switching between SLOW and FAST means changing CC#19 between 85 and 127.

Making the rest of the story short, the remaining Reface YC parameters are assigned to the encoders. Waveform, vibrato/chorus depth and percussion length have five discrete settings each, i.e., they do not sweep continuously across 1 to 127. Expect to hear discrete changes (steps). The step values are: 0, 32, 64, 95, 127.

Vibrato/chorus does not have a Reface on/off switch. Vibrato or chorus are OFF when the vibrato/chorus depth is zero.

Here is a table which summarizes the control mappings:

--------------------------------  ---------------------------------------- 
Reface YC                         Arturia Essential 49 
--------------------------------  ---------------------------------------- 
Rotary speed  19    0-127         Mod wheel, Pad 5-8 OFF, STOP, SLOW, FAST 
Wave          80    0-127         Knob 1
 
16'           102   0-127         Slider 1 
5 1/3'        103   0-127         Slider 2 
8'            104   0-127         Slider 3 
4'            105   0-127         Slider 4 
2 2/3'        106   0-127         Slider 5 
2'            107   0-127         Slider 6 
1 3/5'        108   0-127         Slider 7 
1 1/3'        109   0-127         Slider 8 
1'            110   0-127         Slider Master 

V/C type       79   0-63, 64-127  Switch Part 1 
V/C depth      77   0-127         Knob 2 
Perc on/off   111   0-63, 64-127  Switch Part 2 
Perc harm     112   0-63, 64-127  Switch Part 3 
Perc length   113   0-127         Knob 3 

Effect Dist    18   0-127         Knob 7 
Effect Reverb  91   0-127         Knob 8 
Volume          7   0-127         Knob 9

Oh, yeah, don’t forget volume! With the Keylab Essential at hand, you’ll probably have the Reface YC out of reach at the end of its MIDI tether.

I intend to get into good trouble with the Arturia Keylab Essential. Expect future experiments with iPad, IK Multimedia BX-3 and Modal Skulpt SE.

Copyright © 2022 Paul J. Drongowski