Andertons Synths, Keys and Tech Unleash the Arturia Keystep 37 MKII: It’s More Than MIDI, Mate

Let’s talk workflow: those four macro knobs are mapped straight out of the box to Arturia Pigments’ macros, but they’ll boss any soft synth with MIDI CCs. No setup, no sweat – plug in, twist, and you’re mutating pads and wrecking leads before the coffee’s even kicked in.

If four macros aren’t enough, you get four assignable banks – that’s sixteen ways to mangle your sound without touching a mouse. This is what separates the Keystep 37 MKII from the pack. You’re not just nudging filters; you’re bulldozing whole parameter sets in real time. The video shows just how instant and satisfying this is. Words don’t do the knob-twiddling justice – you’ve got to see it in action.

Slide over, boring MIDI-only boards – the Keystep 37 MKII’s CV outs are the secret sauce. You get two assignable CV mod outputs, and they’re not just for pitch and gate. LFOs, envelopes, random voltages, and even user-defined pulses – it’s like strapping a mini modular brain onto your keyboard.

The LFOs are everything you’d want: sine, triangle, saws, square, sample and hold, even audio-rate craziness. You can clock sync, mess with voltages, and blast control signals into any synth that speaks CV – not just Eurorack. Suddenly, your humble mono gets a double shot of wobbly goodness. If you want to know how deep the modulation rabbit hole goes, watch Tom patch it live and try not to grin.

The Keystep 37 MKII isn’t here to replace your synths – it’s here to make them sweat. Hooked up to the Arturia Microbrute, it adds two LFOs or envelopes with a twist, letting you pump new movement into classic sounds. Suddenly, metallisers and filters start twitching like they’ve been over-caffeinated.

You can fire CV from the touch strips, use envelopes for pitch, and even get those sample-and-hold bleeps straight into your old analogues. This is where the Keystep 37 MKII justifies its place on any hardware nut’s desk. You can taste the difference – and if you want to witness real-time modulation carnage, the video’s patching scenes are mandatory viewing.

It’s one thing to have features – it’s another to actually use them live without wanting to hurl the thing out a window. The Andertons crew walk through performance tricks: from real-time arpeggiator tweaks to macro-driven sound design, the Keystep 37 MKII proves it’s more than a DAW appendage.

What seals it is the playability: aftertouch, hands-on CCs, instant scale and arp changes, and clocking everything tight. It’s not the smallest controller, but for what you get, it’s worth sneaking into your gig bag. And when you see it driving Pigments’ visuals and making analogs scream, you’ll get why this isn’t just another MIDI plank – it’s a full-blown sonic street weapon.