Arturia’s Digital Palette: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Crafts with Rev OCEAN, MiniFreak & KeyStep

Smith singles out the MiniFreak’s arpeggiator as a key performance tool, emphasizing its hands-on, tactile qualities. The arpeggiator offers rhythmic structure and the immediacy needed for improvisational layering—traits that are especially useful in live settings where evolving patterns are essential.

Beyond rhythmic duties, the MiniFreak’s granular sounds play a central role in her sound design. Smith describes using these granular textures to add complexity and midrange presence to otherwise analog-dominant arrangements, often layering them across octaves to create a sense of organic depth. It’s a demonstration of how digital synthesis can complement and expand upon sampled or analog material, enriching the sonic palette.

Smith delves into her nuanced approach to reverb, focusing on how the Rev OCEAN shapes the emotional landscape of her tracks. She describes a sensitivity to resonance and decay, often running two instances of reverb to sculpt a hollowed midrange, avoiding sharp resonances. For Smith, reverb isn’t just a spatial effect but a dynamic tool for tension and release—building familiarity in a mix and then transforming the space by removing it at key moments.

The KeyStep emerges as a cornerstone of Smith’s current live setup. After years of touring with modular gear, she’s shifted to a more streamlined rig—sampling her instruments and relying on robust MIDI controllers to travel efficiently. The KeyStep, in her view, is reliable and physically resilient, giving her the confidence to manually play bass lines and melodies without concern for fragility on the road.

She also highlights the creative role of the Mutate function, both on the MiniFreak and KeyStep. Mutate provides spontaneous, momentary variations that Smith uses for accenting transitions and injecting energy into her improvisational performances. The combination of tactile keyboard input and hands-on mutation tools serves to keep her in a musician’s mindset, emphasizing direct interaction over pre-programmed sequences.

Smith closes the video with a reflection on her ongoing search for artistic identity. She describes the process not as a linear journey, but as one of continual discovery—often defined by realizing what her voice isn’t, rather than what it is. Letting go of the search paradoxically allowed her authentic voice to emerge.

Her creative excitement is rooted in curiosity and improvisation: approaching each session as an opportunity to encounter something entirely new. This openness to the unknown, enabled by her evolving digital workflow and tactile controllers, is what sustains her sense of artistic adventure.