I’m looking for some advice on a recommended controller between these two. I’m looking to control a Digitakt plus a couple of synths one poly one mono and obviously this could get added to overtime. I’m inclined to go with the beatstep Pro because of its connectivity but there is a lot of love for the keystep so I’m not sure.
Thoughts?
The beatstep pro can control two synths and a drum machine.
It’s nice that you can use the pads directly with the 8 tracks on the digitakt.
The keystep has the arp…
Get both?
Guess it depends on whether you want keys or pads, and if and how you plan to use their sequencers.
They do complement each other well, it seems.
I use the Beatstep-Pro as sequencer mostly. The pads are good to key in single notes or events, but for me beeing a keyboard player it’s not comfortable enough to play melodies or chords fluidly.
If you want to play rich pads with a polyphonic synth (many notes on many octaves), I would recommend to go for keyboards with 61 keys.
I plan to use either with a Digitakt and a Fusebox. With the option of adding other mono synths in the future. I’m not a big keyboard player so the smaller keystep does appeal. On the other hand the connectivity of the beatstep Pro with its firmware updates is also very appealing.
The Beatstep-Pro is easy to program and fun to play with the patterns live.
If you are sequencing the fusebox, I would recommend the Beatstep. We have 16 encoders and each has access to note, velocity, and gate values. All values can be changed for each step, or together in one move, which I find very usefull. Example, getting all velocities down to a single value and then change selected steps from there to add rhythmical modulation is quickly done. There are some very handy editing features implemented too. Like creating ties between notes, or extending a short pattern to more lenght by copying the content. The new OS gives us “scenes”, which are pattern chains or a kind of song mode.