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Small MIDI Keyboard With Toggle/Latch/Hold Function?
Hi,
I'm new here to the forum and not musically inclined, more of a techie type 
Anyway my wife has started to play on a church worship team and I set her up with the Korg iM1 app on my iPad Air 2 and a Casio Privia PX-160 with CCK as the main controller. She is mainly playing pads and adding fill where needed. She was wondering if we could add another small midi controller (25 keys) that could be used to kick off a chord and just hold it while she uses the PX-160 to play over top?
We borrowed a K-board https://www.keithmcmillen.com/products/k-board/ from a friend and it has a toggle function where it will hold whatever keys you press until you turn off the toggle and this works fine. I believe other manufactures may also refer to this as "latch". Now the K-board is ok, but it's not a standard keyboard format which she would prefer. Any suggestions on 25-key controllers that have this functionality in a normal keyboard format? Also, how does a toggle/latch differ from a sustain function? I've seen some controllers that will hold sustain on until the sustain button is pressed again to turn it off. Is this effectively the same thing as a toggle/latch?
Thx
Josh
Comments
I think the Akai LPK of MPK support latch, chords or both.
Or what about an app like ChordPolyPad? Not sure but might be worth investigating.
Also, that Casio might support a hold mode via pedal. Lots of keyboard do.
Thanks syrupcore the Casio does support sustain on the pedal and works fine but if she wants to hold a chord on a small keyboard and layer over it with the Casio, the sustain pedal on the Casio doesn't really help in that scenario.
From what I've seen on the lpk and mpk is that they have a latch function but only in Arpeggiator mode.
Can you actually use 2 keyboards at the same time? I guess it would need either a powered hub or one of them to be Bluetooth midi maybe.
Yes, I have an Akai LPK 25 - It does have latch, it also has a built in arpeggiator which is also useful
Arturia Keystep may be a good option. Has 37 keys though, but very portable.
Yes we borrowed the k-board from a friend and connected both it and the px160 thru a USB hub. You just use multi mode in im1 and assign a different midi channel for each controller.
Thanks Andy, can you comment on how latch works on the lpk? I was looking at the user guide and it seemed like latch only works in arp mode but we don't want it to play the notes in a sequence, we want to be able to play a chord and lock it in to keep playing until we stop it. Does latch allow for that on the lpk or will it only play individual notes in a sequence like up/down or down/up etc?
When the arp is turned off the latch button works like a sustain button, so keys held when you press latch will continue to play until latch is turned off....this is from the quickstart manual.
I'm not sure if you have to turn the latch off and back on again if you want to change the chord though, I can give this a go for you later when I am at home.
Thanks Andy. I had come across the following post regarding the mpk http://community.akaipro.com/akai_professional/topics/latch-mode-for-advance-series-controllers-hold-sustained-notes-irrespective-of-arrpeggiator and assumed that the lpk would work similar.
I know that with arp turned off, you can sustain a note by holding latch down. What I was hoping for was to enable holding by pressing latch and then hit the desired chord which would hold those notes until latch is pressed again. If you could test it out that would be greatly appreciated!
That is what it should work like.....you do not have to hold down latch. The latch is a toggle, press once for on, press again for off.
I'll make double sure for you later....
Hey Andy, no worries, thanks for trying! It's kinda odd to me that they don't allow it to latch either unless you're using arp as other models at least allow you to override the momentary vs latch behavior in the editors.
Yeah, I was sure I had been using it in latch in the past like that to drive a beatstep, obviously not lol
just use a latching (foot) switch instead of a sustain pedal...
Good shout !
Thanks for the replies, the issue wasn't if we could or couldn't use a pedal, we just wanted to have a mini keyboard with a latch button built in for simplicity sake -- one less item to setup and/or lose
Anyway we ended up with a m-audio keystation mini 32 which has a sustain button with latch mode. So far it seems to do exactly what we were looking for. Thanks for everybody's input!