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Half Size Poly Aftertouch?
Just got a Korg Micro Key Air. While I do love it for its compact size and three octaves, it has no aftertouch. Some of the wind & string patches on the Moog Model 15 beg for aftertouch for controlling amp envelope and/or filter. Or would be cool to use aftertouch for surfing through waveforms on the Waldorf Wave and Native. Anything portable like the Micro Key Air with the expressiveness of an Osmose? Don't need knobs since I have a MIDI Fighter Twister.
Comments
https://www.keithmcmillen.com/products/k-board/
From what I can tell, this is the most affordable MPE controller on the market. I haven't tried it myself, but it should have polyphonic aftertouch, velocity sensitivity, and key tilt for bends similar to the wiggle on the osmose.
Now that I'm looking more closely at it, the "key tilt" is up and down instead of side to side. So vibrato, or bends would be up and down motion on the keys. The osmose is side to side motion.
There are a range of options but which ones really qualify for your scenario depends on:
Do you need it to feel like a proper keyboard.
Do you want more than one dimension of per-note expression. ie You mention Osmose, and that doesnt just have aftertouch, it also senses the entire range of downwards key travel, not just the final aftertouch zone of key travel, and also detects keys wiggled left-right. When we get into this category, we are talking about MPE controllers, since that MPE form of MIDI is required in order to support the multiple expressive dimensions per key. The synths you will control with it need to support MPE in order to use all these dimensions, although such controllers also tend to have a 'poly aftertouch only' mode.
Options are currently very limited if you just need poly aftertouch but need it to feel like a proper keyboard. Hydrasynth explorer is the most obvious option, although its probably still much larger than you would want, and a different price point.
The Roli Piano M (formerly called the Lumi) is another option, and this also has the left-right wiggle of keys for changing pitch when set to use MPE mode. You can also use more than one to expand the number of keys/octave range. However I dont like how they feel, the range of downwards key movement isnt great, and my early units feel cheap and not to pleasant to touch, although I dont know if that improved slightly with later ones.
The Xkey and Xkey Air support poly aftertouch and superficially resemble a normal keyboard. They dont really feel like a normal keyboard though, more like a low profile computer typing keyboard in some ways. I am a bit out of date with these, I believe they were a CME product but at some point that has changed to Artesia and a 37 key version also exists.
Then we are mostly on to full MPE controllers that dont even try to feel like a normal keyboard, and some of them dont even have a traditional keyboard layout. Options include the Roli Seaboard Block M, some Keith McMullen stuff if still available, the Exquis, and much less well known options like the Striso board. I could include the Linnstrument 128 but thats a leap up in terms of size and price. Several other options no longer exist, eg the Sensel Morph and the Joue Play. You could also check whether different sorts of products with pads support poly aftertouch, eg whether the Ableton Move now supports this.
Do you need polyphonic aftertouch, or just aftertouch? If just aftertouch, then the Akai MPK Mini Plus would be a good choice, otherwise check this link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/1axirmo/midi_keyboards_with_polyphonic_aftertouch/
The Xkey Air 37 supports both channel pressure and polyphonic aftertouch.
https://xkeyair.com/xkey37/
I don’t think channel pressure is on there. Just pressure controlled pitch bends. There’s really no depth to have pressure.
The Xkeys have always had polyphonic aftertouch listed in their specs.
Great info! Thank you!