the artery aqui lab mark 2 gives you easy access to your da and our Turia's
analog lab but does it really improve your workflow let's find out
alright here's a quick tour of all the features from left to right you've got
some chord functions and the 16 pads below that you have transpose octave
shift buttons and pitch and modulation wheels moving right you have your dog
controls I put on the Ableton overlay for Ableton functions the key lab does
come with other magnetic overlays for other DAWs for Ableton you have solo
mute record arm reenable view punch in punch out metronome and undo yes
undo thank you below that you've got your transport buttons you know the play
stop record right in the middle you've got a nice jog wheel for selecting
things on the screen the screen lets you select modes change settings etc at the
bottom you've got three buttons to quickly switch from the primary three
modes analog lab DAW and user next are a few buttons that in analog lab mode let
you layer sounds or split them on the keyboard last you've got nine knobs and
faders which allow you to control analog lab parameters or dog tracks below the
faders you have selector buttons I'll get to those later on the back you've
got cv outs for pitch gate mod one and two MIDI in and out three auxilary ins
expression and sustain pedal ports cv n and USB you also have the option for a
power cable this feels like a premium keyboard you get a nice metal
construction which feels high-quality for a controller keyboard let's talk
about the key bed the sensitivity of the keys feels good there are of course much
nicer key beds on much pricier keyboards I've been playing this for a few weeks
now and using the default velocity curve setting I don't feel like there's enough
volume difference between playing soft and hard
I was able to fix this by adjusting the velocity curve and saving it to a user
template the pads feel pretty good I played some drum kits with them and was
very happy let's talk about the da mode this is something I really love you have
immediate dog control I'll show you the Ableton mode but it also has presets for
other DAWs like Reaper Studio One Cubase Pro Tools logic and also a standard
preset to use the da mode you just press the da button
live integration is great for live looping you hit a pad to record into a
clip or trigger it the metronome button is really handy and well-placed you can
use the knobs and faders on the right to control each track the knobs control pan
and the faders of course control volume you can also select which track you're
working on by using the selector buttons at the bottom I've got track 1 selected
here now I'm selecting track 3 and I can play the drums so this is a nice laundry
list of functions but how does all this really help your music creation workflow
I'll get to that in a second first I want to show you the analog lab
integration one of the main selling points of the key lab mark 2 is the
tight integration with analog lab artorias software analog lab is a plugin
that gives you access to artorias 21 instruments which include vintage sense
and pianos you get 6500 presets from the V Collection and they sound great if you
own the pull V collection or one of the scents in it you'll be able to access
the full controls of the Sense and tweak them to your heart's desire
load up analog lab and you can browse search and filter presets so easily
once you load a preset that you like you load it and now you have control of that
synth using the faders and knobs this in itself speeds up workflow so I've got a
preset loaded here now let's do
you even got dedicated buttons to quickly find sounds when you're in
analog lab mode the buttons below the faders lets you filter the presets from
analog lab quickly so if I press one I see just the piano presets and the
second electric piano organ pad bass and so on this helps when you're creating a
new track to quickly find your next sound from analog lab let's talk about
the user mode the user mode is where I started to get really excited you can
use the user mode to customize what every knob and button deaths you can
create up to 10 user templates each with its own settings for example you can
create a user mode that assigns knob one to send MIDI 74 or a button to send
another MIDI message it's really powerful I've got lots of virtual
instruments and I'd love to create custom templates for all of them so I
can control settings using these knobs and faders the key lab comes with our
Turia's midi control center which is software that really helps you customize
your user templates I was very successful with the plug-in Nexus 2 I've
mapped several controls on Nexus to the knobs and faders you'll see that I'm
controlling cut off with the first knob and resonance with the second I can also
adjust reverb with the fader I've also assigned the preset previous and next
buttons to these buttons on the keyboard this way I can cycle through the presets
in Nexus really fast
this makes finding sounds and Nexus really easy but when I tried to do this
with other virtual instruments like serum acid and some others I couldn't I
believe this is because other virtual instruments don't have default MIDI Maps
if they did I could have created multiple user templates for each virtual
instrument which would have been awesome the only option left is to use the MIDI
learn function on virtual instruments but your MIDI mapping saved for that
song only now virtual instrument mappings aside let's talk about the
workflow because this is where the key lab really shines I've loaded analog lab
on a track in Ableton and now I'm going to click the dedicated analog lab button
on the keyboard then select electric piano now you see
all the electric piano presets let's pick one
you can also layer sounds an analog lab let's add a pad to the same keyboard
sound we used before just click part two button then pad and select a pad sound
and I can just the volumes for the individual parts here
I'm gonna get rid of that pad for now just so I can show you the workflow when
you're ready to record switch to da mode and press the corresponding pad and
we're ready to record into an empty clip slot on that track
now let's create another track with analog lab and find a base sound I
switch back to DA mode and I can adjust the volume click an empty slot on that
track and we're ready to record now let's switch over to our drum track it
can also use these buttons to move tracks and let's record a little beat
boom alright let's load up Nexus next and add
a little something from Nexus
and it's recorded the automation
workflow is great on here all the functions are contained in one device
I'm not moving away from the keyboard it's all right here the only time I'm
looking at the computer screen is when I create a new track or I'm exploring
presets an additional function that you won't find on other keyboards is the
collapse ability to connect to modular synths with its cv connectors in the
back again this is fully customizable in the user modes so how much does the key
lab cost the key lab mark 249 key keyboard is four hundred and fifty
dollars the 61 key version is five hundred dollars the value of this
keyboard really comes from three things first the analog lab sounds and
integration the sounds are top-notch and finding and controlling them is
wonderful second is the way it helps your workflow the doc controls are
really intuitive lastly it's the high customizability so this sounds like all
good stuff but was anything missing the only glaringly missing feature is its
ability to control Ableton devices this includes Ableton instruments like
operator or wave table and Ableton effects are Turia's minilab mark 2 does
this with no setup needed at all you just plug it in set it to Ableton mode
and you're off now what you get with the key lab vs. the mini lab is much more
comprehensive doc control if you liked this video hit the like button and
subscribe keep making the music that you love and I'll see you guys