NAMM 2020 – Arturia’s New KeyStep Pro Packs a Whopping 22 CV Outputs

Today Arturia have (finally) announced a much requested and anticipated product, the KeyStep Pro CV/MIDI controller and sequencer, adding an enormous array of features and additional connectivity to their original 2016 KeyStep. It joins Arturia’s ‘Step’ product line among the BeatStep (2014) and BeatStep Pro (2015).

The KeyStep has been a cult hit among the modular synth crowd, it’s low cost, aftertouch enabled keyboard, incredibly fun polyphonic sequencer and CV outputs (with MIDI to CV functionality) made it a no brainier – but many wished they could have the BeatStep Pro’s additional 8 trigger outputs and its associated sequencing tracks and some extra melodic CV outputs so modular users could make use of the polyphony.

Well Arturia have delivered that, and more. The KeyStep Pro features an astonishing total of 22 CV outputs – 4 voices each consisting of Pitch, Gate and Mod, 8 x Drum Gate outputs, a Clock output and a Clock Reset output. Next to all that is MIDI in and 2 x MIDI outputs. It’s worth noting these are full size traditional MIDI jacks rather than the BeatStep Pro’s minijack connections that require adaptors. That’s, quite frankly, a butt load of connections.

With those 4 fully featured voice outputs, it’s probably no surprise that the KeyStep Pro sequencer features 4 separate sequencing tracks, with track one doubling as the drum track sequencer. Each track can have 16 chain-able patterns per project.  It also features on board memory to store your projects and all the Scenes and Patterns within.

Looking closely at the panel, we can see there’s a chord mode, scales, arpeggiator, touch strip mod and pitch ‘wheels’, and the nifty little performance touch strip that we saw on the Arturia DrumBrute impact.

I think this is going to be a big product for Arturia, there’s an awful lot to like. We can’t wait to get our hands on it.

arturia.com/products/hybrid-synths/keystep-pro/overview