Studio To The Stage: Harnessing the Sounds from Arturia Astrolab

Arturia have announced their new instrument the Astrolab, which harnesses everything we love about V-Collection and Pigments in a beautiful stage piano instrument. From deep basslines to ethereal pads, we take a look at how the Astrolab empowers musicians to unlock sounds, and how this might work for you from the studio to the stage.

In the Studio

In the studio, Astrolab lets you quickly dial in sounds using presets from Analog Lab Pro which utilise curated macro parameters for sound design. In this example I quickly change the brightness of the piano to a more muted quality. Using physical modelling, instead of samples, Astrolab’s sound engine actually changes the emulation of the material used when the hammer hits the piano string, in this case a more felt like material.

From this, I decide a string ensemble would sit nicely underneath my ‘scandi inspired’piano sound. Astrolab lets me add a second part to this preset, letting me browse and select a string ensemble from the Augmented Strings instrument. From here I can set all the octave ranges, splits and other performance settings and save this as my own preset on Astrolab.

To the Stage

All this can be directly linked and integrated when connected to Analoglab Pro on your computer. In fact Astrolab’s full potential is unlocked, when coupled with a v collection or individual instrument license.

With a license you can design your own patch, assign macros, and save as a preset in Analog Lab Pro. You then port this to your Astrolab as a performance preset and assign it into a playlist or like it as a favourite. Then all you need to do is pack up your Astrolab when your ready to gig and take it with you, no need for a computer as you can manage a lot of the setting via the Astrolab Connect app which links directly with Astrolab.

And that’s it, that’s why there isn’t too many on-board controls. Its about giving you the performance controls you will actually use when on stage. Other than maybe adding some more sets of macros for say modulation there is no design that can cover all the patching and tweaking you can do with the sounds included in Astrolab. For this reason having a streamlined panel design is a great way of making this an amazing performance stage keyboard that uncloaks the high-quality sounds Arturia is known for.

Astrolab is available now. Find your Nearest Dealer HERE