Presenting the Arturia Keylab Essential 61 mk3 MIDI controller
by Reptil
13th June 2023
Sponsored by Arturia
Whenever I visit a musician friend, chances are I'll see an Arturia BeatStep or KeyStep on their desk. These controllers proved very popular with both professional and bedroom producers. Somehow I’ve never owned one, but I’ve played them. There’s an immediate quality to using Arturia controllers, so I was thrilled to receive a box from the delivery man containing the newest generation of the full sized key MIDI controller - the Keylab Essential 61 mk3.
Physical appearance
Opening the box, I'm greeted by a sleek looking white keyboard, with a number of controls in rubberized labeled keys, keypads, encoders and faders and a black center section with a little screen and rotary endless controller. Taking it out of the box, it doesn't feel heavy, but it is sturdy. It doesn’t flex, and I'd trust taking this on stage. It comes in at a little over 3 kg, and having carried a lot of heavy synthesizers and workstation keyboards, I consider that a positive. The housing is made from a tough white plastic, with a matte finish. All the controls, wheels, and buttons seem to be of a decent quality.
Connecting it to my computer with the included USB C-to-A cable (after installing the included Analog Lab V software package) my first impression wasn't wrong: the keybed, wheels, and pads feel good when playing, and even the sliders and the rotary encoder in the middle have an assuring feel when using them. The LED lighting (indicating function of the buttons & pads) is clear, but not too bright or tacky. So far so good.
The Analog Lab V instruments didn't disappoint either. There's software included (Ableton Live Lite, UVI Model D Grand Piano and Native Instruments The Gentleman Upright Piano), a free two month subscription to Loopcloud, and an unlimited trial subscription for Melodics, a music learning app. I focussed on the Arturia software only, so you'll find my impressions of that later in this walkthrough.
The controls
The keybed surprised me. Sure enough, it's not a high-end weighted keybed that you'd find in the thousands of Euros/dollars range, but it's good. It's fast, responsive, and has a nice feel. I got my friend and colleague Zendur (who, as a pro player, is far better than me) to give it a go, and he came to the same conclusion.
The keybed of this unit is 61 full sized keys, with spring-loaded action, and they are velocity sensitive.
On the top left of the Keylab there are pitch and modulation wheels. Engaging those, there's no wobbly feel or vague impression of control. Solid and usable.
Just like with any of the controls on the Keylab, the display there will show a short message with the control and the value you've just pressed, turned or slided, except for playing a note on the keyboard (and yes, the wheels and pads show up as well with values).
To the right of the wheels there are buttons that switch between ‘transpose’ and ‘octave up/down’ for the keys. Like the other buttons, these have a reassuring feel also with a light touch. Above that, there's a button that you can switch the MIDI channel output with. The way this works is that you press and hold the button and play one of the keys labeled MIDI Ch 1-16. Next to that, there are the pads, with a button labeled "bank" to switch those (depending on what function the Keylab is set at, more about that, later on).
The pads themselves are pressure and velocity sensitive, and have a reassuring feel to them. They're slightly harder than the soft pads I got as an aftermarket mod on my (now vintage) sampler, but not too hard. I don't like soft pads, that feel like mush: You need some physical feedback, when playing, in my opinion. These pads have a black painted top and the sides are lighted with color LEDs.
To the right of the pads, there are buttons for DAW control, and in the middle there's a slick black section with a 2.5" backlit LCD screen, four black buttons with a little stripe of LED lighting in the middle - Arturia calls these "contextual buttons" - you'll use these a lot! They correspond with the different functions of the keyboard, and what's shown directly above it, on the LCD screen. An endless rotary encoder, with a nice “hi-fi” looking brushed aluminum top, rounds out the middle section. This encoder has a soft clicky feel to it, with a click for each parameter change when you turn it. To engage the function you've chosen, press that button and you’ll hear a muted click sound coming from the inside. It has a reassuring feel to it, and since it's an often-used control, that is important.
Looking to the right of that section, there are four button labeled Hold, Chord, Scale and Arp. The Hold button sustains the note played indefinitely - if it's generated with a synth engine, and a patch that allows for indefinite sustain. It’s simple and useful, not just while playing but also when designing sounds. The Chord function is twofold: First you press and hold the button, and you're greeted with a "create chord or release to edit" message. Holding the chord button allows an up to 16 note (maximum) chord to be created, which is immediately playable. You can see what the notes are, by pressing the contextual key labeled "user" on the screen. Pressing and holding that button does the same as holding the "chord" button. Under the "preset" tab on the screen, there's a number of programmed chords available. These include all the usual suspects, and can be quickly recalled by just engaging the "chord" button. You can set the remembered chord to "user" as well from that list. And yes, it does remember the chord (and scale) setting after power cycling the keyboard. You'll use the central encoder to scroll through and select a preset. Finally for this part, the leftmost button shows a backspace arrow, and the corresponding contextual button underneath allows you to return to the main level, and leave the edit page.
On the bottom left there's the Scale button. It’s the same deal - you can quickly engage it while playing, tapping the button, or you can press and hold the button to edit the setting. When doing so, there's a little drawing of one octave of keys, and in black the notes that are part of that scale, as well as the name and root note. Neat! The contextual buttons show the return button and "root" and "type" which you can press and then use the encoder to scroll and select, just like with the chord function.
Under the bottom right button called "Arp" you'll find a fully featured arpeggiator. There's two pages of values that you can change called; Arp (on/off), mode (direction), Div (note divisions), Gate (note length in %), Swing (in %), Rate (tempo), Sync (Rate/Ext), and Oct (range in octaves). You can engage and edit it in the same way as the Chord and Scale button, which is consistent. Above that there's a button labeled "Prog" and this switches the Keylab in between three main programs, labeled "Arturia", "DAWs" and "User". The button next to that, "Part", switches the set of endless rotary controllers and 3.5 cm faders from assignment 1-8 to 9-16.
There are nine rotary encoders and nine faders on the right side of the Keylab Essential. These are fairly precise and function well. The encoders are made from a similar type of plastic as the enclosure and feel neutral if slightly hard to the touch. They also have a matte surface, and can't be removed - yes, I tried! Thankfully they operate quite precisely and work as intended. The fader caps can be removed, but are a tight fit so there's little chance of losing them. The faders themselves are non-motorized and feel equally precise when dialing in values.
Lastly, on the back there's a USB-C type port, which handles communication with the DAW, and also powers the unit. Next to that is a MIDI out port on a full-sized DIN connector (thank you Arturia!) and a single quarter-inch (6.3mm) pedal input, which provides connection for a sustain, switch or expression/continuous controller.
Analog Lab V: An ocean of sound
Engaging the "Arturia" mode switch on the "Prog" button turns the Keylab Essential into a dedicated controller for the Analog Lab V software instrument package. It comes in a standalone app version, and also in VST2, VST3 and an AAS plugin format.
It is quite a large selection of playable software instrument presets, spanning a wide range of products the manufacturer has released. These presets are neatly organized into Types, Instruments, Banks and (Sound) Designers. On the contextual button the option "Types" is available - you can scroll with the endless encoder or with the up/down marked arrows. Pressing the endless encoder or pressing the contextual button marked with a V will take you into a deeper level of instrument types (for example "bass") which shows up both in the computer application and on the screen on the Keylab Essential keyboard. You can then select a subcategory in the same fashion (for example "Soft Bass", and then once more to the actual preset ("Bassalias", to give one example). Pressing the contextual button labeled "Styles" will take you to the top menu level. There's also a heart icon on the second contextual button, with which you can select a preset that you like - it will then show up in the "Liked" list for quicker future access. When that list is selected in the software application, it is scrollable with the endless encoder. There's no way to engage the "Liked" presets selection from the Keylab Essential controls.
When you've selected a preset in the software on the bottom of the page, there's a visual representation of the mapped controls which correspond to the encoders and faders on the Keylab Essential. In "Arturia" mode the ninth (top right) endless encoder is always the volume fader. So, you can change values both on the screen using the mouse, or with the Keylab Essential keyboard. The values show up both in the application and (with the name) on the LCD display on the keyboard, when you turn an encoder or fader. Presets can also contain two instruments, which are on a separate keyrange, and the controls can be selected with the "Part" button on the Keylab Essential, which then turns green or yellow (corresponding with the visual representation of the keyrange in the software). Every patch has a number of effects modeled as well, including phaser, chorus, distortion, delay and reverb with one controls simply allowing the ‘amount’ to be dialed in. These controls show up with a blue color in the software, so you can distinguish them from the two instruments.
For example, the "Celestial Organ" is a preset sound in the "Bell" category, by sound designer Lily Jordy with a combination from a DX7 V bell type sound, and a Jun-6 V organ. Both instruments span the whole of the key range. And there's a distortion, delay and reverb effect available.
The included version of Analog Lab V (worth $199) can be further upgraded to V Collection. This would allow you to tweak the instruments on an even deeper level, edit all the parameters of the effect and other settings (such as the keyrange) and then save your results.
The more I used it the more I was drawn into it. Below the surface of an easy to access list of presets that you can quickly select and play from the keyboard, there’s a whole ocean of evolving sounds, carefully crafted by creative designers. It’s one of those software instruments that makes you smile widen the deeper you dive. As with any instrument, the Analog Lab V does have an overall sound signature. I’d describe it as precise and lush with a tiny gloss of high fidelity, if that makes sense to you. I’d say; dive in, it’s worth getting wet!
DAW control
Arturia includes scripts for Cubase, Logic, FL Studio, Ableton Live and Bitwig DAW software with the Keylab Essential. In the latest versions of Bitwig, the control assignments are supposed to be already included in the software. Also, it's easy to assign controls to (for example) Studio One DAW software. I own Bitwig and Logic, so I tested the Keylab Essential 61 mk3 with these.
When preparing Bitwig for use with the controller keyboard, it was necessary to put the .bwscript into the folder described in the documentation. After that it worked fine in the newest version of Bitwig (4.4.10) at the moment of writing this walkthrough. I had to go into Settings and then Controllers and select the option “KL Essential 61 mk3 MIDI”. Somehow the ALV option was selected (I might have done that myself) and that didn't work. However, after correcting that everything worked fine.
When engaging the DAW control with Bitwig loaded, the colors of the pads change. This is because Bitwig (and Ableton Live) have a clip launcher and the Keylab Essential presents these clips in their scenes on the pads. Very neat. When selecting Bank A of the pads, the clips are visible as red, orange or green, respective of the selected scenes. With the rotary encoder you can scroll a block of 8 scene locations (2 clips for 4 tracks each) to new scenes. With the contextual buttons (up/down) you can scroll through (blocks of) tracks. This makes for a fast workflow using the clip launcher.
When selecting Bank B of the pads using the bank button, the 8 pads are available to play notes. To the right of the pads, there's a set of buttons to control the DAW with. From top to bottom, there's a save, quantize, undo, and redo button. On the next row down, there's a loop button, left and right arrow keys to move the start point of the cursor, and a metronome button. The Quantize, Loop and Metronome function activates the relevant setting/mode in the DAW. On the next row down there's a trio of stop, start and record buttons and a tap button (for setting tempo)
Underneath the screen, the contextual buttons show (from left to right) a magnifying glass (which pulls up the browser window), then a switch that toggles between Mixer and Device modes, and the previously mentioned up/down buttons (marked with left/right arrowheads).
In Mixer mode, the 8 endless encoders and 8 faders control pan and volume respectively in the first 8 tracks set in the DAW. The Part button next to the encoders and faders flips these to the next 9-16 tracks - very straightforward. The ninth encoder and fader are always assigned to control the pan and volume of the track that is selected in the DAW. The encoders and faders can be used at the same time, so you can actually make a proper mix with these.
In device mode these first 8 encoders and 8 faders control 16 parameter settings of the first (Bitwig) plugin instrument or plugin processor that is selected. Everything is mapped out already. Pressing the Part button so it lights up, allows for control of the second set of 16 parameters to be controlled from the same encoders and faders. This behavior of the Keylab Essential in Mixer and Device mode is consistent across DAWs.
(A note about my experience with Bitwig in relation to the Analog Lab V VST software plugin: Things didn't work when I had the keyboard script loaded into Bitwig. I tried without the .bwextention file loaded, but the newest (non-beta) PC version of Bitwig didn't see the controller without the extension. This is a known issue and most likely this will be solved in future versions of Bitwig.)
Switching to Logic, there's no more clip launcher control obviously. The Bank button now selects a set of 8 more pads to be assigned to notes and played. The contextual buttons now show a Mixer/Device switch on the first button, a mute on the third, and solo on the fourth.
Mixer/Device has the same behavior as in Bitwig, it allows the encoders and faders to control pan, volume, or plugin parameters, with one difference: the Device mode opens the editor screen for the first plugin selected. Switching back to the Mixer mode closes that window.
Ready Player One
Arturia provides the user with a piece of software called MIDI Control Center (MCC for short). With this editor you can assign functions to any programmable button, wheel, fader or encoder and store that within the Keylab Essential unit. This is the third program mode, called User. There are 6 memory slots in the Keylab Essential for these settings which can be called up with the Prog button. The MCC is a very comprehensive editor with a visual interface to map out the controls.
Conclusions
In the three weeks I've used the Keylab Essential 61 mk3 in my studio, I've been more productive in my DAWs and working with them has been faster and more ergonomic. Also, playing around with the many sounds in Analog Lab V using the keyboard has been inspiring. The keyboard controller is great to play with. It made it easier to experiment with sounds, scales, and chords, and on top of that, it's very portable, from one DAW to another, but also physically, outside of the studio.
Given the very reasonable price of purchase (269 USD or 249 Euro and 219 USD or 199 Euros for the 49 key version) and the quality and versatility of this controller, I'm sure this sleek and modern keyboard will be very popular.
Whenever I visit a musician friend, chances are I'll see an Arturia BeatStep or KeyStep on their desk. These controllers proved very popular with both professional and bedroom producers. Somehow I’ve never owned one, but I’ve played them. There’s an immediate quality to using Arturia controllers, so I was thrilled to receive a box from the delivery man containing the newest generation of the full sized key MIDI controller - the Keylab Essential 61 mk3.
Physical appearance
Opening the box, I'm greeted by a sleek looking white keyboard, with a number of controls in rubberized labeled keys, keypads, encoders and faders and a black center section with a little screen and rotary endless controller. Taking it out of the box, it doesn't feel heavy, but it is sturdy. It doesn’t flex, and I'd trust taking this on stage. It comes in at a little over 3 kg, and having carried a lot of heavy synthesizers and workstation keyboards, I consider that a positive. The housing is made from a tough white plastic, with a matte finish. All the controls, wheels, and buttons seem to be of a decent quality.
Connecting it to my computer with the included USB C-to-A cable (after installing the included Analog Lab V software package) my first impression wasn't wrong: the keybed, wheels, and pads feel good when playing, and even the sliders and the rotary encoder in the middle have an assuring feel when using them. The LED lighting (indicating function of the buttons & pads) is clear, but not too bright or tacky. So far so good.
The Analog Lab V instruments didn't disappoint either. There's software included (Ableton Live Lite, UVI Model D Grand Piano and Native Instruments The Gentleman Upright Piano), a free two month subscription to Loopcloud, and an unlimited trial subscription for Melodics, a music learning app. I focussed on the Arturia software only, so you'll find my impressions of that later in this walkthrough.
The controls
The keybed surprised me. Sure enough, it's not a high-end weighted keybed that you'd find in the thousands of Euros/dollars range, but it's good. It's fast, responsive, and has a nice feel. I got my friend and colleague Zendur (who, as a pro player, is far better than me) to give it a go, and he came to the same conclusion.
The keybed of this unit is 61 full sized keys, with spring-loaded action, and they are velocity sensitive.
On the top left of the Keylab there are pitch and modulation wheels. Engaging those, there's no wobbly feel or vague impression of control. Solid and usable.
Just like with any of the controls on the Keylab, the display there will show a short message with the control and the value you've just pressed, turned or slided, except for playing a note on the keyboard (and yes, the wheels and pads show up as well with values).
To the right of the wheels there are buttons that switch between ‘transpose’ and ‘octave up/down’ for the keys. Like the other buttons, these have a reassuring feel also with a light touch. Above that, there's a button that you can switch the MIDI channel output with. The way this works is that you press and hold the button and play one of the keys labeled MIDI Ch 1-16. Next to that, there are the pads, with a button labeled "bank" to switch those (depending on what function the Keylab is set at, more about that, later on).
The pads themselves are pressure and velocity sensitive, and have a reassuring feel to them. They're slightly harder than the soft pads I got as an aftermarket mod on my (now vintage) sampler, but not too hard. I don't like soft pads, that feel like mush: You need some physical feedback, when playing, in my opinion. These pads have a black painted top and the sides are lighted with color LEDs.
Looking to the right of that section, there are four button labeled Hold, Chord, Scale and Arp. The Hold button sustains the note played indefinitely - if it's generated with a synth engine, and a patch that allows for indefinite sustain. It’s simple and useful, not just while playing but also when designing sounds. The Chord function is twofold: First you press and hold the button, and you're greeted with a "create chord or release to edit" message. Holding the chord button allows an up to 16 note (maximum) chord to be created, which is immediately playable. You can see what the notes are, by pressing the contextual key labeled "user" on the screen. Pressing and holding that button does the same as holding the "chord" button. Under the "preset" tab on the screen, there's a number of programmed chords available. These include all the usual suspects, and can be quickly recalled by just engaging the "chord" button. You can set the remembered chord to "user" as well from that list. And yes, it does remember the chord (and scale) setting after power cycling the keyboard. You'll use the central encoder to scroll through and select a preset. Finally for this part, the leftmost button shows a backspace arrow, and the corresponding contextual button underneath allows you to return to the main level, and leave the edit page.
On the bottom left there's the Scale button. It’s the same deal - you can quickly engage it while playing, tapping the button, or you can press and hold the button to edit the setting. When doing so, there's a little drawing of one octave of keys, and in black the notes that are part of that scale, as well as the name and root note. Neat! The contextual buttons show the return button and "root" and "type" which you can press and then use the encoder to scroll and select, just like with the chord function.
There are nine rotary encoders and nine faders on the right side of the Keylab Essential. These are fairly precise and function well. The encoders are made from a similar type of plastic as the enclosure and feel neutral if slightly hard to the touch. They also have a matte surface, and can't be removed - yes, I tried! Thankfully they operate quite precisely and work as intended. The fader caps can be removed, but are a tight fit so there's little chance of losing them. The faders themselves are non-motorized and feel equally precise when dialing in values.
Lastly, on the back there's a USB-C type port, which handles communication with the DAW, and also powers the unit. Next to that is a MIDI out port on a full-sized DIN connector (thank you Arturia!) and a single quarter-inch (6.3mm) pedal input, which provides connection for a sustain, switch or expression/continuous controller.
Analog Lab V: An ocean of sound
Engaging the "Arturia" mode switch on the "Prog" button turns the Keylab Essential into a dedicated controller for the Analog Lab V software instrument package. It comes in a standalone app version, and also in VST2, VST3 and an AAS plugin format.
It is quite a large selection of playable software instrument presets, spanning a wide range of products the manufacturer has released. These presets are neatly organized into Types, Instruments, Banks and (Sound) Designers. On the contextual button the option "Types" is available - you can scroll with the endless encoder or with the up/down marked arrows. Pressing the endless encoder or pressing the contextual button marked with a V will take you into a deeper level of instrument types (for example "bass") which shows up both in the computer application and on the screen on the Keylab Essential keyboard. You can then select a subcategory in the same fashion (for example "Soft Bass", and then once more to the actual preset ("Bassalias", to give one example). Pressing the contextual button labeled "Styles" will take you to the top menu level. There's also a heart icon on the second contextual button, with which you can select a preset that you like - it will then show up in the "Liked" list for quicker future access. When that list is selected in the software application, it is scrollable with the endless encoder. There's no way to engage the "Liked" presets selection from the Keylab Essential controls.
When you've selected a preset in the software on the bottom of the page, there's a visual representation of the mapped controls which correspond to the encoders and faders on the Keylab Essential. In "Arturia" mode the ninth (top right) endless encoder is always the volume fader. So, you can change values both on the screen using the mouse, or with the Keylab Essential keyboard. The values show up both in the application and (with the name) on the LCD display on the keyboard, when you turn an encoder or fader. Presets can also contain two instruments, which are on a separate keyrange, and the controls can be selected with the "Part" button on the Keylab Essential, which then turns green or yellow (corresponding with the visual representation of the keyrange in the software). Every patch has a number of effects modeled as well, including phaser, chorus, distortion, delay and reverb with one controls simply allowing the ‘amount’ to be dialed in. These controls show up with a blue color in the software, so you can distinguish them from the two instruments.
For example, the "Celestial Organ" is a preset sound in the "Bell" category, by sound designer Lily Jordy with a combination from a DX7 V bell type sound, and a Jun-6 V organ. Both instruments span the whole of the key range. And there's a distortion, delay and reverb effect available.
The included version of Analog Lab V (worth $199) can be further upgraded to V Collection. This would allow you to tweak the instruments on an even deeper level, edit all the parameters of the effect and other settings (such as the keyrange) and then save your results.
The more I used it the more I was drawn into it. Below the surface of an easy to access list of presets that you can quickly select and play from the keyboard, there’s a whole ocean of evolving sounds, carefully crafted by creative designers. It’s one of those software instruments that makes you smile widen the deeper you dive. As with any instrument, the Analog Lab V does have an overall sound signature. I’d describe it as precise and lush with a tiny gloss of high fidelity, if that makes sense to you. I’d say; dive in, it’s worth getting wet!
DAW control
Arturia includes scripts for Cubase, Logic, FL Studio, Ableton Live and Bitwig DAW software with the Keylab Essential. In the latest versions of Bitwig, the control assignments are supposed to be already included in the software. Also, it's easy to assign controls to (for example) Studio One DAW software. I own Bitwig and Logic, so I tested the Keylab Essential 61 mk3 with these.
When preparing Bitwig for use with the controller keyboard, it was necessary to put the .bwscript into the folder described in the documentation. After that it worked fine in the newest version of Bitwig (4.4.10) at the moment of writing this walkthrough. I had to go into Settings and then Controllers and select the option “KL Essential 61 mk3 MIDI”. Somehow the ALV option was selected (I might have done that myself) and that didn't work. However, after correcting that everything worked fine.
When engaging the DAW control with Bitwig loaded, the colors of the pads change. This is because Bitwig (and Ableton Live) have a clip launcher and the Keylab Essential presents these clips in their scenes on the pads. Very neat. When selecting Bank A of the pads, the clips are visible as red, orange or green, respective of the selected scenes. With the rotary encoder you can scroll a block of 8 scene locations (2 clips for 4 tracks each) to new scenes. With the contextual buttons (up/down) you can scroll through (blocks of) tracks. This makes for a fast workflow using the clip launcher.
When selecting Bank B of the pads using the bank button, the 8 pads are available to play notes. To the right of the pads, there's a set of buttons to control the DAW with. From top to bottom, there's a save, quantize, undo, and redo button. On the next row down, there's a loop button, left and right arrow keys to move the start point of the cursor, and a metronome button. The Quantize, Loop and Metronome function activates the relevant setting/mode in the DAW. On the next row down there's a trio of stop, start and record buttons and a tap button (for setting tempo)
In Mixer mode, the 8 endless encoders and 8 faders control pan and volume respectively in the first 8 tracks set in the DAW. The Part button next to the encoders and faders flips these to the next 9-16 tracks - very straightforward. The ninth encoder and fader are always assigned to control the pan and volume of the track that is selected in the DAW. The encoders and faders can be used at the same time, so you can actually make a proper mix with these.
In device mode these first 8 encoders and 8 faders control 16 parameter settings of the first (Bitwig) plugin instrument or plugin processor that is selected. Everything is mapped out already. Pressing the Part button so it lights up, allows for control of the second set of 16 parameters to be controlled from the same encoders and faders. This behavior of the Keylab Essential in Mixer and Device mode is consistent across DAWs.
(A note about my experience with Bitwig in relation to the Analog Lab V VST software plugin: Things didn't work when I had the keyboard script loaded into Bitwig. I tried without the .bwextention file loaded, but the newest (non-beta) PC version of Bitwig didn't see the controller without the extension. This is a known issue and most likely this will be solved in future versions of Bitwig.)
Switching to Logic, there's no more clip launcher control obviously. The Bank button now selects a set of 8 more pads to be assigned to notes and played. The contextual buttons now show a Mixer/Device switch on the first button, a mute on the third, and solo on the fourth.
Mixer/Device has the same behavior as in Bitwig, it allows the encoders and faders to control pan, volume, or plugin parameters, with one difference: the Device mode opens the editor screen for the first plugin selected. Switching back to the Mixer mode closes that window.
Ready Player One
Arturia provides the user with a piece of software called MIDI Control Center (MCC for short). With this editor you can assign functions to any programmable button, wheel, fader or encoder and store that within the Keylab Essential unit. This is the third program mode, called User. There are 6 memory slots in the Keylab Essential for these settings which can be called up with the Prog button. The MCC is a very comprehensive editor with a visual interface to map out the controls.
Conclusions
In the three weeks I've used the Keylab Essential 61 mk3 in my studio, I've been more productive in my DAWs and working with them has been faster and more ergonomic. Also, playing around with the many sounds in Analog Lab V using the keyboard has been inspiring. The keyboard controller is great to play with. It made it easier to experiment with sounds, scales, and chords, and on top of that, it's very portable, from one DAW to another, but also physically, outside of the studio.
Given the very reasonable price of purchase (269 USD or 249 Euro and 219 USD or 199 Euros for the 49 key version) and the quality and versatility of this controller, I'm sure this sleek and modern keyboard will be very popular.
