Joué Play | 4-in-1 Portable Digital Instrument, with Powerful and Easy-to-use Musical App Included - Plug & Play Music

Product Information

Developed by Arnaud Rousset and Pascal Jouguet (co-creator of the JazzMutant Lemur multitouch controller, best known for use by Björk), this is a modular system with a wooden baseboard, and up to four different control layouts, connecting to macOS, Windows, or iOS. The first two buttons on the module are dedicated to octave transpose and can't be programmed. (There's no visual indication of the transposition that's currently in effect.) The others can be assigned a variety of MIDI messages, or act as toggles for other modes like sustain and vibrato. (Again there's no indication of which modes are active, so it might have made more sense to have a way to group the buttons into on/off pairs instead.) The Joué editor. A Fretboard preset is open for editing, although the device itself is running the chromatic Scaler module.

So as a stopgap measure until we get support, I've made a template that will allow the automation controls (pitch bend, aftertouch, cc74) to be recorded for MPE-mode controllers. The Mini is a flexible little controller that you can take anywhere and fits into the smallest nook in your studio or live rig, but if we were going to choose just one model, it’d be the FLkey 37. The display and the extra buttons, plus its expanded playing functions, make it worth the extra money and the extra space - recommended for any FL Studio user seeking keyboard integration and hardware control.Portability is further aided by a battery power option, which promises to give you more than 14 hours of runtime. You can also power the keyboard via USB. The obligatory USB port, meanwhile, is now of the 'C' variety, and there's now a proper 5-pin MIDI Out, too. The most significant improvement over the original Rise might well be the Keywave2 silicone playing surface, which provides ‘frets’ that enable players to more accurately judge the position of their fingers on each key. As well as making Rise 2 more playable than its predecessor, it's also easier for players accustomed to standard keyboards to get to grips with.

The slim keys are joined by pads, faders and knobs, plus touchstrips for pitchbend and modulation and a new OLED display. There’s also a built-in arpeggiator, a Chord mode and custom DAW presets for Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro, Bitwig Studio and Reason. The Joue Play combines an expressive multi-instrument, an intuitive application and interactive content to practice. It's also a MIDI controller compatible with all MIDI music softwares (DAWs). Rise 2 also offers a new platinum blue anodised aluminium chassis, giving it a more contemporary look. Build quality is said to have been improved, and you now get both standard MIDI and USB-C ports to ensure maximum compatibility with your software and hardware instruments. Like most 88-key keyboards, the layout differs a bit from the smaller models, with the mod and pitch wheels on the top panel, and the controls spread out a little bit more. The sounds are pretty impressive, especially when you start to jazz them up a bit with the effects sliders. Usefully, the actions you perform on the effects are recorded as part of the clips in the Joué app as automation, which makes it easy to spice up your loops and make them more intriguing. The app allows you to add multiple parts of different bar lengths and quantise or delete the recordings, though not edit in any greater depth than that. Combined with the ability to layer sounds, you can make multi-part, multi-instrument projects and then export them as audio mixdowns, stems or MIDI files.

Offering a playable semi-weighted and a great set of features, Launchkey 88 Mk3 is a fine option at its price point.

The 25-note keyboard is said to be more playable than before, with improved velocity response. With just two octaves to work with, though, there’s not going to be a great deal of scope for giving two-handed performances. Besides this, you must set the port to 1 for the MPE controller and any instruments you'd like to control should be set to port 2. If you need to use patterns to control different MPE instruments I'd recommend using Patcher to route the appropriate MIDI ports, to be triggered by automation within the pattern. If you have upper zone MPE enabled make sure to change the MPE Channel 16/1 controls to MIDI channel 1 so you don't miss your first played notes! Like the Sensel Morph, the Joué itself is a generic multi‑touch sensor — the modules are essentially passive (though they are configurable, as described below). Unlike the Sensel, the Joué doesn't feature Bluetooth for wireless operation, and its interfacing is purely MIDI. Getting Started You can also control instruments and automation, browse presets from Image-Line plugins and assign custom controls.Grand Clavier: A full-width 'grand piano' module offering two octaves of piano keys (each somewhat wider than the keys on the synth module), again with optional vibrato, Y sensing and aftertouch. And again, glissando is an option. Like the scaler, there's a bubble control, two configurable buttons and a ribbon. Using the Joué Play is a lovely experience. I’ve been making ambient and other kinds of electronic music for the better part of three decades now and I found myself coming up with new expressions that I never would have before, particularly when exploring the non-standard controls. As a keyboardist, I tend to favor basic piano-style note playing but Joué Play encouraged me to break away from this. My normal controller, a vintage Roland synthesizer from the ’80s, has a solid keybed but little in the way of unusual control functions. My fingers rarely stray from the keys. With Joué Play, they were much more mobile, exploring and experimenting. I found the guitar module particularly inspiring, coaxing out not only playing styles and note combinations that I wouldn’t normally come up with but a smile on my face. Tap out a beat, lay down some sweeping pads, bend some chords—all without swapping out hardware. Not only a super-compact MIDI keyboard controller (though it most certainly can be that), Akai Professional’s MPK Mini Play mk3 is also a self-contained portable instrument that offers 128 built-in sounds. Launched in 2015, the Risewas a more affordable version of ROLI’s full-size Seaboard MPEcontroller, but has been off the market for two years. The new version is easier to play, more durable, and comes with a better bundle of software. Synth: A double-width module implementing an octave and a half of keyboard, with a selection of buttons in a row at the top. Vibrato and aftertouch (channel or poly) are supported, as is Y ('slide'). Again, at present these control streams are not useful polyphonically except with MPE enabled.