I should imagine there comes a point in every contemporary composers career where a larger MIDI master keyboard is required, for me that day came this week. I had been flirting with the idea of upgrading for some time, but what with the vast volume of products available on the market and just sheer size of a full format keyboard in general, I found myself trawling through the internet and never really coming to any sort of conclusion on what the best solution would be.

I had been using the M-Audio Oxygen 49 for the past two years and found the assignable faders and pots very useful, especially when working with sound design and electronic based composition. The synth action keys on the other hand and general lack of them were beginning to frustrate me.

Most modern orchestral sample libraries contain patches called ‘key-switches’, essentially this enables the composer to change the articulation of the loaded instrument during the performance at the touch of a piano note; These notes are usually placed outside the playable range of the instrument. In other words, should the composer be using a solo cello for example, using a key-switched patch would provide the ability to switch between a sustained and pizzicato note articulation at the touch of key instead of having to move to a different track with the pizzicato articulation loaded in order to play that part of the composition. This makes playing ‘live’ much more of a possibility and is a great way of adding realism to your sampled instruments. I found that using a 49 key MIDI controller made using these patches very difficult to use as I had to hit the octave button down on the keyboard every time I wanted to change articulation, a frustration which is no longer an issue with an 88 key controller…