Keith McMillen K-Board Pro 4 48-Note USB/MIDI Keyboard

The Keith McMillen K-Board Pro 4 has been a long time in the making, and while we were waiting, we were pretty much starved of anything like this touchpad-based keyboard. The 48 notes of the Pro 4 can be ‘pushed’ horizontally back and forth to steer a controller, so a single key can be played much like a violin where your finger acts like a bow playing vibrato. Luckily, a uniform standard has also been specifically developed to support this innovation: MIDI Polyphonic Expression, or ‘MPE’, so if your DAW supports MPE, you can use the K-Board Pro 4 without any issues, and if it doesn’t, the relevant update is very likely to pop up, very, very soon.

The Keith McMillen K-Board Pro 4
Essentially an enlarged touch-pad in the shape of a keyboard, you can play this future-proofed instrument in three dimensions with swiping gestures: horizontal, vertical (depth), and aftertouch. And while the keys are touch-sensitive, they’re also pressure and release sensitive, so every nuanced movement across the keys is detected and translated into sound. Since it can be described as an instrument in its own right, it also takes some learning to build the skill needed to really play it, so don’t be surprised if you spend your first night with this smooth MIDI operator wondering just what it wants from you. However, once you’ve nailed even a few of its subtle controls, you’ll be able to flavour your performance with breathtaking expression.

Polyphonics
Horizontally ‘wiggle’ your finger while holding a key and the pitch-bend function is seamlessly activated, and anyone who knows anything about MIDI might remember that only one pitch-bend value is allowed per channel (as opposed to velocity sensitivity which is specified per note). Much like other developers, the K-Board Pro 4 counter this by dividing the played notes over different MIDI channels – which is basically the reason that the MPE standard was even designed, since your plug-ins are likely to find the multiple MIDI channel polyphony concept a little strange. With this full, astute support, the K-Board doesn’t just look like more than any normal keyboard, it actually is.