Softstep 2 Manual

[Latisha Gervase]

BerkeleyCalifornia's Keith McMillen Instruments (KMI) has a solid reputation for innovation in an industry sometimes known for releasing products that are often just another variation on a common design. The QuNeo is unlike any other pad controller available, the SoftStep takes MIDI foot controllers to the next level, and the 12 Step fills a niche that has been ignored for far too long. All of them weigh in at a pound or less, easily fit into a computer bag with a laptop, are impossibly thin, yet still feel very durable.

The first clue that these are products for the "Laptop Generation" comes upon opening the box. No software or documentation comes with the units, save a small pamphlet, which instructs you to go online for the manual and installer. Considering how many discs I send to the landfill each year, I appreciate this, but since these are definitely RTFM products, I went ahead and printed the manual. I'm still old-fashioned enough that I prefer to figure things out with paper in hand.

I set up the QuNeo with Live, Logic, Reason, Animoog, and Pro Tools. Starting is easy, since you can download templates for popular DAWs, but you can go considerably deeper with your own mapping assignments, if you're inclined. I assume most will, after spending some time with the QuNeo, since customization is where the magic lies.

There are many grid controllers available to consumers, but what makes the QuNeo unique is its layout of differently-shaped trigger pads, beyond the prerequisite array of squares. It's a compact surface that still feels organized. Nothing is labeled, but the layout itself is a mnemonic. Square pads obviously lend themselves to percussion trigger assignments, while circles, strips, and triangles can be assigned to volumes, pan, start, stop, or whatever your intuition tells you. In fact, the "rotary" controls are also pads. They can be set to sense circular movements so you can "spin" them, in the virtual sense; although difficult to explain, there are more than enough video examples floating around the Internet showing DJs in action, to get the point across. If you'll pardon the pun, the most striking feature is that the sixteen square pads not only respond to note on/off and velocity, but also lateral movements. Put another way, each pad also functions as an X/Y controller. Alternately, each pad can be subdivided into quarters, so its four corners each function as a trigger, for a total of 64 trigger points. The LEDs illuminate in different colors, depending on where, how fast, or how hard you hit the triggers. I'll leave it to the performer to decide whether or not this kind of feedback is useful, but I have to tell you, it looks really cool, and cool can be very inspiring. Since the QuNeo community seems to be both clever and communicative, the Internet is awash with ideas and seemingly limitless hacks that I didn't have time to explore. I am very interested in its use as a step sequencer though.

Somewhere in the middle lies the recently updated SoftStep. At first glance, it looks like a ten-pad MIDI foot controller, but like the other devices, each pad is multi-assignable and responds to commands along both the X and Y axes. That means each pad can be assigned to send out up to six data streams. In short, it's not your father's MIDI footswitch. Much has been written about how the first version of the SoftStep can work with virtual instruments, so I connected it to a popular guitar multi-effect from the '90s and created banks. Within them, I assigned some buttons for effect on/off, and others for parameter control. Again, I kept it simple, but the possibilities are vast. As an example, within one bank, the first four pads could select between four presets, while four more could switch effects on and off within the preset (distortion, reverb, delay, envelope filter), while the last two controlled the parameters of a particular effect, say, using the X/Y of one pad to control the envelope filter as a wah, and the other to control feedback and width of the delay (up/down, left/right), giving options for "playing" delay effects beyond what traditional expression pedals have allowed. Of course, the SoftStep can be used for clip launch, triggering specific notes (simple bass pedals again) or even lighting-scene changes. A distinct advantage the SoftStep has over the 12 Step is that each of its keys can have independent MIDI CC messages, while the latter's are global for the entire keyboard.

While there are many inexpensive controllers out there that can cover a lot of what the KMI products do, they have a professional feel to them that sets them above the toy-like construction of their similarly-priced brethren. In fact, at Moogfest, I spied Dave Smith, inventor of the legendary Prophet5 and the MIDI protocol itself, using a QuNexus key controller to play his own Evolver synth, which is a pretty sweet endorsement. Frankly, my only criticism is that even with a month's worth of weekends available, I only scratched the surface of what these devices can do. The support forum is active and seems to be a source of countless ideas and solutions, from both users and the KMI staff. There are many hours' worth of rabbit holes you can fall down with any of them, but at the same time, I made them do what I initially wanted, not long after opening the box. You can't ask for much more than that.

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