 Hello, OsladeSync here. Artoria recently released the version 2.5 firmware for the Keystep Pro, along with this new Chroma version in lovely metallic black. Yum, yum, yum. Artoria recently sent me across the new Chroma Keystep Pro and asked me to put together a little video which demonstrated the new features that have been added to this version and that is exactly what we're going to do in this video today. Before we dive into the new features, I just want to make clear that the firmware update is for the whole Keystep Pro family, not just for the Chroma. And actually, in terms of what's different between the original Keystep and the Chroma, it's mostly aesthetic. So yes, we'll start by talking about the one thing that the Chroma version gets that the original Keystep Pro doesn't, and it's just an aesthetic thing. And it's down to the fact that on the original Keystep Pro each of the tracks had their own colors which were kind of defined on the face of the controller. On the Chroma, we have this sleek black look instead, which means that we don't have individual colors sort of painted on the controller itself. So what we have instead on the Chroma is the ability to change each of the tracks' colors. Now, most of the new features in this firmware can be accessed using the track menu which we get to by doing Shift and the track here. And if we come down towards the bottom here, find track color and this allows us to set the color for this particular track. So at the moment is Aquamarine and if we wanted to instead have say purple, you can select purple and now this track is purple. The track button here goes purple and so do the steps on the sequence here. Obviously when we move to a different track, we get a different set of colors so we can set that track's colors if we like. So yes, an aesthetic thing, but it is quite pretty. What color do I want to use for the rest of this? Should we go with, do I quite like the cyan? Let's go with that. So what's up with cyan for the rest of this demonstration? And yes, the rest of the features that we're talking about now are also available on the original Keystep Pro as well. All right, so I have the Keystep Pro hooked up to the Microfreak just with this little bass sound and I'm gonna record a little sequence of my self-match name. So I've recorded this little sequence and you can hear that the velocity is sort of varying a little bit between those notes because I played it fairly sloppily. And obviously velocity sensitivity is something that we come to expect on a lot of synths and controllers. However, it's not always desirable for certain types of sequences. So for example, this bass line probably would sound a bit better if it was happening at a sort of hard constant velocity. When you're tracking say, drums and you want to get that kick drum absolutely the same every single time, those sorts of things. Fixed velocity is actually a useful thing. So one of the features that we have now on this version if we come into the track menu, if we come down to the bottom here, fixed velocity, we can come in here to the moment with the off velocity is being transmitted and if I turn it on, now it doesn't matter how hard I hit the key, we're gonna get that constant velocity and that velocity is gonna be set by the velocity control. So if we want full velocity all the time, we can do that. And now I am able to record. And it doesn't matter how I play those notes, they're all gonna come out at full velocity and give us a nice harder sound for this bass line. So of the things that have been added in this update, this is probably the big one, I suppose. And that is that you can now send program changes to her pattern within a single track. What this means in practice is that if you've got a synth hooked up over MIDI and that synth responds to program changes to alter the presets, which most synths do, it means that as you change pattern within a track, you can also change the sound that the synth is playing. It should be noted that program changes aren't just applicable to synths, a lot of MIDI controllable effects units also respond to program changes. So you can actually line up the program so that the patch and say an effect changes as well on an effects unit. So it can be quite a powerful way to sort of iterate through a particular arrangement. So on the micro freak, I've got this bass sound on preset one. I'm just gonna move it across to preset two where I've got a pad sound. So now I've got a little pad sound and I'll move across to pattern two on track one and just record a chord sequence metronome back. So now I have a paddy sound on track two and a bass sequence on track one. But at the moment, if I go back to track one, of course, I'm just gonna get that bass line played on the pad, which is not what we want. We want those programs to change as we move between those two patterns. So the way that we do this is again through the track control. So we hold down shift and click on the track here. And in the menu here, I'm going to come down to PC meaning program change send and make sure that is turned on, which it is now. Lovely. So what we wanna say is that on sequence one, we want that bass sound, which was on program one and on sequence two, we want that pad sound which was on preset number two. So the way that we do this is we come down to PC assign here and click in and you'll notice that we have lights lit up here on the sequence bar. These are going to allow us to select which of the different 16 patterns or sequences within this track we are assigning to. So I'm gonna click on one here because we want to assign to pattern one. And we can do this either through program change values or through the most significant bytes and least significant bytes program changes. You'll have to look in the mid-implementation of your particular synth to find out which one it responds to, the microfreak response to straight program change values. So at the moment, it's not going to send a program change because it's set to off, but I wanted to send program one for that pattern and then I will press on to two here. Let's flashing now to know we're selecting this one and we can set to this to two. Okay, we can come out of here now. And yeah, if I select two here, it's going to be running on that program. Back down to one. And the microfreak has changed to a different preset automatically. This gives you quite a lot of scope to get a lot more out of a single track within an arrangement. Suddenly you're not having to change different projects to move between more than say four sounds here. Just changing the pattern will allow you to change the sound on the synth, which is pretty sweet. So the final new feature is kind of more of a quality of life thing, but depending on the complexity of your setup, it might actually be quite a big deal because it essentially will free up a hand for a particular operation. So one of the features of the KeyStep Pro is the transposition. And by default, it works like this. We hold down the trans button and we play a note and that transposes our sequence. If I want to turn off that transposition, I can just tap trans and we go back to where we were and turn it back on. However, if I want to transpose this further, I need to be holding down the trans button still because if I just play a note, it's just going to play a note instead. Now, this operation takes two hands, which depending on the complexity of your setup and what you're trying to do and what you're trying to play might be a problem because if you're trying to play a bass line with your left hand and transpose a sequence with your right hand, well, you're stuffed because your left hand is holding down this button. So in this new update, we have a way to latch the transposition and to turn the feature on, we need to go into the utility menu, so that's shift and project, scroll down towards the bottom to misc. Go into misc and then somewhere down here, we have transpose latch. Turn that on like this. And now if we play our sequence, I can just turn on transposition mode and play a note and it transposes. I've now got this hand free to do whatever else I want to do and I'm just transposing with the one hand here. The one sort of minor downside of this is that you now don't have the sort of one touch ability to turn off the current transposition. So if I got trans latch turned on and I tap it and it starts flashing, it just means that we're back to be able to play. It doesn't turn off that last transposition. To do that, you'll have to clear the transposition by doing shift and trans. So those are the new features in the 2.5 update for the KeyStep Pro. I hope that was useful and sort of cleared up how some of them operate. I know I was slightly puzzled about how to do the program change initially, I have to admit. I actually had to read the manual, which everyone should do, but there we go. If you did enjoy the video, we'll find it useful then. As always, a thumbs up on the video is always appreciated and if you're not already subscribed, then you could always do that. There's lots of synth and electronic music stuff coming up on the channel soon. As always, thanks so much for joining me here today and until next time, take care. Bye-bye.