Arturia Beatstep

The pads feel great straight out of the box and although I was quite satisfied with their default action, four velocity curves are available to address different finger strengths. If I were being picky I’d mention that the polyphonic aftertouch wasn’t completely smooth across its 7–bit range. However, it’s hard to remain critical for long. Perched on top of my Yamaha KX8, a master keyboard low on knobs and entirely devoid of pads, the Beatstep began to look very appealing.

Sequencer Mode

Flip into sequencer mode and you have a basic but effective simulation of an old–school step sequencer. The encoders set the pitch of each step over a four-octave range, while the cool blue pads act as step mute buttons. The main limitation is that the sequencer only sends patterns of notes, all at a fixed velocity. So there are no patterns of MIDI CCs to amuse the experimentally minded and lovers of 303–type sequences will have to cope without accents. Get beyond these omissions, though, and the Beatstep has a number of tasty features with which to spice up your patterns.

The Beatstep’s MIDI Control Centre software.

During playback, a progress light marches across the pads and there’s an easy visual correlation between pads and encoders. Here’s where those subtle notches become really useful because, unlike the fully variable tuning of a classic analogue sequencer, every notch represents a semitone. You therefore have a reasonable chance of setting intervals by feel as the sequencer loops. It can get ugly though, especially at speed, so it’s a good job Arturia included that most important of note–programming aids — scales.

Picking one of the eight available scales has no effect on the active sequence. Instead, it restricts the notes dialled up by the encoders. Assuming your base sequence is in C, selecting a major scale would mean the encoders only ever produce ‘white’ notes. The scales on offer are: chromatic (all notes), major, minor, dorian, mixolydian, harmonic minor and blues. Joining these presets is a single user scale. As you’d expect this is defined in the MCC where it appears as a graphical filter — blue notes are included, white notes excluded. I’d have preferred all the scales to be user–programmable, but perhaps that’s because I spent way too long spinning Frank Zappa records in my youth.

The shift key, in conjunction with the large data encoder, is used to transpose the current sequence. Again this is in semitones — down by a maximum of one octave, up by three. Transposition is real–time — ie. it can’t be prepared in advance and confirmed at a critical point during playback. It’s usually preferable to transpose with a MIDI keyboard, providing your DAW provides a friendly means of rerouting MIDI inputs and outputs (ie. not Logic). With no visual indication of the current key or transposition, it becomes natural to work by ear, discovering new patterns by the age–old method of random grabbing and turning. Whatever you come up with, up to 16 sequences can be stored internally to be archived at your leisure.

In order to make patterns more interesting, there are four playback directions: forwards, backwards, alternating or random. Step sequencers are all about interaction, so as well as the different directions, patterns can run at one of four different speeds, from quarter up to 1/32nd notes (triplets aren’t catered for). Lastly, at any time during playback, a pattern’s length can be reduced from its default 16 steps by holding down the Shift and Chan buttons and pressing one of the pads.

If you switch speed, length or direction, it’s likely you’ll get out of step with other material in your current song. Depending on the tempo, it might take a few attempts to get lined up again. This is something live performers need to be aware of and it’s a pity you can’t simply stop and start the sequencer while sync’ed to your DAW, as you’d expect to do in a purely hardware setup. Some kind of ‘resync’ function would be much appreciated in a future firmware update.

Not all the available functionality is accessible from hardware. Specifically, swing, legato and gate time (step duration) are only reachable from the MCC software. It seems an opportunity lost that you can’t program these into Beatstep’s controller persona. When legato is enabled, all notes are played as if they overlap and any two steps triggering the same note are merged. While this can hint at 303–type slides, the feature is seriously compromised without the option to set legato on individual steps only. I guess that’s another request.

Patterns can be freely routed to virtual instruments, MIDI hardware or the CV/Gate outputs but it’s perhaps less obvious that the Beatstep can serve as a MIDI to CV converter. Fortunately, it requires no more effort than routing a chosen DAW track to the Beatstep’s virtual port, which is then neatly forwarded on to the CV/Gate and/or MIDI output.

Naturally the sequencer continues playing when you switch to controller mode, providing the opportunity to capture long, gradually evolving patterns and simultaneous parameter tweaks. With the Beatstep sync’ed to Logic and U–he’s Diva firing on all cylinders, I came scarily close to the experience of analogue hardware noodling; with the added advantage of going back over it later to fix cock–ups and add individual accents and slides.

Conclusion

The Beatstep is a tasty and compact controller for MIDI tweaking and drum programming. Making it a step sequencer too — even one so basic — is a master stroke! Admittedly its patterns are of fixed velocity and the sequencing of MIDI CCs has been omitted, but within limitations, you’ve got a ready source of inspiration ripe for further development in your DAW. Certainly, the technique of spinning encoders and switching scales should lead to patterns in complete contrast to anything you’d play on a keyboard. And having chanced across a sequence that takes your fancy, with the press of a single button, the same interface is ready to tweak filters, envelopes and effects.

For a modest outlay this creamy little Arturia ticks so many boxes it’s hard to resist. It’s a shame there’s no MIDI input, but I doubt external sync will be an issue for the bulk of users working mainly in a DAW environment. Ultimately, if you’re a laptop performer in the market for drum pads, a flexible control surface and a hands–on step sequencer, the Beatstep could be exactly what you’re looking for!