Chapter 2
Panel & controls
Every knob, button and touch control — and what Shift adds.
In this chapter · 3
The front panel
The panel is laid out in three rows. The top row holds the matrix, the display and the preset controls; the middle row is the sound engine — glide, oscillator, filter and cycling envelope; the bottom row has the octave buttons, SHIFT, the arp/sequencer, the LFO and the envelope above the touch keyboard. Explore each control in the interactive panel below.
Tap any knob, button, icon or the keyboard. Hold Shift to light up the blue functions.
Pick a control to see what it does.
All 47 controls on the panel, from the matrix to the keyboard. Words in blue are what a control does while SHIFT is held.
Redrawn from the manual’s panel photos (§3.1) · not to exact scale
Top row
| Section | Controls | More |
|---|---|---|
| Matrix | A grid of 35 patch points — five sources by seven destinations — and the MATRIX encoder | The matrix |
| Paraphonic | PARAPHONIC — when lit, up to four notes play independently through the shared filter | Paraphonic mode and chord mode |
| Panel | PANEL — makes the sound follow the knobs’ current positions | Panel mode |
| Display and presets | The OLED display, the PRESET encoder and SAVE | Display, encoders and buttons |
| Utility | UTILITY — global settings and settings saved with each preset | Utility: preset settings |
| Volume | MASTER — overall level of the line and headphone outputs | Display, encoders and buttons |
Middle row
| Section | Controls | More |
|---|---|---|
| Glide | GLIDE — fully anticlockwise for none, turn up for longer slides between notes | Glide |
| Digital oscillator | TYPE picks the oscillator model; WAVE, TIMBRE and SHAPE change its sound | Oscillator basics |
| Analog filter | CUTOFF, RESONANCE and FILTER TYPE for low-pass, band-pass or high-pass | Filter types and cutoff |
| Cycling envelope | RISE, FALL, HOLD/SUSTAIN, AMOUNT and MODE — an envelope that can retrigger itself | The cycling envelope |
Bottom row
| Section | Controls | More |
|---|---|---|
| Octave | OCT DOWN and OCT UP shift the keyboard’s range | Octave buttons |
| Shift | SHIFT — reaches the functions printed in blue, and a few hidden ones | What Shift does |
| Arp/seq | ARP | SEQ, OCT | MOD and RATE/SWING; press RATE/SWING to sync to tempo divisions | The arpeggiator |
| LFO | LFO SHAPE chooses one of six waveforms; LFO RATE sets the speed, and pressing it syncs the LFO to the arp/seq clock | The LFO |
| Envelope | ATTACK, DECAY/REL, SUSTAIN, FILTER AMT and AMP MOD | The envelope |
| Keyboard | 25 touch keys that send gate, pitch and pressure, covering two octaves | The touch keyboard |
| Icon strip | HOLD, UP | A, ORDER | B, RANDOM | REC, PATTERN | PLAY, then SPICE, DICE and BEND on the touch strip | Key hold, Spice & Dice, The bend strip |
From the community
Using the Arturia MICROFREAK complete deep dive guide tutorial
XNB
Nearly two hours covering every non-oscillator feature (presets, panel, paraphony, filter, envelopes, matrix, arp, sequencer, unison, chord and scale modes) with timecodes.
Introduction & Panel Overview | Arturia MicroFreak Tutorial 01
Synth Codex
Clear short intro to the panel, rear connections, signal flow, Amp Mod and the menu system.
What Shift does
Holding SHIFT gives many controls a second job. Some are printed in blue on the panel; others are hidden. This table gathers them all in one place — each is explained, with its exact key combination, in the section linked on the right.
Hold SHIFT and…
| Control | When | What it does | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| ARP | SEQ | — | Switches between the arpeggiator and the sequencer. | The arpeggiator |
| Turn RATE/SWING | — | Sets the swing amount. | Arp rate, sync and swing |
| Turn RATE/SWING | Sequencer, step recording | Changes the sequence length. | Step recording |
| Turn RISE | — | Sets the curve of the cycling envelope’s rise (attack) stage. | The cycling envelope |
| Turn FALL | — | Sets the curve of the cycling envelope’s fall (decay) stage. | The cycling envelope |
| Turn WAVE, TIMBRE or SHAPE | — | Turns the parameter at the opposite speed to the Osc Knob Speed setting — fast if it is set to slow, and the other way round. | Oscillator basics |
| Turn TYPE | Sample, Scan Grains, Cloud Grains or Hit Grains selected | Browses and selects samples. | Sample |
| KEY | Arpeggiator | Transposes the arpeggio. With HOLD on, it stays transposed until you play a new arpeggio. | The arpeggiator |
| UP | A or ORDER | B | Arpeggiator | Copies the current arpeggio into sequence A or B. | Turning an arpeggio into a sequence |
| KEY | Sequencer, record off | Transposes the sequence. | The sequencer |
| UP | A or ORDER | B | Sequencer, record off | Reloads sequence A or B as it was last saved. | The sequencer |
| Turn PRESET | Naming a preset | Jumps between the A, a, 0 and . character ranges. | Saving presets |
| Long-press MATRIX | — | Clears every routing on the matrix. | The matrix |
From the community
The complete Arturia MicroFreak Iceberg
SoulBrix | Groove Lab
Tiered tour from basics to obscure tricks: Click to Load, knob catch, MIDI TRS type, power options, program changes and more.
Display, encoders and buttons
The small OLED display reports whatever you touch: the parameter and value of a knob as you turn it, the name and category of the current preset, and the source, destination and amount of a matrix point. Around it sit the two encoders and the buttons you use to manage sounds.
| Control | What it does | More |
|---|---|---|
| PRESET | Turn to browse presets; the display shows each name and category. Three quick presses reset the sound to Init. While saving, it picks the slot, category and characters of the name. | Loading presets, Saving presets |
| MATRIX | Turn to move the lit LED around the matrix; it wraps from the last point back to the first. Press to set that point’s amount; hold for half a second to clear it. | The matrix |
| MASTER | Overall volume, for both the line and headphone outputs. | — |
| SAVE | Starts saving a preset; a long press quick-saves to the current slot. | Saving presets |
| UTILITY | Opens the global settings and the settings stored with each preset, such as preset volume, bend range and pressure mode. | Utility: preset settings, Utility: global settings |
| PANEL | Replaces the stored knob values with the knobs’ current positions. | Panel mode |