Chapter 8
Keyboard & touch strip
The touch keyboard, glide, hold, Spice, Dice and bend.
The touch keyboard
The MicroFreak’s 25 keys are flat touch plates rather than moving keys — a capacitive design in the tradition of the EMS Synthi AKS and the Buchla Easel. Your finger becomes part of the circuit, so the keyboard senses how much skin is in contact with each key, not how hard you push.
Look closely and you’ll see hundreds of small copper-coloured dots on the keys. These pick up your touch and turn it into either pressure (aftertouch) or velocity — which one is up to you, and is set per preset in Utility > Preset > Press mode (Keyboard response).
What each key sends
- Gate — on while your finger is on the key, off when you lift it (Gates and triggers).
- Pitch — which note you played, two octaves’ worth, extended with the octave buttons (Octave buttons).
- Pressure — how much of your finger covers the key, or the velocity of the touch.
All three are available as modulation sources in the matrix (Matrix sources and destinations) and at the Pitch, Gate and Pressure outputs on the back panel, so the keyboard can play modular gear or other synths with CV inputs (CV, gate and pressure outputs). It also works as a fully polyphonic MIDI controller for other instruments over USB and MIDI out.
To raise the pressure, start with your finger on a key and gradually lay more of its skin onto the surface. Skin contact alone takes you to about 30% of the pressure range; pressing a little harder on top of that reaches 100%.
From the community
Tutorials | MicroFreak - Episode 3: Keyboard & Arpeggiator
Arturia
Official tutorial 3: playing the flat capacitive keys, pressure, and the arpeggiator.
Keyboard: Pressure, Glide & Bend | Arturia MicroFreak Tutorial 08
Synth Codex
Focused lesson on the capacitive keys, sensitivity setting, glide and the bend strip, ending with an expressive patch.
Paraphony & Polyphonic Aftertouch on MicroFreak
Chalk Walk Music
Explains what paraphony means on MicroFreak and how polyphonic pressure works per voice.
Gates and triggers
Envelopes and the amplifier need something to tell them when a note starts and stops. On the MicroFreak that job falls mainly to the keyboard: touch a key and a gate opens, lift your finger and it closes. The arpeggiator and sequencer generate gates too, and you can set how long those gates last.
- Trigger
- A very short pulse. It marks a moment — for example to start the LFO or an envelope, or to keep modules in step.
- Gate
- A longer signal, from a few milliseconds to several seconds, that stays on for as long as the note is held.
What you hear from a gate depends on AMP MOD, next to the envelope:
- AMP MOD off — the amplifier follows the gate directly. Sound switches on the instant a key is touched and off when it is released: simple, abrupt, on/off.
- AMP MOD on — the gate starts the envelope instead, and the envelope shapes the volume through its attack, decay/release and sustain stages (The envelope, Amp Mod).
Hear the arpeggiator’s gate length
- Turn AMP MOD off so the gates reach the amplifier directly.
- Turn on the arpeggiator with ARP | SEQ and hold a chord.
- Open
Utility > Preset > Default gate lengthand change the value while the arpeggio plays — notes get shorter or longer.
Keyboard response
The touch keyboard can be tuned to your playing. The two most important settings are stored with each preset, so a pad and a lead can respond differently.
Preset settings
- Press mode
- Chooses whether the keyboard sends pressure (aftertouch) or velocity. Found in
Utility > Preset > Press mode; changing it gives a noticeably different dynamic response.Range Aftertouch, Velocity - Velo Amp Mod
- How strongly velocity changes the volume of the preset. Found in
Utility > Preset > Velo Amp Mod.Range 0–10
Global settings (Utility: global settings) refine the response further: KBD sensitivity (10%–100%) sets the overall response for both pressure and velocity, and Aftertouch curve and Velocity curve each offer Lin, Log and Exp curves.
Learn the keyboard by ear
- Start from an empty preset. Pitch is easier to judge than volume, so you’ll use pressure to bend the pitch.
- In the matrix, route the pressure source to Pitch with the maximum amount (The matrix).
- Place a fingertip upright, at 90°, on the upper part of a key.
- Slowly lower your finger so more of it covers the key. The pitch rises as the pressure value increases.
Good pressure and velocity destinations
- Timbre and pitch, where the slight instability of the touch keyboard sounds lively.
- The cycling envelope’s rise and fall times.
- Via the Assign columns (Assignable destinations): the oscillator type, or a mix of Wave, Timbre and Shape for sudden, dynamic changes of tone.
- Glide (Glide).
- The envelope attack and decay times — probably the most natural-feeling use of pressure.
Try it: pressure controls the LFO speed
- Make LFO RATE an Assign destination — for example hold ASSIGN 1 and turn LFO RATE.
- In the matrix, set an amount where the pressure row meets that Assign column.
- Play: the more of your finger covers a key, the faster the LFO runs (The LFO).
Pressure (or velocity) also leaves the MicroFreak as a voltage at the Pressure output. Set its range, up to 10 V, in Utility > CV/Gate > Pressure Range, then use it to open an external filter, change a sequencer’s speed or alter a resonator’s damping (CV, gate and pressure outputs).
From the community
- If pressure feels weak, raise the pressure sensitivity in Utility (one owner settled around 75). The touch keys respond best when powered from the supplied grounded adapter rather than USB. via Elektronauts: Arturia MicroFreak
- With
Press modeset to velocity, matrix routings from Press respond to velocity from an external MIDI keyboard — soft notes can get slow attacks and hard notes snappy ones. via Undulations on YouTube (5:26)
Tutorials | MicroFreak - Episode 3: Keyboard & Arpeggiator
Arturia
Official tutorial 3: playing the flat capacitive keys, pressure, and the arpeggiator.
Microfreak MIDI Keyboard Trick
Free Beat
Using an aftertouch MIDI keyboard to drive MicroFreak’s pressure modulation for easier vibrato.
Glide
Normally the pitch jumps straight from one note to the next. Glide (portamento) makes it slide instead, like a singer or a sitar player bending into a note. GLIDE sets how long the slide takes: fully anticlockwise it is off, and turning it clockwise lengthens the glide.
What the knob actually controls depends on Utility > Preset > Glide mode:
Glide modes
| Mode | What GLIDE sets |
|---|---|
Time | A fixed glide time, from zero to about 10 seconds. |
Sync | A glide time locked to the tempo: 1/32T, 1/32, 1/16T, 1/16, 1/8T, 1/8, 1/4T, 1/4, 1/2T, 1/2 or 1/1. |
Rate | How fast the pitch rises or falls within an octave, rather than a fixed time. |
Glide is also a destination in the matrix (Assignable destinations). Route pressure to it and your touch controls the amount of glide; adjust the matrix amount carefully to get the effect just right.
Add glide to just some steps of a sequence
- Switch on the sequencer with SHIFT + ARP | SEQ and choose sequence A or B (The sequencer).
- Press RANDOM | REC and step-record a melody. Recording switches off by itself at the end of the sequence (Step recording).
- Press RANDOM | REC again and move GLIDE at the places where you want the notes to slide. The movement is stored on a modulation track (Modulation tracks).
From the community
- For 303-style slides only on overlapping notes: turn
Envelope Legatoon, keep sustain high, leave GLIDE at 0, assign Glide to an Assign column and route Env to it. Dice then adds random slides to sequences. via Elektronauts: Arturia MicroFreak
Keyboard: Pressure, Glide & Bend | Arturia MicroFreak Tutorial 08
Synth Codex
Focused lesson on the capacitive keys, sensitivity setting, glide and the bend strip, ending with an expressive patch.
🙂 How to 303 ACID BASS with #microFreak Formant
andy 801 dawless
Getting TB-303 style acid lines from the Formant engine, glide and the filter.
Spice, Dice and Acid - Microfreak Techno Patch and Arpegiator Tutorial
Aisjam
Builds an acid techno patch then uses Spice, Dice and randomised glide to generate patterns.
Key hold
HOLD, at the left end of the icon strip, keeps notes playing after you lift your fingers, so both hands are free for the knobs. Turn it on, hold a key or chord, and let go — the notes keep sounding.
Key combinations
- HOLD
- Turns Key Hold on or off; while it is on, the keys you hold keep sounding after you lift your fingers.Arpeggiator and sequencer off
What HOLD does in each mode
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Keyboard | Latches the keys or chord you are holding. |
| Paraphonic | Any extra notes you play are added to the chord that is already held (Paraphonic mode and chord mode). |
| Arpeggiator | Keeps the arpeggio running until you turn Hold or the arpeggiator off; new keys replace the held notes (The arpeggiator). |
| Sequencer, step recording | Enters a rest, or ties held notes into the next step (Step recording). |
| Sequencer, real-time recording | Erases notes and modulation as the sequence plays (Real-time recording). |
| With UP | A or ORDER | B | Clears that sequence (Editing, copying and clearing sequences). |
| With OCT | MOD | Clears a modulation track (Modulation tracks). |
When the sequencer is switched off, HOLD goes back to being an ordinary key hold. The four pads beside it control the arpeggiator and sequencer, which have their own chapter (The arpeggiator, The sequencer).
Spice & Dice
Spice and Dice share the touch strip and only work together. Dice reshuffles the gates and triggers of whatever arpeggio or sequence is playing — moving notes closer together or further apart, lengthening or shortening them, or dropping them altogether. Spice sets how much of that randomness you actually hear.
Where the arpeggiator’s Pattern mode randomises which pitches play (Arp modes and Pattern), Spice and Dice randomise when and how long they play. They also nudge octaves, velocity and the amp envelope’s release time — subtly — in the same way. Used together they can change a pattern beyond recognition.
Key combinations
- SPICE, then slide along the touch strip
- Sets the amount of variation you hear — further right means more.Arpeggiator or sequencer running
- DICE, then tap the touch strip
- Rolls the dice for a new random variation; touches near the left make small changes, near the right a complete reshuffle.Arpeggiator or sequencer running
Use Spice & Dice
- Start the arpeggiator or a sequence — Spice and Dice do nothing unless one is running.
- Press DICE and touch the strip to set how random the variation is: far left is none, far right is maximum.
- Press SPICE and slide your finger to the right. Nothing changes until you add Spice; the more you add, the more of the Dice variation you hear.
- Go back to DICE and tap different places on the strip to roll new variations at the intensity Spice has set.
The order is up to you: set Spice first and then roll the Dice, or the other way round. Tapping the strip at different positions is a performance gesture in itself.
How it works
- Gate length
- Every step has a gate length. 0 is a silent step, 100 is a tie into the next step, and anything in between is a percentage. New steps use
Utility > Preset > Default gate length. - Status
- The row of gate lengths for all the steps. In a new sequence, every step is at the default gate length.
- Spice
- Blends between the default gate length (no Spice) and the current Status (full Spice), in a straight line.
- Dice
- While DICE is lit, each touch adds a random positive or negative amount to every step’s gate length, so some get shorter and some longer. When you lift your finger, the last pattern you heard becomes the new Status, ready for the next roll.
From the community
MicroFreak: Episode 3 (Arps and Sequences)
Undulations
Arp basics, the Pattern mode, Spice and Dice, and recording sequences, with syncing to a drum machine.
Spice, Dice and Acid - Microfreak Techno Patch and Arpegiator Tutorial
Aisjam
Builds an acid techno patch then uses Spice, Dice and randomised glide to generate patterns.
The bend strip
Press BEND and the touch strip becomes a pitch-bend ribbon. The centre is neutral; slide right to bend up and left to bend down. Unlike a wheel, you can also put your finger straight down anywhere on the strip and the pitch jumps there instantly. Let go and the pitch drifts back to centre.
Key combinations
- BEND, then touch the strip
- Bends the pitch up or down from the centre of the strip.
Things a strip does that a wheel can’t
- Tap two points to flip quickly between two pitches.
- Wiggle your finger on the strip for a natural-sounding vibrato.
- Use the six zig-zag marks printed along the strip as guides for accurate bends.
Bend settings
- Bend Range
- How far the strip bends. By default it covers 12 semitones either side of centre (24 in all); the widest setting spans 48 semitones — four octaves. Set it in
Utility > Preset > Bend Range; it is saved with the preset. - Relative Bend
- Off (the default) measures bends from the physical centre of the strip. On makes wherever you first touch the zero point, so your movement is added to or subtracted from the current pitch — good for dive-bomb effects. Set it in
Utility > Misc > Relative Bend(Utility: global settings).Range Off, On
From the community
Keyboard: Pressure, Glide & Bend | Arturia MicroFreak Tutorial 08
Synth Codex
Focused lesson on the capacitive keys, sensitivity setting, glide and the bend strip, ending with an expressive patch.