Switch pads on the fly to instantly transform your Joue Play into a guitar, piano, drums or keyboard and explore their assigned sound banks.

The effect zones on each of the Play Pads allow you to modify the sound to add the little touch that will make the difference in your creation. Add distortion, reverb and more. Enter a creative mode with no barriers thanks to a turnkey app. No need to spend hours on overly complex music software, enjoy the simplified version of essential music creation tools in the Joue Play App. The slim keys are joined by pads, faders and knobs, plus touchstrips for pitchbend and modulation and a new OLED display. There’s also a built-in arpeggiator, a Chord mode and custom DAW presets for Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro, Bitwig Studio and Reason. The 25-note keyboard is said to be more playable than before, with improved velocity response. With just two octaves to work with, though, there’s not going to be a great deal of scope for giving two-handed performances.The Joué's initial selection of modules (minus the Grand Clavier).We'll look at the modules in turn, starting with the smallest and simplest. For testing I used ROLI Equator and FXpansion Cypher2 (which are MPE-capable), both stand-alone and in Bitwig Studio, and I also fired up Cycling '74 Max to inspect MIDI controller messages more closely.

You will be able to choose between 5 modes: Major, Minor, Pentatonic major, Pentatonic minor and Chromatic, by defining the starting note of the scale, the "root note".Use the Joue Play with its dedicated app or compose with hundreds of sound banks via Garageband, learn to play in a fun and playful way with Melodics or remix the creations of millions of users from BandLabsocial platform. MPE polyphonic glide works fine: A glissando option switches between the playing of glissandos (with all intermediate notes triggering) versus being able to glide a single note across multiple keys. This does need a bit of setting up: after some experimentation I discovered that setting a glissando value of 48 semitones in the Joué editor resulted in the correct pitch generation while gliding between keys — at least, that certainly seemed to be the case with Equator and Cypher2. Joué tell me that some instruments don't necessarily adhere to the same pitch range, hence the ability to change it. Scaler: A full-width 17-key chromatic keyboard layout oriented towards instruments like harp or vibraphone. A preset scale can be selected (there are 23 to choose from), and vibrato (left-right glide), Y position (slide) and aftertouch are all supported. I was pleasantly surprised to note that MPE glide between keys arrived at the correct pitch regardless of the selected scale. There's also a single bubble, two configurable buttons and a ribbon control. The sounds are pretty impressive, especially when you start to jazz them up a bit with the effects sliders. Usefully, the actions you perform on the effects are recorded as part of the clips in the Joué app as automation, which makes it easy to spice up your loops and make them more intriguing. The app allows you to add multiple parts of different bar lengths and quantise or delete the recordings, though not edit in any greater depth than that. Combined with the ability to layer sounds, you can make multi-part, multi-instrument projects and then export them as audio mixdowns, stems or MIDI files.

Conveniently, a set of buttons beside the Joué image allow generated control messages to be filtered by X, Y and Z dimensions individually, making it much easier to use 'MIDI learn' to bind controllers to parameters in instruments and DAWs. Using the Joué Play is a lovely experience. I’ve been making ambient and other kinds of electronic music for the better part of three decades now and I found myself coming up with new expressions that I never would have before, particularly when exploring the non-standard controls. As a keyboardist, I tend to favor basic piano-style note playing but Joué Play encouraged me to break away from this. My normal controller, a vintage Roland synthesizer from the ’80s, has a solid keybed but little in the way of unusual control functions. My fingers rarely stray from the keys. With Joué Play, they were much more mobile, exploring and experimenting. I found the guitar module particularly inspiring, coaxing out not only playing styles and note combinations that I wouldn’t normally come up with but a smile on my face. Tap out a beat, lay down some sweeping pads, bend some chords—all without swapping out hardware. Portability is further aided by a battery power option, which promises to give you more than 14 hours of runtime. You can also power the keyboard via USB.Joue Play's unique technology offers a sensational expressiveness. Express yourself in the moment with natural gestures and enjoy all the spontaneity and expressiveness of acoustic instruments. So as a stopgap measure until we get support, I've made a template that will allow the automation controls (pitch bend, aftertouch, cc74) to be recorded for MPE-mode controllers. Whenever a module is edited, or a new preset is called up, and the result dragged to the Joué, the module state is apparently loaded into the module itself (there's a small RFID chip in each one), rather than into the Joué. If you only have one Joué and one module of each type, this technical detail is unlikely to affect your workflow much, but you'll only be able to load a preset into a module if that module is physically sitting in the Joué to start with. Modules

The third-generation MiniLab is a similar offering to its predecessor, giving you a compact 25-note keyboard, various other control features and plenty of sounds courtesy of the tightly integrated Analog Lab intro software that comes included.Rise 2 also offers a new platinum blue anodised aluminium chassis, giving it a more contemporary look. Build quality is said to have been improved, and you now get both standard MIDI and USB-C ports to ensure maximum compatibility with your software and hardware instruments. Like most 88-key keyboards, the layout differs a bit from the smaller models, with the mod and pitch wheels on the top panel, and the controls spread out a little bit more. So that digital music can rhyme with sustainability, the Joue Play was designed to last, just as acoustic instruments. Production is carried out with suppliers at 80% located in France, using sustainable materials. Area: A simple two-dimensional touch pad with a third 'dimension' of monophonic pressure. The X and Y outputs can be configured to output in high-resolution (14-bit) mode, though in practice the resolution available seemed to be around 9 or 10 bits. There's no obvious physical orientation to the pad, but it can be placed any way round on the Joué and still work.