Analog Keys is an analog polyphonic synthesizer released in 2013 by Elektron, a Swedish groove machine manufacturer. Elektron released "Analog Four" in 2012 and added a velocity and aftertouch sensitive keyboard on Analog Four. That was Analog Keys. Although Analog Keys looks like a usual musical synthesizer, it is a groove machine. Analog Keys has four analog synth voices. They can be used as 4 voice polyphonic synth. Also they are four mono synths. The sound is beautiful and powerful. The internal digital effectors are silky (sampling frequency is 48kHz). The uniqueness of Analog Keys is that you can change your sound inside a pattern. For examle, please listen "My 1st Beat" below. There are bass drum, snare and hihat with one voice. Tweaking knobs changes the sound nicely. In conclusion, you should use the internal sequencer if you want to get much from Analog Keys. An Interesting, but very difficult synth to play.
In 2019, I visited Elektron Web site. No Analog Keys product page. Analog Keys is shown in Legacy Products page. The successor of Analog Four is "Analog Four MKII". They does not have a successor of Analog Keys.
| Sound | Comment |
|---|---|
| Factory Kits (2 and a half minutes) | With pushing "Song" button and "Play" button, kits are played sequentially. Very long. I recorded first 2 and a half minutes. Amazing sound. |
| SAW1 | The first sound I made. At initial status, modulation wheel(joystick +Y) and aftertouch add vibrato, nice. I selected sawtooth at oscillator 1. No pulsewidth adjustment. I adjusted filter cutoff, resonance, amplitude envelope and reverb send. When play voices more than one makes the sound louder much. During keyboard play, key down with lower velocity missed some notes. Not easy. |
| SAW1MONO | I assigned one oscillator, switched to unison. Not good enuough. I changed envelope mode. The mode includes choise of "start from zero" or "start from current". Attack and decay curve can be set to linear or exponential. They has 12 shapes. Wonder. |
| My 1st Beat | 1 track, 1 voice, 1 measure (16 beats). I used bass drum, snare and hi-hat in preset sounds. We can use some sounds inside one pattern. I watched YouTube video "Workflow: Analog Keys / Four". In simple, push "Beat" button, tweak sound selection knob to choose sound and play key. I copied some sounds to a kit, because it might be needed. I am not sure how to use Analog Keys. |