It was with a heavy heart that I heard the news that blues great B.B. King passed away this week, a true original and a valued addition to the pantheon of rock greats. While I would normally pay tribute by trying to ape some of his licks on my electric guitar, I recently received an iRig KEYS portable keyboard, so fired up the accompanying apps, SampleTank and iGrandPiano, and got stuck into some 12-bar jammin’ in memory of the King…
IK Multimedia have a knack of producing really fantastic music accessories that get rid of the need for tons of wires and pedals and basically give musicians a full kit that they can carry around in their backpack, or sometimes even their pocket. The iRig KEYS doesn’t fit in your pocket (unless maybe you’re MC Hammer), but it is small enough to carry in one hand and balance on your knee if you’re playing in confined spaces – that’s right, you could be Mozart on the bus home.
With 37 velocity-sensitive mini-keys and a full 3-octave range plus one note, the keyboard connects directly to your iOS device’s Lightning connector or the USB port on your Mac/PC. You can fire up a compatible app such as iGrandPiano?? and start tinkling away, the free app offering one type of Grand Piano sound but the paid upgrade taking you through loads of different sounds, from upright to a classic Grand.
If you fancy yourself as the next Beck or Moby, download SampleTank and trigger all sorts of offbeat and wacky tracks and instrumentation with the app’s programmed sounds. This is great for musos who want to record that full band sound without wasting time, effort and GumTree ads recruiting a real-life full band.
The tactile elements of the keyboard are very impressive, with soft-touch buttons, keys and back-lit octave up/down functions, so I can bust out Rock Me Baby in a falsetto or Sweet Sixteen in a low Waitsian growl…
