The new Osmose CE’s keys may look like a regular MIDI controller’s, but they actually have way more sensors and expressive control.
Each key can detect pressure from the moment it’s pressed and throughout a wide range of motion, and detect left-right motion for pitch bends and vibrato.
The keyboard also lets you create a controlled slide between two notes by gradually transitioning pressure from one key to the other. It also has a built-in Arpeggiator that lets you dynamically control the timbre, pitch, and playback articulation of each note individually.
Three years ago Expressive E released Osmose – a synth that combines their keybed technology with Haken Audio’s EaganMatrix based synth – and now comes Osmose CE – a lower-cost MIDI controller only version, without the built in hardware synth engine, but with bundled with software that includes over 900 presets designed with the Osmose CE in mind, based on various software free and paid synth engines, including Vital, PhasePlant, Dune 3 and more. They also added transport and device control integration with a few popular DAWs.
In this video, I take a look at it in detail and cover the pros and cons compared to the competition.
0:00 Intro
2:25 Pressure/AT
4:20 Wiggle
5:20 Press glide
6:40 MPE Arp
9:00 Vel on/off
9:20 Overview
10:20 Menus
12:05 I/O
13:10 CTRL-E
17:20 DAW control
18:40 External MIDI
21:25 Eaganmatrix?!
22:30 Pros & cons
26:45 Some presets