Play your EP from a keyboard with chords and an arpeggiator
A velocity-sensitive keyboard with one-button triads, custom chords, split zones, and an arpeggiator locked to the hardware clock.
Best Friend includes a velocity-sensitive keyboard that plays your EP-133 K.O. II, EP-40 Riddim, or EP-1320 Medieval directly over the same USB-C connection.
Arm it first
The keyboard plays one pad, chromatically:
- On the EP, press KEYS and pick the pad you want to play.
- If the pad has a MIDI channel set, sync it with Best Friend. In Best Friend, open the keyboard’s settings sheet and set MIDI to the same channel. The stepper runs 0 to 16, where 0 is Off — on Off the keyboard sends nothing.
Play the keyboard and you get that one sample pitched across the keys. A different pad per note means the channel does not match or the pad is not in keys mode.
Each pad’s MIDI channel is editable alongside its other parameters. See edit pad settings.
How the keys behave
The keyboard is monophonic, and the newest finger wins. Slide across several keys without lifting and each new key retriggers while the previous one stops; a wobble inside one key does not retrigger. Land a second finger while the first is down and the newest sounds; lift it and you fall back to the finger still held.
Nothing rings on after the last lift.
Octave and range
- The octave stepper shifts the range and keeps a held note, retriggering it an octave away at the same velocity.
- The scroll bar moves the window a key at a time and releases a held note rather than retriggering it, because the window now points at unrelated pitches.
- The readout names the pitch of the leftmost key.
Changing the MIDI channel while a key is held stops the note — the release goes to the channel it started on, so nothing is left ringing on the old one.
Pitch bend
Drag the pitch wheel and release: it springs back and lands exactly at rest, so a note held through the return ends in tune rather than a few cents off. Grabbing it again mid-return takes over cleanly.
Chords
- One-button triads: major, minor, suspended, and diminished.
- Extensions: add a 6th, 7th, or 9th.
- Lower octave: add it to any chord.
- Custom chords: save your own to any Chord or Extension button.
- Split zones: divide each key into one to three zones for alternate chord positions.
Latching
- Single tap a chord to move the latch to it.
- Double tap to latch or unlatch.
- Press and hold a chord to override the latch for as long as you hold it; the previous latch comes back on release.
A slide across the chord column that ends over a different button is not treated as a tap, so the latch does not move by accident.
Two extensions can be held at once with two fingers. Adding an extension adds its note without restriking the chord, and lifting it drops only that note while the rest keeps ringing.
Sub
Sub adds a note an octave below the root, underneath the whole chord. Toggling it mid-hold adds or drops only that note — the chord above it does not restrike. A bare key with no triad armed still gets its sub, and a sub that would fall below the bottom of the MIDI range is dropped rather than wrapping.
With the arpeggiator running, the sub is walked as an ordinary tone: C–E–G plus a sub is a four-step phrase, lowest first.
Arpeggiator
Four modes, six rates, and a three-octave range, synced to the hardware clock. It needs MIDI clock out — see the arpeggiator for the detail.
This screen writes nothing
The keyboard plays your EP. It does not alter a single pad setting while doing it — open the pad afterwards and it is exactly as you left it.
