Arturia Might Have Just Made Beatstep Pro Your Next Sequencer

Firmware 2.0 adds pattern chaining recall, poly rhythms and more   27-Jun-17

Arturia's Beatstep Pro - the MIDI and CV sequencer with two Sequencer tracks, a 16 part drum sequencer (8 trigs/8 MIDI)  has been out for a couple of years now. And Arturia continue to release updates for the firmware. A highly commendable practice, and one that should please the many Beatstep Pro owners.

In this update which takes us to version 2.0 we see a number of new features - and a  bunch of bug fixes. Probably two of the biggest new features is are the Scene Memories (16) each of which allows you to store and recall pattern chains for song structures, previously this was only something you could do on the fly. Another big one is the addition of poly rhythms for the drum sequencer, now you can have different sequence lengths for each pad - thats quite a biggie, additionally you can now set the MIDI channel for each drum pad individually (previously a global setting). So that makes is compatible with the Korg Volca Sample too.

Another biggie is Volca Sync compatibility via the sync in and out - setting in MCC editor. Previously the sync was incompatible. (ED: In my live setup I use a pad trig output to the Korg Minilogue to run the sequencer which still does require attenuation, but allows for clock dividing)

Additionally a number of parameters previously only available via the MIDI Command Centre application are now available via new front panel functions.

See the handy new BeatStep Pro cheat sheet

There are a bunch of videos demonstrating the new features:

Pattern Chaining

Looper/Arpeggiator Modes

Poly Rhythms

The new Firmware is installed via the MIDI Command Centre application see the instructions here. (scroll to bottom of the page)