FLkey Mini is the ultimate compact 25-mini-key MIDI keyboard for making music in FLStudio.

The Novation FLkey Mini is a Compact MIDI Keyboard Controller for FL Studio.

South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands (USD $).

You can’t ditch the mouse completely, but you can perform most basic tasks directly from the controller. With the pads and pots you can easily control volume and panning both from the mixer and channel rack, control many of Image Line’s native plugins, and play chords with a single button. What makes the FLKey stand out, though, is its out-of-the-box mapping for controlling FL Studio. Still, considering the almost rock-bottom price of $200, this is all pretty impressive. They make sense on the Mini model, but on the 37 they look slightly out of place. And the eight knobs across the top are smooth and have a nice amount of resistance, but are quite small. There's a small screen that gives you useful info at a glance, like preset names. They’ll get the job done for finger drumming, but can’t compare with those found on an Akai device. The pads are velocity sensitive, and have polyphonic aftertouch, but are a tad stiff and small. Everything is plastic, and the keys have a slight springiness to them. I probably wouldn’t take the FLKey out on tour. The build is solid, but not what you’d call rugged. The only real difference is that the FLKeys are gray instead of black, and the labels on the controls are slightly different. They even both have the same amount of buttons and pitch and mod wheels placed somewhat awkwardly above the keys. It’s got the same full-size keybed, 16 velocity sensitive pads and eight knobs across the top. Novation sent over the 37 key version for me to test, and I can tell you that, physically, it’s nearly indistinguishable from the Launchkey 37.

Now Novation is taking its well regarded LaunchKey series, giving it a light facelift and rebranding it as FLKey – the first keyboard MIDI controller designed exclusively for controlling FL Studio.įLKey comes in two varieties, the FLKey 37 and FLKey Mini. And that it was another four years before a second company had a stab at it, after Akai’s Fire. It’s even harder to believe that it took 20 years for someone to make dedicated hardware for the DAW.

It’s hard to believe that FL Studio (née Fruity Loops) has been around for 24 years.

Fl studio controller