Caelum Audio King Key Is A FREE Mechanical Keyboard Instrument

Caelum Audio has released a new free keyboard virtual instrument called King Key.

We all love analog keyboards such as the classic Rhodes piano or even the more budget Casio keyboards, which always have their own charm.

Yet none of them can truly capture the analog nuances and pure mechanics of a real keyboard. But do not worry because Caelum Audio has us covered!

MIDI keyboards allow us to play essentially any sampled instrument in the comfort of our DAW.

And with Caeulm Audio’s new release, King Key, “NOW you can play the hyper-realistic sounds of a keyboard while playing ON your keyboard.”

Happy International Joke Day! Every year on this day, Caelum Audio releases a new free plugin. 

Last year, we covered their 2023 International Joke Day plugin SUBscription (currently priced at £9.99), which was a very interesting synthesizer.

And this year they have made a new addition to the series, the King Key keyboard. It features multiple keyboard patches including a typewriter, a computer keyboard, and a MIDI keyboard among others.

Here are some sounds you can get from this instrument, as described eloquently by Caelum Audio: “Click, Clack, Svvvvt, B-ding, cha-cuh, fshhhh”.

However, it doesn’t stop there. They have also created some additional sound-designed patches, which sound very cool. 

Those include 4 drum kits (Marshal Kit, Micron Kit, Uppercut Kit, and Voltage Kit), along with 2 additional bizarre but awesome typewriter patches (Typewriter Bells and Typewriter Buzz).

While King Key is essentially a joke plugin, there are tons of controls included to help you shape a unique sound.

The parameters you can control are a filter with cutoff and resonance control, bit depth and sample rate, drive, and reverb.

However, there are 2 LFOs and 2 envelopes that can be assigned to any of those parameters. There are also 4 more modulators: Touch, Mod, Key, and Velocity, which can also control the knobs.

So that’s a lot of control for a free instrument and you can get a huge range of sounds with it. 

There is also a randomize button, which is always a fun feature on plugins, as well as 11 factory presets (on top of the 9 instrument patches) to give you an idea of what King Key can do.

King Key is available for Windows and macOS machines as a VST3, AU, or AAX plugin. It also runs as an AUv3 plugin or in standalone mode on iOS devices.

Download: King Key (FREE)

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