I've been playing piano since I was little, so I'm pretty picky about how the keys feel. It took me a long time to find the right MIDI controller, but I eventually landed on the Doepfer PK88. It fit my studio desk perfectly, and the keys felt great.

Once I started playing, though, the velocity response felt off. I was hitting high velocities far too easily, and the black and white keys responded noticeably differently. Other Doepfer controllers, like the LMK2+ and LMK4+, let you choose different velocity curves. With the PK88, I was stuck with what I had.

So I went looking for a fix. I tried things in my DAW and gave other software a go, but there was always something: a missing feature, a bug, or something that just didn't work reliably. Eventually, I wrote a little Python script to catch the MIDI notes and adjust their velocities. And that did it. I finally had the response I'd been looking for.

The script slowly turned into a proper native app, with an interface and all the things I wanted in my own studio: flexible velocity adjustments, live feedback so I could see what was happening, multiple controllers routed to a single output, and more. I wanted something I could set up once and then forget about. Just let it run in the background and get on with making music.

At some point, I thought: if this has made such a difference for me, maybe other performers and composers would find it useful too.