There are two ways to get MPE data into a synth. The obvious one is to buy a controller that generates it — a Seaboard, an Osmose, a LinnStrument, an Erae. The less obvious one is to generate it in software, from a keyboard that has no per-note controls at all.
MPE Drift, released on 15 September by German developer Christophe Kalkau, is the most thorough attempt at the second approach we've seen so far. It's a MIDI effect plugin that sits between your keyboard and your MPE instrument, and it does one thing: it gives every held note its own independent life.
What it actually does
When you press a chord on a normal keyboard, all four notes arrive on the same MIDI channel with the same pitch bend and the same aftertouch value. That's the whole problem MPE exists to solve.
MPE Drift intercepts those notes and redistributes them across channels, one note per channel, exactly as an MPE controller would. Then it starts moving them. Each held note gets its own pitch bend, channel pressure, CC74 timbre and pan values, generated in real time and modulating independently for as long as you hold the key.
The important detail is that this comes out as ordinary MPE data. The receiving instrument has no idea the gestures weren't played by a human finger — it allocates a voice per channel and applies the expression the same way it would from hardware. And because it's standard MIDI, your DAW records it like any other performance, so you can edit the curves afterwards.
Five lanes per note
Each note runs five independent modulation lanes, and each lane has its own shape, depth and rate. A lane can target pitch bend, channel pressure, CC74, pan, or any of the 127 CCs, using one of eight shapes: drift, sine, triangle, saw up, saw down, square, sample and hold, or static.
What keeps this from turning into noise is the four drift modes, set per lane:
- Chaos — each voice moves independently of the others.
- Parallel — all voices move together as one body.
- Orbit — the motion travels from voice to voice around the chord.
- Split — voices move in opposing directions.
That distinction matters more than it might sound. Assigning an unrelated LFO to every voice gives you mush. Parallel and Orbit keep the chord reading as a single gesture that happens to be distributed across notes — which is much closer to how a real expressive performance behaves.
The generative half
MPE Drift is not only a modulator. It also includes a chord machine with 22 chord types, octave layers, strum, 13 scale locks, note spread, velocity humanisation and timing offset — so a single key can become a voiced, strummed chord before the drift engine ever touches it.
There's an arpeggiator too: six directions, up to four octaves, latch, ratchet, gate and shuffle, running free or locked to the host grid. Arpeggiated notes get the same per-note treatment, which produces something genuinely unusual — an arp where each repetition carries slightly different pressure and timbre.
The engine handles up to 15 voices across 16 MIDI channels, with a configurable bend range up to 48 semitones and 48 host-automatable parameters. It ships with 24 factory presets, and user presets are saved as plain files.
Where it fits — and where it doesn't
Let's be clear about what this is and isn't. MPE Drift does not give you expressive control. Your fingers still send note-on, velocity and note-off, and nothing more. What the plugin adds is motion, not intention — movement that is algorithmic rather than performed.
For pads, evolving textures, generative work and sound design, that's often exactly what you want, and it will make an MPE-ready patch sound alive in a way a static chord never does. For a solo line where the expression is the phrasing, it's no substitute for a surface under your fingers.
It's also a good diagnostic tool. If you own MPE instruments but no MPE controller, this is a cheap way to hear what your patches actually do when pressure and timbre move — which is frequently a surprise, and occasionally a disappointment.
One practical caveat: MPE Drift is Windows-only for now, in VST3 and CLAP formats. It costs €24.99 including VAT, and there's a free 7-day trial, which is the sensible way to find out whether your instruments respond the way you hoped.
Full details and the trial download are at christophek.de/MPEDrift. Kalkau is also the developer behind MPE Insight and MPE Keys, so this is clearly part of a growing set of tools aimed squarely at the per-note corner of MIDI.