For a long time, getting truly expressive MPE sounds meant either programming your own patches from scratch or buying a specialist instrument built around per-note control. That's starting to change for Arturia Pigments, where a small but growing community of independent sound designers is now building preset banks specifically engineered around MPE, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

Pigments 7 as an MPE Showcase Instrument

Pigments has supported MPE for several versions now, but it's with Pigments 7 — a free update for existing owners — that the feature has started to feel central to how the synth is marketed and used. Arturia maintains a dedicated MPE compatibility FAQ walking players through channel-per-note routing, and the synth's wavetable, virtual analog, and granular engines all respond to per-note pitch bend, pressure, and CC74 timbre data out of the box.

That combination — a widely owned, frequently updated flagship synth with genuine MPE depth — has made Pigments an attractive target for third-party content creators in a way that more niche MPE-only instruments haven't quite managed. Players don't need to buy a new synth to access MPE-tailored sound design; many already own Pigments for entirely unrelated reasons.

Marc Barnes' "MPE Expressions" Bank

The most notable recent release is MPE Expressions, a 32-patch bank for Pigments 7 by sound designer Marc Barnes, covered by gearnews.com. Barnes built the pack after acquiring an Expressive E Osmose 61, and by his own account the controller reshaped how he approached patch design entirely — every patch in the bank was built with per-note pitch, pressure, and slide as core sound-design parameters rather than bolted on afterward.

Two details about the pack are worth noting for players without a dedicated MPE controller. First, most patches make full use of Pigments' four macro controls, so the added expressivity is still accessible through normal mod-wheel and macro automation even without MPE hardware. Second, the pack was tested primarily on Osmose but is designed to work with any MPE source — meaning owners of a LinnStrument, Seaboard, or Continuum should get comparable results. MPE Expressions is available for £6.99 through Marc Barnes Sounds.

A Broader Pattern, Not an Isolated Release

MPE Expressions isn't happening in a vacuum. It's part of a wider trend of sound designers building content specifically for mainstream, MPE-capable software instruments rather than exclusively for boutique MPE synths. The same logic that made Pigments attractive to Barnes — a large install base plus real MPE depth — applies to other synths that have added MPE support over the past year, and preset marketplaces are starting to reflect that with dedicated "MPE" tagging and categories.

For the MPE controller market, this matters more than it might first appear. Historically, one of the biggest barriers to adopting an MPE controller has been the "now what do I play it with" problem — a beautiful keybed or touch surface is only as useful as the sounds available for it. A growing marketplace of preset banks purpose-built for MPE, attached to synths people already own, lowers that barrier considerably. It means a new Osmose or LinnStrument owner can be playing genuinely expressive, purpose-designed patches within minutes of plugging in, rather than needing to learn sound design fundamentals first.

What to Watch Next

If this pattern continues, expect more sound designers to treat MPE compatibility as a selling point for preset packs the way "Serum wavetables" or "Omnisphere patches" became standard categories in years past. For players building out an MPE rig, it's worth checking whether the software instruments you already own — not just the ones marketed as MPE-first — have picked up per-note support recently, since that's often where the most interesting new preset content is starting to appear.