If you're into creating music, then you probably already know everything (or enough) there is to know about MIDI keyboards.

Their job is to allow musicians (as well as both aspiring producers and more experienced ones) to control various electronic music instruments such as synthesizers and samplers.

Some MIDI keyboards come with default controller apps, however, if you're a Linux user, you might not be so lucky. That's why SysEx Controls might be quite interesting, as its a free and open-source, Linux-only app for configuring MIDI keyboards.

In short, SysEx Controls allows for reading the control settings of some MIDI keyboards, as well as changing and "writing" them back to the device in question. It's a controller app.

It's not exactly "universal," but it does work with various popular products such as the Arturia KeyStep 37, the MiniLab MKII, and the MiniLab 3. It also works with most BeatStep MIDI keyboards.

The GUI is quite spartan, but it does look at home on GNOME desktop environments (since it's GTK, that's to be expected). From the app's main window, you select any of the detected/connected devices, and you're provided with a wide range of settings that can be tweaked.

For instance, from the Controller tab, you can change aspects such as the User Channel, the MIDI Input Channel, MIDI Thru, the Velocity Curve, the Aftertouch Curve, and Knob Catchup.

Other settings can be accessed from tabs such as Sequence, CV/Gate, Transport, CC Bank 1, CC Bank 2, and so forth.

While definitely not what one might call impressive, SysEx Controls shows great promise. It's still a very young app, and it only offers support for a couple of MIDI keyboards, but for those specific keyboards, it works great.