MIDI keyboard devices

[Morella]

I'm thinking of buying a MIDI keyboard to compose some rock, funk, latin jazz and reggae music. Can anyone tell me what features to look for?

Also, straighten me out on this. Since the MIDI instrument voices are in the sound card, the quality of the file that I will produce depends on my sound card, right? What about midi software (I'm evaluating Music Masterworks now) that creates a .wav file. What is it that will determine the quality of the instrument sound? Does the software poll the sound card to get the sounds that it needs to build the .wav?

Since it costs me $500 or more to have a live backing track produced, I wouldn't mind investing a little money in the equipment, if it will get me a realistic live music sound, but I don't want to waste money; for instance, I do not need a keyboard to use for live performances, and I'm perfectly content to compose one instrument at a time and mix them later.

TIA for any advice.

-d

[spastic_chicken]

If you plan to use your MIDI controller through your computer, you will need to connect the controller via USB cable, or you can get a USB to MIDI Adapter like this one:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Uno.html

I personally prefer the adapter, when I connected mine via USB, it seemed kind of laggy to me.
Typically you won’t use your soundcard based voices. You’ll need to get a program like SONAR, Cakewalk, or Cubase (there’s like a million of these programs). Then you can import different software synthesizers into the program.
The other alternative is to get a MIDI controller and get hardware rackmount synth(s). I tried the software route but found it really wasn’t for me.
As far as a controller, I wouldn’t go with a cheapo one. You’ll want to get a nicer one that you can grow into. I like one with lots of knobs and sliders so you can modify your voices real time. My friend has a cheap one that he can’t even assign a slider for attack, release, sustain, or decay.
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Cakewalk...42-i1526687.gc This is a pretty nice board for the money.

This is what I use for my MIDI controller:

http://www.roland.com/products/en/AX-Synth/

[Morella]

I agree 100% about buying cheap stuff. I would rather just not have something than to have a cheap one of something that is going to cause me problems and disappointment, and this will be for commercial use. I make international karaoke CDG, and hope to have my first album out this year. That Cakewalk unit looks pretty cool, and the $300 price tag seems very reasonable to me. I want to produce what sounds like real live music. A lot of CDG tracks sound flat and mechanical. I need the music to sound like it was done with feeling, which it will be. I get really emotional with it.

My music background is in percussion, violin, vocals, and a little guitar, but I'm new to MIDI. Do you think that that Cakewalk unit will produce the quality that I'm looking for? If not, I'd rather spend a little more, but if it will, there is no reason to. Also, are there accessories, such as drum pads or pedals that can be added?

Thanks for the pro advice.

-d

[spastic_chicken]

The quality is going to come from the software you run. The cakewalk unit is nice, I believe Roland produces it. I'd stay away from the M-Audio's. Their MIDI controllers aren't that great.

[spastic_chicken]

Check some of these out:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Virtual-Instruments-Software.gc

[Scary Guy]

As far as drums go you can get an electronic drum kit. But anything you can do with that you could just do with a keyboard anyway, you just don't get that drum kit feel.

As far as getting the drum kit to interface into MIDI, well I don't know about that. I have some good friends in a local band called D:Konstruct and two of the members have other side projects Pulse State and OPPFOR. You can ask them pretty much anything and just mention that I sent you.

http://www.dkonstruct.net/Content/Bio.aspx

http://www.pulsestate.com/new

Pulse State/Mike knows a ton about music production. He's done a few remixes for some bands as well.

[Scary Guy]

Yeah, the ensuing discussion said just about what I want to say, but in case I missed it, if they want a good, sturdy MIDI controller, get one of the newer CME's. I have a UF-7 at my house that Rob gave me (you've seen it), and those things are fucking tanks.

Huge penis Jesus = epic win

.

[Morella]

Well, I went with the AKAI MPK61 controller, an interface box, mic and boom stand, and some decent headphones, everything came with a few sample programs, with the cables and extras, about $1100 worth of crap, and I managed to assemble it all and install the software. I got a drum kit loaded and played with the drum pads for a while, and it's pretty cool. There's definitely a bit of a learning curve getting started with all of this stuff.

I think I am going to use two separate programs, one just for recording MIDI and the other for voice, and perhaps a guitar (I play a little), or any instrument that I want to mic. One thing I haven't figured out yet is why there are MIDI in/out jacks on the interface, but I'm about to kill a tree printing the docs for all of this stuff.

Anybody have any comments about quality loss when using ACID to mix it all together? I have a few karaoke tracks that I've mixed with ACID. This is an example of a simple one, no MIDI, just used some loops that I had to add some percussion, the trombone intro and some other stuff to a backing track that I thought was too simple.

http://www.singersshowcase.com/song.php?id=33252&act1=25&act2=85692

The only disappointment so far has been that my studio computer doesn't have enough memory to work with the recording interface, but desktops are so cheap, I may just replace the box. It seems to work fine with the midi controller.

-d

[spastic_chicken]

Akais are nice, congrats. Acid is a good program. Are you talking about sound quality of the final mix? It should be fine. Another program I've had luck with that I like is a free program, can be found at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

[Morella]

Yes, I have Audacity. Haven't done too much with it but it looks pretty cool, especially for freeware.

Right now I'm working with a version of Ableton that came with the keyboard controller. I put the original commercial song into one track, and then I can listen to it as well as the instrument(s) that I'm recording. When I have all of the instrumental parts covered, I can just take out the original and save everything else as a .wav. There is another piece of software that came with the interface box, which I plan to use for recording backup vocals, guitar solos, or anything else that is not MIDI, and I'll mix it together with the Ableton track.

The Ableton "pick bass" patch, with a little tuning, was pretty close to what I need for my bassline, and I've found the way that the way the keys are struck affects the sound of the notes. It takes a lot of practice; however, once I had one good repeated measure, I could copy and paste it. Once that track is done, I can just silence it while I work on the next instrument. It should be interesting to see how my version of Marcia Beila turns out, compared to all of the crappy ones that are out there now.

-d

[Scary Guy]

Audacity is great stuff, but I really like Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro) for other things that it does. Seems more robust to me is all, however that costs money too. As always though you can find things on the internet if you know where to look.