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An instrument is a set of easy-to-do vs. hard-to-do factors. The instruments and tools you use for composing and arranging - just like your personal skills as well - are bound to affect the actual content you produce, not only how quickly you get it done. If something is very hard to do with your tools, you may find yourself seeking to do something else ...
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I've looked into this before, and there really don't seem to be any keyboards like this available apart from the Jankó Keyboard. Whether that's because it's really a bad idea or more due to the current layout being a heavily established convention I couldn't say for sure. Some pros and cons:
Pros:
There are only two major scales to learn instead of 12 - ...
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[are there] any guidelines as far as recording a mechanical instrument versus using a midi controller or synth?
No, only pros and cons. It all depends on what you want the finished product to sound like, and what instruments and equipment you have available to you.
Are there any benefits to recording a real instrument [eg piano]?
Assuming you have an ...
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The real instrument will sound more real, but as you note, there are many challenges to recording acoustic instruments or anything with a microphone that are completely bypassed when using a virtual instrument plugin.
With a plugin, you don't have to have an audio interface, microphone or cables. You don't have to have an actual acoustic instrument, which ...
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If you truly mean "as if I were practicing on a true piano" (as in an acoustic one)...
A decent weighted digital piano (which is actually a true synthesizer) will usually run $400-ish. I'd recommend a Yamaha DGX/YPG or Casio Privia if you don't mind some "clacking keys". Or a slightly better Yamaha Digital Piano to silence the "clack" of keys hitting the ...
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Firstly, does your USB keyboard have MIDI out (DIN) sockets as well...
...or is it USB only?
If it is USB only, then it is possible to get a hardware converter (from USB to traditional 'DIN' MIDI) that should work as long as the USB Midi keyboard is 'class compliant'. an example is http://www.kentonuk.com/products/items/utilities/usb-host.shtml.
Once you ...
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If you're willing to do it DIY, single board computers like a Raspberry Pi have enough processing oomph to act as (simple) synthesizers. They come with a USB and sound ports, it's just a matter of piecing together the midi driver and a synthesis engine software. Some examples of Pi based synthesizers can be found here.
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If you want to go really cheap, I found this little sound module on Amazon that costs only £50. Haven't tried it, but it should get the job done. Accepts both USB and MIDI as an input and in the product description states that it can power up a MIDI keyboard.
Ammoon Midiplus MiniEngine, and
Ammoon MIDIPLUS MiniEngine Pro
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You're probably running out of voices of polyphony. You haven't clarified what virtual instrument or synthesizer is the sound source, but most of them have some sort of voice limit, ranging from 1 to 128 voices. If you keep the damper pedal down, then voices can get used up very quickly.
For most instruments, when the voices are used up and another note is ...
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Imagine learning to drive in a simulator and never getting in a car. (Would you call yourself a "driver"?)
There are many physical aspects of piano playing that are impossible to reproduce without actually using your finger to accelerate a wood and fabric assembly. In contrast to the other answers so far, weighted digital keys feel very different to me. For ...
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TL;DR Extra knobs and buttons are not absolutely necessary, but then again a MIDI keyboard is not absolutely necessary either, because you can just use a mouse. But since you're buying a MIDI keyboard, you most likely want to make it easier to play virtual synthesizers, and for that purpose the extra knobs and buttons are very useful.
Even something very ...
answered Dec 26 '18 at 12:26
piiperi Reinstate Monica
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Hardware instruments (e.g. digital pianos) have a limit on the number of simultaneous notes that they can produce - this part of their spec is called "polyphony". As Todd explained, once you exceed the limit, notes start getting cut off. Some instruments try to do this in a clever way, cutting off the least noticeable notes; others are a bit more basic, just ...
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You needn't calculate or estimate or do fancy math. Others have measured piano string decay rates, and they're messy:
Measurements have been made on a high‐quality spinet piano to determine the initial amplitude and decay characteristics of the principal harmonic components of notes covering the entire scale. Decay rates of individual components varied ...
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can you switch easily between normal and mini key sizes like it was
two different instruments, or do you feel that your playing on a real
piano is badly impacted with the bad habits you constructed playing on
the mini keyboard?
I haven't noticed anything bad caused by playing mini keyboards. Mini keys are a little awkward to play, so I won't try to play any ...
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Regardless of the genre of music you’re interested in or your proficiency level on keyboard the difference between the two is 163mm or less than 7” in length. I’m pretty sure you will at some point wish you had the larger keyboard if you get the 49 key controller. You probably will never wish you had those 7 extra inches of space if you get the 61 key ...
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As an erstwhile pianist, you will probably regret not having a full size keyboard for when you decide to be a pianist again. Trouble is, there aren't that many controllers that have weighted keys, which narrows the field even more!
If all you'll be doing is production, then a range of 4 octaves will do for most, but you'll be using the octave shift button ...
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I am a pianist and have both a baby grand Koehler and Campbell and a Casio Privia for traveling/notating music on a computer. I don't mind practicing on the keyboard but I notice there are two major differences:
Note Reaction: While the weighted keys do feel the same going down, they are nowhere near the same coming back up. The action in a piano is ...
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It is possible that you are making a couple of incorrect assumptions. Let's check it out.
First, you said "I'm hoping this will allow me to experiment with different sounds over the lifetime of the keyboard rather than being locked in with the sounds that are normally built in to a digital piano."
Having built-in sounds will not restrict you. Most stage ...
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MIDI is a standard for carrying sound-related instructions like "start playing note 102 on channel 15 with velocity 187" from a producer (like a keyboard, a drum pad, or a sequencer in playback mode) to a consumer (like a hardware synthesiser, a software synthesiser, or a sequencer in record mode).
So you really have two questions here:
Can I buy a ...
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Reaper is an awesome tool and can do A LOT, so it's a bit overwhelming but in its basic use, it's quite simple, once you know what you're doing. You can find a lot of tutorials and resources on the Internet about this software (because it is inexpensive, a lot of non-professional use it).
I like a lot the website Tutorials For Reaper, you can start with ...
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I believe that when J. Rudess is referring to "pattern based" he is talking about describing musical phrases as a series of relative intervals, and then repeating those series of intervals from different starting pitches.
On a guitar this is straight forward to do by moving up and down the neck: play a particular passage, and then play the same ...
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First make sure that Windows is receiving MIDI from your keyboard. If you are connecting through USB you might need to install drivers, or do some setup. Google your keyboard's model and check the manual.
As for free stand-alone apps for Windows, two options are:
SimplePiano
Virtual Piano
I do strongly recommend you to get familiar with a DAW (you can get ...
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One way to think about it is:
a single staff spans about an octave and a fifth, i.e. about 20 notes, so if your exercises/experiments fit within a single staff (treble or bass) 32 keys should be enough. With a MIDI controller, you should have the option of (octave) transposing the keyboard as necessary to cover either of these cases.
The grand staff ...
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First, know that specific product recommendations are off-top here. But I'll point out a few points to consider as far as features.
Number of keys
Do you plan to learn piano/keys? 25 should be fine for playing most melodies or bass lines separately, but it will tough to play both at the same time as you would when learning piano. So if you only want ...
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Yes
You have to download the USB MIDI drivers and then you can connect the P-45 to a computer to control software synthesizers and/or record and play back MIDI data. If you want to control other hardware using MIDI, you will have to connect that hardware to the same computer.
This page has driver and manual downloads for the P-45:
https://usa.yamaha.com/...
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I can't speak to the logistics of connecting your particular keyboard. But one piece of software that is useful for this (and has been around forever) is Scala. Depending on the abilities of your equipment, it can export tuning files in various formats or use MIDI pitch bends to allow real-time performance on an instrument that doesn't natively support ...
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There IS software that claims to generate MIDI from audio input. 'Imperfect' would be too kind :-) Use a keyboard that DOES have a MIDI output. Life's too short to do it the hard way.
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