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Music & Sound FX / So im looking at buying a keyboard.....any thoughts?

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SoftMotion3D
AGK Developer
18
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Joined: 24th Aug 2005
Location: Calgary,Alberta
Posted: 17th Oct 2008 11:21
I was shopping today for a keyboard but there seems to be soo many to choose from. A keyboard that says general midi 2 compatible....what does this mean?

I see some fancy ones out there with a disk drive too. Do they record to the midi file format? If there is a 3.5" disk? Also i see you can connect these things to the pc. Is it possible to play a midi song from the pc out to the keyboard? How does that work.

The new keyboards have nicer sounding notes then the built in pc ones. Why is this? Is it posiible to get a better sounding midi card for the pc?

Anyways....has anybody bought one of these....id like to here some opinions?

price seams to range from 100-1000 $ easy

SMD3DInteractive
Rudolpho
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Joined: 28th Dec 2005
Location: Sweden
Posted: 18th Oct 2008 17:40
Well, it depends with what you're after.
Just a midi keyboard (don't buy these small, crappy 1,5 octave ones you'd find in a rappers garage though; got to be completely useless), an electric piano (with weighed keys and a grand piano key range), a keyboard (sampler without too many editing possibilities) or a synthesizer (I assume you want the digital sampler type; this one lets you edit a great deal of the prerecorded samples, add effect chains etc.)

I for myself have a Roland XP-10 which has been my trusty master synthesizer for almost a decade by now.
It is very good in my opinion; good quality sounds, a lot of editing possibilities (filters, envelopes, effect chains, etc.), a standard 5 octave keyrange (this can be too few at times, but you can just prepare and use the transpose button for most purposes. Also, I doubt I could even fit a 7-octaver in my den )
Of course it is midi compatible, has built in arpeggiator functions, custom layer splitting / combining, mod- and pitchwheels (your average keyboard usually doesn't have these) and so on. Being a synthesizer, it features no built-in speakers and thus you need to connect it to an amplifier.
No disc drive (yeah, these are mainly for recording / importing midi sequences; the older samplers used them to import extra samples as well, but how good quality can you get today on a 1,44Mb disc?), but you can just connect a sequencer to it for that matter (I've got an QX5).
This fancy piece of equipment I would guess cost about $2000 when it was new; you can probably get a used exemplar for about half that price.
(If you like, I could list some more features of it, but this post is already pretty long )

"I kören hörs de brummande busarna Björnligan och Gondolen"
AlexI
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SoftMotion3D
AGK Developer
18
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Joined: 24th Aug 2005
Location: Calgary,Alberta
Posted: 20th Oct 2008 04:17
haha! i got that kind already...

i just bought one I can hook it up to the computer and use it in my program for play back. Im gunna try setting it up to capture from playing on it as well

Cheers...

Oh! and i ended up buying a casio LK 220

It seems pritty good and has 400 tones to choose from

SMD3DInteractive
SoftMotion3D
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Location: Calgary,Alberta
Posted: 21st Oct 2008 04:01
@ rudolpho

Is it possible to capture midi in from an actual keyboard?

Are those commands available in your plugin?

SMD3DInteractive
chunks chunks
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Location: ackworth uk
Posted: 21st Oct 2008 10:43
It is possible and easy to do , have you got a midi interface ?.

The one ive got is the roland um1 usb interface , it makes it east to connect your keyboard to the computer .

chunks

nvidia geforce 8600gt + amd athlon 64
windows xp pro.
Rudolpho
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Joined: 28th Dec 2005
Location: Sweden
Posted: 21st Oct 2008 15:46
Yes, it works just like any midIn port (assuming, as chunks said, that you have an interface, but since you said that you could output to it, I'm pretty sure you do ).

Now, go try out my sampler test (Black Noise, a few posts down in this forum).

"I kören hörs de brummande busarna Björnligan och Gondolen"
SoftMotion3D
AGK Developer
18
Years of Service
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Joined: 24th Aug 2005
Location: Calgary,Alberta
Posted: 21st Oct 2008 16:44
@ Rudolpho

I just finaly read the manual to my keyboard. I have a sampler built i never new about. I could sample a real guitar then play with it on the keyboard. Also yes my keyboard hooks up with a usb cable. I will have to check out your sampler program. I should be able to record music off of the keyboard since the music it plays is much nicer then my sound card. Also my music editor will play over my keyboard wich is very neat. I have alot of playing around to do

I might have another music editor in mind to be more compatible with this thing

SMD3DInteractive

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