Keyboard/Synth

(sorry, cant help about lending you one unless you fancy coming up to Wigan to lend a cheap 80s Casio hunk of shit that you could buy in Oxfam for £1.50)

can Vicky help? Can anyone else help?

You do have a sound card, don't you?

Whereabouts are you, Dr C? I can't help, I'm afraid, but maybe there's a local gear shop that would loan something out for a couple of days?

Dumb question - how do you *play* a softsynth w/o a *keyboard*. Do you somehow map keys to notes?

We can't hire one cos we need it for rehearsals as well as the gig.We have a song in which all members of the band swop and play each instrument at sometime during the song and to do it right we need two keybds.

If I download reactor or LL is it good enough quality to play loud thru a PA?

Many softsynths let you play notes via the QWERTY keyboard; Reaktor uses the oldfashioned tracker keymappings of the bottom row of letters Z-M being C to B of one octave with the row above being black notes (so the "S" key is C#, "D" is D#, "G" is F#, and "H" and "J" for G# and A#) and the top row is the octave above, so "Q" is C right up to "P" for high E and possibly beyond depending on the synth - I think Reaktor also maps [ and ] to notes but these were usually control keys in old trackers - with 2 and 3 and so on for sharps.

If your chosen softsynth doesn't already do that you can download a "virtual midi keyboard" and some drivers that will redirect the midi output into your softsynth. http://www.maz-sound.de/misc_without_frames.html has some freeware and shareware utilities which will do that for you if you have a PC. I don't really know where to look for Mac stuff but there must be some out there if they're needed.

Reaktor and pretty much any commercial softsynth should be high enough quality as long as your soundcard is reasonable and your laptop has a fast enough CPU not to cause stuttering and clicks. Unless stuttering and clicks are your thing, but even if so it's nice to know they're under your control.

However, if you intend to play chords, be warned that the PC keyboard was really not designed for this kind of thing and certain key combinations just don't register at the same time. Two at once is usually fine but more may cause problems.

dumb question, but what do i need to play soft synths? ive got a little usb keyboard and a softsynth called imposcar, how do i get it working?

welp a computer is a fairly essential part of things, do you have one of those? is imposcar installed on it?

I can't imagine why I thought I needed this, or what I needed it for.

phat analog vibes?

xxpost, yep and yep. i thought you could simply load up imposcar and play away but seems not. i guess i need to use cubase or fruityloops to get it working. which is the simplest program to use?

the keyboard comes with a program called sound studio ii but the delay between hitting a key and the sound coming out, is ridiculous, like 0.5 secs. (this delay doesn't happen when using the sounds in the program - it seems to be the softsynth that causes it)

can you use acid 4 to get these working? ableton gives me the fear with how crazy complicated it looks and im thinking id be better off with a program specifically for playing and arranging music.

ableton isn't that complex.. but you should be able to get a free cubase LE pretty easy i would think. did you get any free software with your midi keys?

i have no experience with acid 4 or FL

Dr. C, you needed an extra keyboard for two songs.

electricsound, is it easy to sort out on cubase? i just want to be able to mess about with diff sounds on the soft synth, maybe record them and use the loops in acid or something

yep, it should be easy to use it as a virtual instrument in cubase.

You need an ASIO soundcard otherwise the delay between pressing the keyboard key and sound coming out will be to great for live play.

Yup, and if it's still a problem you can try messing with the latency settings in Cubase or whatever.

the keyboard comes with a program called sound studio ii but the delay between hitting a key and the sound coming out, is ridiculous, like 0.5 secs.

This is a latency issue and as Jarl said you really need an ASIO soundcard - a workaround however is to install something like ASIO4ALL which is a software asio emulator. I have NO idea how it works, but it does work! Not perfectly mind you - I find in FL I still have to run the quick quantizer over my doodles on the kbd. Live it'd be pretty unnoticeable though I reckon.

Related note: soundcards, I need an ext one, whats good? (I have an ASUS P4 1.8ghz with 1mb ram but the sound card is poop)

what sort of inputs do you need it to have? usb/fw?

are asio soundcards massively expensive? im trying desperately to find an idiots guide to setting up and playing away in cubase, why oh why are these things like a NASA nightmare

Who me Jim? USB I guess... not sure if I have FW, but I imagine thats faster. Isnt there an external soundblaster live! or something thats good?

trayce, is the asio emulator simple to set up? ive got it here but im completely and utterly stuck

please don't purchase any creative labs products trayce they suck balls!! i recommend an edirol or m-audio interface

speaking of m-audio, do you need an actual bass guitar (and uh drum kit) to use this: http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/DrumBassRig-main.html or does it recreate those for you? using a midi keyboard? (this is the v basic one im using: http://www.htfr.com/more-info/MR170545 )

and this is the softsynth im grappling with at the moment http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/GForceimpOSCar-main.html

yeah you would trigger the drum/bass stuff with a midi keyboard. note that (i have found) playing drums (well) on a midi keyboard is pretty difficult

but not impossible by any means.

or you can just use their sounds/samples and sequence shit manually (ie not in real time)

which i generally prefer for most drums.. but i am also a shit programmer

does playing bass on a midi keyboard sound anything like the real thing though? or is it like how a 303 bassline sounds?

it will not sound like a real bass guitar, no. but that's not to say it won't sound cool in context

has anyone tried to play bass on a midi keyboard through a guitar amp??

get one sampler

how would that be possible?

xpost

haha

srose: Im afraid I cant be much help with the ASIO sw setup, my bf did all that for me, he tweaked it lots I seem to recall. I'll ask him tonight.

Jim: ah yeah, I couldnt remember the pro brand names, thanx. I still just write songs in fruity loops, it sounds poop but its good for "sketches". We can always record things properly later on the guitars/bass using a SW multitrack recorder like Reaper.

Or like, a real one, if we HAD one (we dont).

i've never used reaper but it definitely has a loyal fanbase

"Has anyone tried to play bass on a midi keyboard through a guitar amp??"

I've played Hammond organ on a bass guitar hooked up to a computer with a wave to midi converter running live.

Guitar->PC->Wave to MIDI->B2 soft synth

Latency was appalling.

Trayce, sequencers sound as good as the samples you use, I know Lynskey here does a lot of his stuff with FL, i guess its easier for sample driven stuff, if you are doing old fashioned Rawk then it's better to multi track your instruments.

Yeah you're right on that point. I must admit some of the 3rd party FL plugins (lie Slayer) have made a big difference.

lie=like

My Roland RS-5 has been in the repair shop for 10 MONTHS awaiting replacement parts. I'm looking for a replacement 61-key model of some description, with a preference for quality piano/organ sounds over spacey Faithless pads. Any suggestions? The Nord stage is way, way out of my price range, unfortunately.

Just get me an ARP 2600 and I’ll be set 😜

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 6, 2020

omg

This raises so many questions.

<3

Excellent.

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