Keyboard Newbie

[Sangram]

I'm basically a writer-guitarist, kind of like Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger (except my skills are about 1% of theirs, heh), and we have a little band, and I've basically started writing and putting my own stuff down. Unfortunately, I need more instruments - strings, sax, brass - at least for the demos.

I've been looking at picking up a keyboard, nothing fancy, something that can interface to my SB Live! or onboard sound synth (nVidia DLS synthesiser) to give me a little more variety of sounds. Just a couple of guitars isn't good enough, and loops are pretty limiting musically.

I was looking at something like the PSR series of Yamaha, the low-end stuff with 5-octave touch sensitive keys and midi connectivity. My budget is tight, and since I don't yet know how to play a piano, I wasn't looking at a high-end piece anyway, in case I lose interest down the line. There is a little flexibility in my budget, but I do need Midi and touch sensitive keys at the minimum, and don't want to go above about $300 (which would be actually about $150 in the USA because of high import duties and stuff. The PSR 290 goes for about $250 or so...).

Advice, thoughts, suggestions? I am really lusting for one of the 'grand piano' series, but don't know if it's overkill for my requirements. I am also looking at some controllers but they seem expensive and have no sounds built in, which may be a bit of an issue in a band jamming situation...

TIA

Sang

[Krakit]

If you're just interested in computer recording and have soft synths already, you should just buy yourself a MIDI controller.

eBay has used controllers all the time and very reasonably priced (well below $300)

I recommend Evolution.

Carl

[Sangram]

Can't avail of eBay. I'm located a few thousand miles from the US. But thanks for the info.

What's a soft synth? Is it the software that allows me to play midi on my PC? Or Midi programs like Cakewalk?

Thanks

[LfO]

A softsynth is basically a piece of software that can take midi data as input, and produce sound from it. So, you mentioned your nVidia synth, which the previous poster was referring to as a softsynth. I think you may be saying that you have a synth onboard the sound card, and frankly, I don't know if that qualifies as a "softsynth" technically or not, but they usually don't sound very good.

[Sangram]

OK, I get it. Yes you're right, the onboard synth sounds pathetic frankly but it has soundfont support and I guess I can get slightly better sound with soundfonts.

But if I pick up a synth module down the line, I should be able to hook it up using standard MIDI wire, right?

[LfO]

Anything you get that's MIDI compatible now will work with any MIDI gear you get in the future. So, if you want to get a cheap controller now, and write with just the nVidia synth, but buy a nicer module later when you're ready to start recording in earnest, that would work just fine.

[Sangram]

Thanks!!