Keyboard Newbie

S

Sangram

New member
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
 
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) :D

I recommend Evolution. ;)

Carl
 
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
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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