What to buy?

[astoebe]

Hey, I'm pretty new to recording my own stuff, and I have tried to read up on midi and it all confuses me. Right now I am recording with an m-audio mobile pre interface using a mxl 990 for vocals and acoustic guitar, which sound pretty good. I have been using the drums at my church which are already mixed ok when i try to do full band songs. I would like to buy some type of midi device that has natural, good sounding key/drum/bass/string sounds on it and am unsure of how to go about this. I use a program called power tracks pro audio to record, and it seems to be good, but the midi sucks. Is there a way to buy and external box and a midi keyboard controller, or a way to get something on my computer that has better midi sounds and still use it w/ the songs i have recorded on power tracks? Any suggestions or info would be helpful. Thank you!

Andrew

ps- my budget is somewhere around 500?

 

[Tifstorey]

Hi Andrew,

I think your best off buying a midi keyboard, and an external voice module. You can get a midi keyboard from anywhere, so wont blab on about those really. i would suggest, if your budget is around £500? Spend about £100 on a decentish keyboard, and then spend the rest on a voice module. When your looking for your keyboard, obviously look for the quality, and not how many on-board sounds it has. Maybe check This one out?

Next, Voice modules, all depends really what your going to be playing as you can get specialist voice modules. You could check out the proteus range of voice mods, i tried looking for some but failed, so i think they might be non produced now... So you may have to resort to looking on eBay. I have the proteus 2000, although the proteus 2500 looks amazing. You can buy upgrade chips too which have specific sounds depending on the sound you want.

Like i said, it all depends really what kind of sound your wanting to get.

Hope some of that helps a little,

Good luck and have fun!

 

[ssscientist]

First of all, here are links to two good articles on midi basics - part one and part two. They may be a little too basic for you, but we can all use a refresher course now and then...

Second, to expand on what Tif said, there are basically three choices in the current world of computer music - a keyboard with built in sounds like this one, a controller keyboard and sound module team like this and this, or the option of staying 'inside the box' --- doing it all with softsynths. For this last option you'll still need a controller keyboard, but the choices get quite numerous from there - this is just one package out there. There are literally thousands more.

 

[mikemorgan]

I am partial to the Yamaha line of XG products for hardware midi sounds. I also use some software synths, but to a lesser degree.

Do a search on Ebay for "Yamaha MU". You'll find a number of different options and price ranges on these stand-alone performance modules. They include the MU10..Mu15..Mu50..Mu80..Mu90..Mu100..Mu128..Mu1000. If you are interested in a PCI card version of these devices, Yamaha made the excellent SW1000XG card which not only has the features of the MU100, but includes spdif/analogue in-out ports for audio.

I use an Mu100r, which is a rackmount version. It also doubles as a two channel FX unit with a gazillion options for effects that can be used on your audio in real time. Oh, and did I mention, the software for all these boxes, XG Edit, developed by Gary Gregson, is amazingly helpful and beautiful to look at!

My Mu100 ran about $400 used two years ago. You could probably get one now for $250-$300. Same goes for the SW1000XG.