Cheap Keyboard/Controller: MIDI or General MIDI?

Chris Long

Chris Long

New member
I'm in need of a cheap keyboard/midi controller to use with my Cakewalk Guitar Studio 2. I see cheap Casios priced around $100, but they have MIDI, not General MIDI...will that make a big difference? Any real difference at all? I'm only going to use it for recording in the Cakewalk, and I need something...

Looking for the best $150 can buy...lol....just something that works well.

Thanks!
 
It's enough when your keyboard says 'midi', cause it means that it's capable of transmitting midi-data from/to/thru any midi-devices you might have or buy.
General midi is just a standard. If you were to write a song using general midi (GM) sounds, and you would play it on another computer that's also using general midi, it would consequently sound the same (a little dull, I'm afraid). Most soundcards have some sort of wavetable onboard that consist of the 128 sounds of general midi.
In short, in your case, any (controller)keyboard that simply says 'midi' would do the job perfectly!

greetings..
 
Just to make it a little clearer...

MIDI defines the messages that describe what notes to play, how loud, how long, what patch to switch to... but it does not specify what patch number corresponds to what sound. A Roland might have patch #12 assigned to a glockenspiel but that doesn't mean that Korg can't assign patch #12 to a French horn.

General MIDI just adds a standard mapping of patch numbers to sounds. Patch #1 is a piano on any synth by any manufacturer that follows the General MIDI specification. This guarantees that if a MIDI sequence is played on other GM-compliant synths, a piano part will always be a piano part, a bass part always a bass part, etc.

There's no inherent reason a General MIDI sequence should sound "a little dull." Dullness (or not) has to do only with the quality of the sounds on the synth and the quality of the performance captured in the sequence.
 
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