Dear Lazyweb

[solarbird]

Hey, Lazyweb! What do I need to know about cheap midi keyboards? (As in, midi keyboards to be used with a digital audio workstation, not home keyboards that happen to have midi in/out pairs.) I am strongly considering one for studio work because I can't afford, you know, an orchestra. I'm seeing things like Miditech used for <$100, is this any good?

eta: to clarify, I don't know anything about these, other than they exist. So what I need to know really starts with the list of things I need to know. ^_^

eta2: I think I want semi-weighted keys. I have a piano background and don't like standard low-end synth/keyboard keys. But am I wrong?

Comments

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

For me, I wanted at least 8 faders (a.k.a. sliders) and a bunch of pushbutton toggles. Depending on what you're doing these can be a godsend -- you can adjust levels, plugin parameters, etc, without having to touch a computer. Having these things available may or may not make a bit of difference to you.

If you don't have a ton of real piano experience, you probably don't care that much about weighted keys. If you've done a lot of piano work before, unweighted keys just feel completely wrong. If you haven't done a ton of piano work before, weighted keys still feel better (IMO), but you can probably live without and never know the difference.

Aftertouch basically lets you change the pressure on a key after a note is struck. i.e. without aftertouch, you'll hit a key on your velocity sensitive keyboard and generate a value for how hard the note was struck ("I hit C4 at a velocity of 100"), and that's it. Aftertouch sends a series of messages after that initial message as your pressure on the key changes ("I hit C4 at a velocity of 100... and now I'm at 90... and now I'm at 80... and now I'm at 100 again..")

The main thing I've seen aftertouch used for is orchestral instruments. With a piano, volume and attack are linked -- the harder you press, the stronger the attack, the louder the note (and you can't change the volume of a note in the middle of it). But most orchestral instruments don't work that way -- think of a violin. You can have a very soft attack that grows into a very loud note, or a very hard attack that quickly tapers off to little more than a whisper. Aftertouch lets you do that, by sending an initial key velocity to determine the strength of the attack, and then sending aftertouch data to control the volume after that.

(you could strike a key really hard and then take almost all the pressure off of a key to get a strong attack and then drop to a very quiet sustain, for example)

I'm sure buying used MIDI bits is the same as buying anything else used... some stuff has been treated well, some stuff hasn't been. I don't think there's any particular reason *not* to look at used, though.