5 Totally different Methods to Use Your MIDI Keyboard

Many music producers will advocate getting a MIDI keyboard to make use of together with your DAW. It is one of many quickest methods to take a music and report it straight into your pc. However moreover recording a melody, what else is a MIDI keyboard good for?

You possibly can experiment with digital synthesizers and report impact plugins with ease, however that is simply the tip of the iceberg. For those who’re new to music manufacturing, you may uncover that the MIDI keyboard has a lot extra to supply than you may suppose.

What Precisely Is a MIDI Keyboard?

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and it is a technical language that helps computer systems perceive music enter. A MIDI keyboard does not have audio system constructed into it, so by itself, it will not make any sound. As an alternative, it should be linked to a pc to create any form of music.

The enjoyable begins as soon as it is hooked as much as a DAW software program of your selection, like FL Studio or Logic Professional X. After loading totally different sound samples or digital devices, you should use the MIDI keyboard to play and report them. You are able to do the identical factor utilizing your pc keyboard and mouse, however anybody will let you know that it’s miles faster, simpler, and extra fluid to make use of a keyboard.

Beneath the hood, a MIDI keyboard is solely telling the pc if you began urgent a notice, if you stopped, and the way arduous you pressed. Since these actions are translated to knowledge, it makes it actually easy to edit any notice you performed after recording it by shifting the notes round with a mouse. That is one benefit it has over recording with a microphone.

This is how you should use your MIDI keyboard.

1. Traditional Piano Sound

The plain means to make use of your MIDI keyboard is to easily load up a piano instrument. A grand piano can value tens of hundreds of {dollars} to purchase, to not point out enormous house necessities, so it is protected to say a digital piano is the following neatest thing.

You’ll find nice digital piano devices in almost each DAW. You may also purchase digital instrument sound libraries which are usually indistinguishable from the actual deal, all because of superior sampling methods.

In both case, utilizing your MIDI keyboard to play a digital piano has numerous advantages. It is excellent for sketching a music out or for experimenting with totally different chord progressions. In contrast to audio recordings, you can too copy sections of MIDI music over to a separate monitor and see what it seems like with a unique instrument altogether.

As an added bonus, you can too use a MIDI keyboard, akin to PopuPiano, to learn to play piano.

2. Experiment With Digital Synthesizers

Some of the in style makes use of of a MIDI keyboard is to play digital synthesizers. It is how one can create really bizarre seems like nothing you’ve got heard earlier than.

Except you solely take heed to classical music, it is the synthesizer that reigns supreme in most fashionable in style music and movies. Hans Zimmer is one well-known composer who ceaselessly used synth sounds. His music is in movies just like the Batman Darkish Knight trilogy and Interstellar, each of that are nice examples of how synths are used immediately.

The important thing to experimenting with digital synthesizers is the MIDI keyboard. With out it, you might be pressured to make use of your mouse pointer to create melodies and harmonies, one notice at a time—not a really inspiring technique to write music.

In reality, the Alchemy Synth is among the core causes it’s best to think about upgrading from Storage Band to Logic Professional X, and it is a terrific place to start out utilizing your MIDI keyboard to its full potential.

3. Play Any Digital Instrument You Can Think about

At this level, virtually any actual instrument has a digital model that you may play utilizing a MIDI keyboard. These days, they sound fairly reasonable, so for those who wished to interchange your whole band with digital devices, you possibly can achieve this with ease.

A lot of folks love utilizing Logic Professional X as a result of it has an enormous instrument library that comes with it by default. However there are additionally numerous web sites to obtain free VST plugins and devices that you may add to any DAW you personal.

In actuality, it is unimaginable to personal so many bodily devices and be ok to play them too, however with MIDI you do not have to.

4. Automate Audio Results Plugins With no Hitch

MIDI keyboards with knobs and faders permit you to automate results plugins. It is a trick that skilled producers use so as to add results in an intuitive means and pace up the manufacturing course of. With no MIDI keyboard, it’s important to do it together with your mouse, which as we have talked about earlier than, is way slower and rather more tedious.

For instance, you possibly can assign the quantity of a monitor to a knob in your MIDI keyboard. Then, if you hit play and take heed to your monitor, you possibly can change the quantity in real-time. In different phrases, you possibly can “automate” any impact modifications in real-time; together with different parameters like delay, pan, acquire, and dry/moist.

Nowadays many MIDI keyboards and DAWs have an auto-detect function, making assigning results to your keyboard a breeze.

5. Make Beats With Your MIDI Keyboard

Alongside writing melodies and harmonies, a MIDI keyboard is nice for creating beat tracks.

You are able to do this utilizing the keyboard keys to play samples, or you should use pads. Pads are rubber squares that can both be above the keys or off to the facet, and a MIDI keyboard can have eight or extra relying on the mannequin.

Just like knobs and faders, you possibly can assign sounds to the pads, so you possibly can play them in real-time like a efficiency. Making music this manner is way extra enjoyable and loads higher for producing music that flows. It additionally frees up house so that you can use the keys to play harmonic materials.

Lots of the finest MIDI keyboards include pads these days, making it simpler than ever to put down some beats.

Make the Most of Your MIDI Keyboard

With the correct MIDI keyboard, you possibly can create nice music that does not sound prefer it was made on a pc in any respect. Mix this with digital devices or synthesizers, and you should use your MIDI keyboard to play just about any sound you possibly can think about.

As soon as you’ve got acquired a maintain of taking part in sound libraries, you possibly can learn to management results plugins. On high of that, studying easy methods to produce beats in your MIDI keyboard will take your music manufacturing abilities to the following degree.