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[Sappho]

I'm getting kind of frustrated. I bought a MIDI keyboard today to use to start to practice some basic piano as well as record some simple music. The description of the keyboard led me to believe I'd be able to plug it into the computer and basically just play it and hear it through the speakers. This is apparently not the case. It came with some free software for recording, but the software is so complicated I can't even begin to process what the hell I'm looking at.

Before buying this, I watched a video online of someone describing the features and playing it a bit. He just had it hooked up to an iPad and was playing it through some free application. Why can't I seem to find something simple like that? I don't even want to record right now, I just want to play around with it. But I can't find a simple way to do that, and looking at the software that comes with the keyboard gives me a headache.

Anyone know how to do this? I've tried googling it but all I came up with were a thousand tutorials on how to physically connect the keyboard to the computer. I don't need that. I just need a program that will let me PLAY the damn thing.

EDIT: Okay, after a banging my head against the wall for a few minutes, I found something that works. Free software called Cantabile Lite combined with a free ASIO driver and some freely downloaded VST instruments. Was a hell of a difficult thing to set up but at least I can finally at least play the keyboard. If I'd realized it would be this complicated, I'd have just bought a regular mini keyboard and worried about recording later!

EDIT2: Well I'm still trying to figure out how to use the ridiculous software that came with this thing. To join their support forums, you have to answer a trivia question about MIDI recording. I had to google the answer. Suffice it to say, so far they have not been helpful. If anyone has ever used this kind of software before, or knows anything about recording and editing MIDI, please let me know here, because I have ALL the questions.

[Eagleon]

If it's not too late I can answer all the questions! Lots of experience with midi and recording thereof, including esoteric routing tasks within DAWs.

My first suggestion would be to grab ahold of both LMMS (a free, open-source Digital Audio Workstation - intimidating term, but they're really just ways of getting MIDI and real samples together in a way that makes musical sense) and the demo version of FL Studio (for getting familiar with things, it has a nicer UI than LMMS but you can only save projects, not load them. Still lets you import/export MIDI files and render sound out from VST, so you can use it for recording)

Anything in particular you still need help with/clarification of? And if you'd rather skype or something shoot me a PM

[Sappho]

Hooray, my very own expert! Thanks for the offer of help. I have been slowly figuring out how to use Samplitude, but as I just posted earlier today in the general computer help thread, I was apparently conned into thinking I was getting fully-functioning software with my keyboard, as this "silver" version is essentially just a free demo. I am currently making a shady back-alley deal with a hooded member of the cult of questionable software-obtainment rituals to get the full version, because I've sunk so much time into learning it, I'd be very displeased if it all was wasted. I've learned how to use the "quantize" button, and I am suddenly unable to live without it.

If, however, you can recommend free software which is fully-functional, I'd be willing to try it. And believe me, I'd buy this stuff if I had the money, but I just got deported from my home and I'm living off savings until they let me go back (another 2.5 months), so I really, truly cannot afford it right now.

Right now my primary question is whether there's any possible way to use the sound card for one other program while the ASIO driver is running. I really wanted to be able to play along with an MP3 or video, and I was really sad to discover that's not possible.

[Eagleon]

Hooray, my very own expert! Thanks for the offer of help. I have been slowly figuring out how to use Samplitude, but as I just posted earlier today in the general computer help thread, I was apparently conned into thinking I was getting fully-functioning software with my keyboard, as this "silver" version is essentially just a free demo. I am currently making a shady back-alley deal with a hooded member of the cult of questionable software-obtainment rituals to get the full version, because I've sunk so much time into learning it, I'd be very displeased if it all was wasted. I've learned how to use the "quantize" button, and I am suddenly unable to live without it.

If, however, you can recommend free software which is fully-functional, I'd be willing to try it. And believe me, I'd buy this stuff if I had the money, but I just got deported from my home and I'm living off savings until they let me go back (another 2.5 months), so I really, truly cannot afford it right now.

Right now my primary question is whether there's any possible way to use the sound card for one other program while the ASIO driver is running. I really wanted to be able to play along with an MP3 or video, and I was really sad to discover that's not possible.

Yeah, audio software is beastly expensive. You can easily sink tens of thousands of dollars into professional sample libraries, so I don't think it's reasonable to feel -too- guilty if you're just using it to learn, haha.

But unfortunately no, ASIO4All (I'm assuming you're using) is a pig that way. What you can do is take an MP3 and drop it into the playlist/Samplitude's equivalent thereof, hit record, and play along with as it plays the mp3/sample. I'm not immediately sure how to do that because I've never worked with samplitude - I'll familiarize myself with it as soon as it's done downloading. It's a long-shot, but if Samplitude has some kind of HTML feature, you might be able to embed a video into that.

Most DAWs have a quantization feature. I can't find one in LMMS (other than basic note duration and snapping), but FL Studio has really advanced quantization, where you can record or lay down a pattern of a few notes, and it'll squish notes together based on their durations, volume, panning, basically any midi property at all. Then you can use knobs and tensioner-knobs to adjust how much it's doing so. I don't know what kind of limitations Samplitude places that you're annoyed with, but it's worth poking around the different DAW options before picking one, because you may be more comfortable with one of their workflow over others.

[wierd]

How nasty.  You would think that with more modern interfaces, you would have BETTER responsiveness than you did back when the MPU401 ruled the roost.

I guess device makers are lazy, OS devs think MIDI is a retro functionality, and consumers of MIDI devices are just stuck in the middle?


You dont want to know how much of a PITA it can be to get midi working on a linux machine for instance.  I frequently have to install timidity+ and put it into soft-midi mode just to get SOMETHING that can respond to midi events.

(I understand that windows does something similar with the directsound DLS software wavetable synthesizer driver, since very few soundcards actually have real midi hardware in them anymore.)

Timidity+ at least has support for very large patch sets.  The directsound softsynth gets ... unreliable... when you feed it DLS files bigger than 10mb. (And a GOOD patch set can easily be bigger than 100mb)

[Eagleon]

How nasty.  You would think that with more modern interfaces, you would have BETTER responsiveness than you did back when the MPU401 ruled the roost.

I guess device makers are lazy, OS devs think MIDI is a retro functionality, and consumers of MIDI devices are just stuck in the middle?

You dont want to know how much of a PITA it can be to get midi working on a linux machine for instance.  I frequently have to install timidity+ and put it into soft-midi mode just to get SOMETHING that can respond to midi events.

(I understand that windows does something similar with the directsound DLS software wavetable synthesizer driver, since very few soundcards actually have real midi hardware in them anymore.)

Timidity+ at least has support for very large patch sets.  The directsound softsynth gets ... unreliable... when you feed it DLS files bigger than 10mb. (And a GOOD patch set can easily be bigger than 100mb)

Midi isn't going away, and device makers know that. It's just geared towards professional use more than casual playback of VSTs or soundfonts. Hell, a lot of people use it for robotics! That requires flexibility over all else. The DAW is what makes things easier on the surface, but for instance, if I wanted to remap how hard I hit a note to the frequency of a filter in a synth, rather than the volume, I can do that because it isn't all hard-wired to what it's "supposed" to do. It comes up more often than you'd think.

Linux in general is miserable for audio, from what I recall. They have like 10 different audio standards, right? OSS ALSA Pulse, etc. etc. Everyone wants to one-up each other and no one seems interested in compatibility.

[Sappho]

This new world of music is so big and complicated...

I'll just have to survive until I finally am allowed to go home where my other computers are. It's true, I could import a sound file into Samplitude and just have it play using one of the tracks, and I could always rip the audio out of a video file and do it that way. Kind of a pain in the ass, but at least it's possible.

I'm certainly not going to be making any money off of this. I already make money off of one type of art (writing), so I figure I can leave the other arts for hobbies.

I need to learn all these acronyms. I know that a VST is an instrument sound (and I've built up a small library of the ones I found most useful), but I still need to learn what this other stuff is.

It's funny, I remember MIDI being for music when I was younger, but as an adult, I associate it with VJing. One of the reasons I chose this keyboard is it comes with lots of sliders and dials which can be mapped for use with my VJ program, and I can use the keys to select clips rather than hunting through my library. So yeah, MIDI is important, useful business. I just wish it wasn't so complicated to use for sound.

While I'm waiting for the slowest download of all time to complete, I'm playing around with the "silver" version of this software, which is free, and which I have been learning on. I managed to make two short clips to practice and get the feel of it, and practice my playing by ear from memory, whatever that would be called. I hope to develop perfect pitch while I'm stuck in Scotland. I certainly have the capability, just need to train it up. I'm also watching some Beardyman for inspiration because that gentleman is pretty gosh-darned excellent at music (and watching him press buttons has helped me better understand some functions of music editing programs).

Here are the two little clips I've made as practice. The one good thing about not being able to play other audio while I play is that I have to really figure out all the notes from memory. It's good practice. See if you can name those tunes (and the artists who wrote them)!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zj1irjytk9bzhdy/last%20stop%20this%20town.mp3?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l3jz5s54dwra6lj/sad%20song.mp3?dl=0

[Eagleon]

This new world of music is so big and complicated...

I'll just have to survive until I finally am allowed to go home where my other computers are. It's true, I could import a sound file into Samplitude and just have it play using one of the tracks, and I could always rip the audio out of a video file and do it that way. Kind of a pain in the ass, but at least it's possible.

I'm certainly not going to be making any money off of this. I already make money off of one type of art (writing), so I figure I can leave the other arts for hobbies.

I need to learn all these acronyms. I know that a VST is an instrument sound (and I've built up a small library of the ones I found most useful), but I still need to learn what this other stuff is.

It's funny, I remember MIDI being for music when I was younger, but as an adult, I associate it with VJing. One of the reasons I chose this keyboard is it comes with lots of sliders and dials which can be mapped for use with my VJ program, and I can use the keys to select clips rather than hunting through my library. So yeah, MIDI is important, useful business. I just wish it wasn't so complicated to use for sound.

While I'm waiting for the slowest download of all time to complete, I'm playing around with the "silver" version of this software, which is free, and which I have been learning on. I managed to make two short clips to practice and get the feel of it, and practice my playing by ear from memory, whatever that would be called. I hope to develop perfect pitch while I'm stuck in Scotland. I certainly have the capability, just need to train it up. I'm also watching some Beardyman for inspiration because that gentleman is pretty gosh-darned excellent at music (and watching him press buttons has helped me better understand some functions of music editing programs).

Here are the two little clips I've made as practice. The one good thing about not being able to play other audio while I play is that I have to really figure out all the notes from memory. It's good practice. See if you can name those tunes (and the artists who wrote them)!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zj1irjytk9bzhdy/last%20stop%20this%20town.mp3?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l3jz5s54dwra6lj/sad%20song.mp3?dl=0

I haven't heard either, but so far so good if you're playing from memory! Just keep bridging it outwards to other parts of the song, incrementally, practice what you're messing up on until you don't, and eventually you'll be able to play it all - that's how I've always learned to play things, and to hell with sheet music Just don't rely -too- too much on quantization, you'll get the timing and flow down eventually if you practice.

Just finished getting Samplitude. Something that might help if the volume of different notes feel a little jumpy or unresponsive under your fingers (hopefully your keyboard has velocity/pressure sensitivity haha D:?), in the Effects menu at the top, there's MIDI Velocity Dynamics. That changes the curve of the volume based on how hard you're hitting the keys. The presets in the drop-down list offer a pretty nice selection.

If you're looking for a nice piano VST and haven't found one yet, PianoOne is what I use pretty much whenever piano is called for, and is free. http://www.supremepiano.com/product/piano1.html

[Sappho]

That's just the start of each song. I don't really have any problem figuring out the notes - I could probably figure out the rest of each of those songs pretty quickly if I wanted to, but I was just testing things out and figuring out how to actually use the software more than anything. But it's been so many years since I played piano or keyboard, I definitely need practice to get it smoother. Don't worry, I won't be relying on quantization for stuff like this, that'll be more for drums and such. The real problem on that front is that I've only got a 37-key keyboard, so it's fairly awkward to try to play anything legitimate on it. Eventually I'll get a proper keyboard, when I get back home, but that has to wait, so there's only so much real practicing I can do.

I was actually looking for a way to disable the dynamic volume. Sometimes I'll want that, but most of the time I'll prefer to have steady volume. Thanks for finding it for me. ; )

I'm still waiting for my download... But I'll take that part of the conversation to PMs so as not to anger the almighty Toad.

Here's one of the songs I was using for testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TfqbuTBqX8
The other is here (though I made a few little mistakes on it; my memory could use some improvement as well!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_x4_QrMcm8