The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm researching to buy a midi keyboard. maybe a Casio or Yamaha and just wonder if anyone know whether you can do mide files in BIAB or Cakewalk to use on some of these keyboards? If so, do you know which model?
Thanks,
Wally Giffin

Must be lots of more qualified folks on here to give you a better answer than mine, but...I'm guessing all it has to be is a keyboard that is capable of general midi! I use a Yamaha PSR220 with BB on my PC. It's not the latest thing for sure?

I believe any MIDI capable keyboard will input midi data or notes into BIAB or Cakewalk. However the to get great sound and realistic sounding instruments the playback is most critical and thats where a good keyboard comes into play. Some of the cheap keyboards are limited to sounds produced such as some computer sound cards. Also some are limited to the number of instruments that can be played back at the same time. If you just want to make sound tracks to play along with you do not need a keyboard, only a good sound module such as a Roland SC 88 or such. The better keyboards have good tone modules in them and can be used for playback. It all comes down to how much you want to spend. Unless the cheaper keyboards such as the type found at Sams or WalMart have improved since I purchased mine aprox 10 years ago, I wouldnt go that route as they will only playback 4 instruments. My Roland SC 88 plays back 32 instruments. Also you can not make sound tracks with Cakewalk unless you can play the keyboard and play all the instruments in such as drums,bass and so forth.

I would highly recommend a "touch sensitive"
keyboard. A much less mechanical sound. --Joel

Keyboards are simply a trigger to make the midi note. The soundcard/sound module provide the actual sounds that you hear.

As long as you have the latency matched (the time between when you hit the note on the keyboard and when it sounds in the program), any midi keyboard will work.

I use a 10 year old Roland. Works just fine.

Some low end keyboards will only allow a trigger to run a program which you wrote on the keyboard. What you want I believe is a keyboard that will allow you to use it's on board tone generators independently , like a sound module if you will. Be sure the one you purchase can do this. I have a Yamaha PS 282 and it does not allow the tone generators to be used independently. The keyboard must allow the midi set up to allow multiple sounds to be played at the same time via different midi channels independently. Most commonly it's 16 sounds at one time, one per midi channel.

Now, to make things more confusing, many low end keyboards can only play 8 or 16 notes at the same time. What does this mean? If a keyboard player plays a full chord with both hands , maybe 8 notes total. This means if you are in the midi world at this point you may only have 8 notes left availabe on the keyboard. If the limit is 8, you are there.

If a drum pattern is playing, that may take up another 6 or 8 notes at the same time..I there is a Bass line more notes, you get the point I hope. This is called polyphony. The low end units are restricted, maybe 8 or 16 and the high end gear is over 24. What happens when you go over the limit is that some of the notes drop out and are not played. I have used 16 note polyphony for years with no problem, but I never was heavy into large keyboard chords though.

Keep in mind that the use of Cakewalk PRO does also require that the PC has a multi-channel midi interface card, minimum 16 channels. This is how the independent midi channels are communicating with the keyboard or sound module.

I believe BIAB does and I know that Cakewalk PRO allows setting different midi channels for each tone. The trick is that the keyboard must be able to receive all that information at the same time. Be sure the one you purchase can set different tones ( timbres) to different midi channels for external midi control.

tp