Hi, everyone. I've been attacked and overwhelmed by acronyms, and am seeking clarity.
I have a K2000s kurzweil, and a Yamaha YPG-525 (with a messed up display, which I haven't forgiven Yamaha for). For reasons that are unclear even to myself I was thinking about adding yet another keyboard, and had - sorta - settled on a Casio WK-7600. Not chiselled in granite, but leaning that way.
I read - somewhere - that the MIDI on the Casio is one way only; you can send from the Casio keyboard to... something, I guess a computer... but it won't listen to any signals coming the other way. I'm not sure of the implications of this, but I had wanted to hook all my keyboards together through MIDI, mostly because it was a cool thing that all the really cool musicians did. So a MIDI restriction bothered me. The Kurzwiel has V.A.S.T. architecture, and if the Casio was gonna cut half of that off, I could wind up sounding like a half-vast musician. Not what I wanted.
So I started digging into what software I needed, and that led me into Digital Audio Workstation software, and that's where I got chopped up by the lawnmower blades going through the weeds. More acronyms than I can count, and I don't know what they mean, and each definition seems to contain more acronyms... I'm drowning.
The Casio has a 17 track sequencer. But if I'm using a DAW, maybe that's no longer important. That makes me think about the Yamaha PSR-EW400 which has different and maybe better samples than the Casio, except apparently it doesn't like Linux, and lots of the free software is written for Linux, and so maybe I ought to keep my options open and go with the Casio anyway. Aargh. And I might have most of the Yamaha samples anyway, on my YPG-525.
Maybe I have enough keyboards, and should buy some software; except there's lots of free software, and if the Casio is gonna turn me into a half-vast musician anyway, maybe I should just stick with free. It might be good enough.
Really... all I wanted to do was make pretty music. Suddenly I feel like I need a 4 year engineering degree to make this whole thing happen.
I have a moderately powerful (Intel i7, 8GB ram) computer and LCD display that I can dedicate to the game, and put Linux on if necessary. The Kurzweil has traditional MIDI plugs, the Yamaha has USB-MIDI, and I've got a MIDI to USB adapter coming for the Kurzweil just so everything would at least have the same jacks.
And so, I seek clarity. I think I want to create music on a track by track basis; play a tune, edit that track and get it right, add another track, edit that and get that right, etc. Eventually I'd like to be able to print the music out in standard musical notation. Oh, and I might be adding a vocalist; at least, some of the partially written songs in my head have partially written vocals. So I guess I should allow for that possibility.
Given all of the above, what sensible path should I follow?
>Charlie
I have a K2000s kurzweil, and a Yamaha YPG-525 (with a messed up display, which I haven't forgiven Yamaha for). For reasons that are unclear even to myself I was thinking about adding yet another keyboard, and had - sorta - settled on a Casio WK-7600. Not chiselled in granite, but leaning that way.
I read - somewhere - that the MIDI on the Casio is one way only; you can send from the Casio keyboard to... something, I guess a computer... but it won't listen to any signals coming the other way. I'm not sure of the implications of this, but I had wanted to hook all my keyboards together through MIDI, mostly because it was a cool thing that all the really cool musicians did. So a MIDI restriction bothered me. The Kurzwiel has V.A.S.T. architecture, and if the Casio was gonna cut half of that off, I could wind up sounding like a half-vast musician. Not what I wanted.
So I started digging into what software I needed, and that led me into Digital Audio Workstation software, and that's where I got chopped up by the lawnmower blades going through the weeds. More acronyms than I can count, and I don't know what they mean, and each definition seems to contain more acronyms... I'm drowning.
The Casio has a 17 track sequencer. But if I'm using a DAW, maybe that's no longer important. That makes me think about the Yamaha PSR-EW400 which has different and maybe better samples than the Casio, except apparently it doesn't like Linux, and lots of the free software is written for Linux, and so maybe I ought to keep my options open and go with the Casio anyway. Aargh. And I might have most of the Yamaha samples anyway, on my YPG-525.
Maybe I have enough keyboards, and should buy some software; except there's lots of free software, and if the Casio is gonna turn me into a half-vast musician anyway, maybe I should just stick with free. It might be good enough.
Really... all I wanted to do was make pretty music. Suddenly I feel like I need a 4 year engineering degree to make this whole thing happen.
I have a moderately powerful (Intel i7, 8GB ram) computer and LCD display that I can dedicate to the game, and put Linux on if necessary. The Kurzweil has traditional MIDI plugs, the Yamaha has USB-MIDI, and I've got a MIDI to USB adapter coming for the Kurzweil just so everything would at least have the same jacks.
And so, I seek clarity. I think I want to create music on a track by track basis; play a tune, edit that track and get it right, add another track, edit that and get that right, etc. Eventually I'd like to be able to print the music out in standard musical notation. Oh, and I might be adding a vocalist; at least, some of the partially written songs in my head have partially written vocals. So I guess I should allow for that possibility.
Given all of the above, what sensible path should I follow?
>Charlie