Keyboards / MIDI Controllers

These MIDI Controllers don't make any sounds of their own, but control software based synths and samplers. For more about these, see below. This makes them expandable beyond many of the keyboards in this price range.

• Oxygen 8
  The Oxygen 8 is a 2 octave MIDI keyboard with knobs that works over USB. If you're not really a keyboard player and just need to control your MIDI applications, this is a very attractive and portable choice at $140.
• Roland ED PC-300 / Edirol PC-300 & the PC-70
  49 keys should be enough to satisfy all but the most die hard keyboardists and arrangers, and these keyboards have control options on the keyboard, which some of the lower priced keyboards do not. Edirol pioneered USB keyboards. PC-300 $170 and PC70 $140.

Sequencing, Sampling, Synth & Looping Software

• Reason
  This program does it all. I'm using it for my drums, keyboards, strings and more. It's also very easy to use, especially if you've ever used hardware based sequencers in the past. $300
• Acid
  I'm very impressed with the latest Acid. I don't own it, nor have I used it myself, but from what I've seen it's very robust.
• VST Instruments
  Cubase supports VST Instruments, many of which are very high quality. I can't recommend any particular packages to buy.
• Battery / Kontakt
  When I asked around about how to sequence drums in ProTools, Battery was often mentioned as the way to go. Kontakt takes it beyond a drum machine into a full blown sampler. Battery: $150 Kontakt: $275

On January 15, 2003, David Lemire sent to me:

In the category of  MIDI interfaces (MIDI only), I recently purchased the Edirol UM-1S, a 1-in, 1-out USB MIDI interface.  Using it with a WinXP laptop with an Athlon processor, it came right up and seems to work great w/no hassles.  I've not stressed it yet in terms of volume of data, but can't fault the ease of installation & use.

There's an open source MIDI sequencer called Jazz++ available at http://www.jazzware.com   I've begun playing with it as a companion to the UM-1S.  So far it seems straightforward and reasonably capable, with some interesting features for "random" (really probalistic) rhythm, melody, and arpegio generation.

In the category of MIDI plus audio interfaces over USB, I'm looking seriously at the Tascam US-428 and at the Edirol UA700.  The former offers a nice control surface, the latter offers COSM models for microphones and guitar amplifiers.  Decisions, decisions.  :-)  These push the "inexpensive" qualifier a bit, since they're each about $500, but they appear to offer a lot of bang for the buck.

My notes: I believe Edirol pioneered MIDI over USB, and their MIDI breakout boxes should be as good as their keyboards. If you already have a MIDI enabled keyboard, it makes sense to find a way to get the MIDI & Audio into the computer rather than depending totally on the software as I've been recommending.

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