[musictlk] Question about keyboards

Christian Comaschi christiancomaschi81 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 10 21:28:38 UTC 2011


Well, with a Midi keyboard and a laptop with Sonar I can use automations to 
control many parameters, but sending program changes quickly is still 
critical. For example, suppose I want to play a song that requires 10 
program changes: I will build a 10 tracks Sonar project, setting the patch 
number for every track; everytime I need to change to the next patch, I will 
strike the down-arrow key on the pc keyboard. This approach is quite good 
because I could forget about program numbers; still, there is the problem of 
doing it quickly: one hand must be free and it may take a long time to reach 
the down-arrow key while I'm playing. Is there a way to automate this 
track-change command with some kind of remote control, such as a foot switch 
or a key of a control surface or Midi keyboard?
Then another features I need is splitting the keyboard to play with 
different patches. How can this be done in Sonar? For example, Can I set up 
a track to use Grand piano from C0 to B3 and Jazz Organ from C4 to C7? I 
suppose I can do it using different Midi channels, but it also means using 
different tracks, is that right?
So, I'm quite confused...
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jorge Paez" <jorgeapaez at mac.com>
To: "NFBnet Music Talk Mailing List" <musictlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2011 7:26 PM
Subject: Re: [musictlk] Question about keyboards


> Christian:
> There are several options you could take.
> For example, if you get a good midi keyboard and get something like Pro 
> Tools or Logic for Mac and/or Sonar for Windows, you could do it that way.
>
> There is also another option, which is to have one keyboard with all the 
> sounds, and set up a second keyboard as the master, so the keyboard you 
> play, (in other words the master) can call upon all the sounds found in 
> the other keyboards but its all transmitted threw your "master" keyboard.
>
> This may be handy although I have never tried it.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
>
> Jorge
>
>
>
> On Jan 8, 2011, at 1:18 PM, Christian Comaschi wrote:
>
>> Hi all, my name is Christian. I'm new to the list and I lhope I am in the 
>> right place for sharing informations about music and music technologies!
>> Two years ago I bought a Yamaha Mo6, because there is no touch-screen and 
>> it seemed to have all the features I was interested in.
>> After using it for some time, I found some strong limitations:
>> - instrument change is terribly slow, and while the new sound is loading 
>> there is an audible break (about half a second);
>> - the possibility to use numbers to select instruments or sound 
>> combinations is useful when there are only a few changes per song, 
>> unfortunately, some songs I'm playing require many changes and they must 
>> be done quickly, sometimes even while I'm playing with both hands.
>> A possible solution could be some kind of hardware or software to store 
>> for each song all the sound changes in the order they appear in the song, 
>> and  I could use pedals to recall the stored sound combinations.
>> Some people told me that I must use a MIDI pedal keyboard for this 
>> purpose, but I'm worried about its accessibility.
>> Do you know anything about pedal keyboards?
>> Has somebody of you an idea on how to play songs with many sound changes?
>> Should I buy a new keyboard? What about a master keyboard connected to a 
>> laptop?
>> Thanks in advance
>> Kind regards,
>> Christian
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>
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