Help buying MIDI keyboard

[ace214]

Here's my scenario.

I'm considering buying a MIDI keyboard. I hardly do any recording/sequencing. I would use it mostly for music notation input, but I would love to have something that I could actually use live. When I have to step-away from my keyboard, it's usually out of a need for portability.

I usually use a Yamaha Clavinova keyboard and frequently layer voices (piano+pad, etc.) and have about 8 registration presets that I normally use.
In order for a MIDI keyboard to really successful, I would want to be able to turn layering on and off quickly and be able to change presets quickly.

My question is can a keyboard such as this one be setup to do this with Qsynth or LinuxSampler? I'm not sure there are enough hardware buttons and how this would be done in the software.

I would really like an 88 key controller, but don't need a bunch of DAW buttons.

Thanks for any help.

[noedig]

In order for a MIDI keyboard to really successful, I would want to be able to turn layering on and off quickly and be able to change presets quickly.

I think if the keyboard can satisfy this requirement, the rest will fall into place.
Looking through the manual, I see that in order to send program changes, one needs to press the Advanced Function button, then either press the key representing PGM CHANGE and + or -, or the PGM# key and then two number keys. That means, at least 3 presses needed in order to send a program change.
Luckily, there are a few directional and transport buttons that send MIDI messages which you can assign on your computer to program up/down or whatever. This will enable the quick preset changes that you want.
So basically you can use two directional buttons for program up/down, one for enable/disable layer split, and then you have a few buttons free plus the pitch and modulation wheels that you can assign to anything, if you set up your software (like Mididings) appropriately. You can even assign the mod wheel to the volume of your second layer.
Is this all you would need? Personally, for myself I would consider something with more hardware buttons and sliders (even if just for possible future expandibility), but that's just for my use cases. If preset and layer switching is all you need, a few buttons are enough.

[ace214]

Thanks for the help. Yes, that would give me basically what I need. I wish the keyboard had a display for program number, but that'd be OK.

I was not familiar with mididings. So I would run the MIDI signal through that into a synthesizer (Qsynth)? I was hoping there was a way to do this in the synthesizer, but mididings seems quite powerful. I'm very unsure about the software part.

Regarding more functionality, I don't want to spend much more money. I did find this keyboard that is only $100 more and seems to have a lot more hardware control. I think it has dedicated split/layer buttons.

[ssj71]

I think it has dedicated split/layer buttons.

That split/layer is for the keyboard, so you could have it split that the upper half acts like one keyboard on channel 1, the lower half is a second keyboard on channel 2. The keystation is kinda cheap, but it should work fine for the basics. I didn't like how springy it feels, but I was looking for a realistic piano feel (weighted keys). If you are just layering sounds, probably the cheapest route would be the m-audio. You can do program changes or just change channels and have e.g. piano and strings on chan 1, accordion, bagpipes, and kazoo on chan 2 etc. For your simple requirements you've listed, I think it will work (but note that I'm often an advocate for the low-end theory).

[noedig]

That second keyboard looks pretty cool. However, $100 more is quite a lot on a $200 keyboard and it might be bit of an overkill for your needs? The first keyboard is probably sufficient.

I was not familiar with mididings. So I would run the MIDI signal through that into a synthesizer (Qsynth)? I was hoping there was a way to do this in the synthesizer, but mididings seems quite powerful.

Yes, you would run the MIDI through Mididings to QSynth.

I'm very unsure about the software part.

If you need help with Mididings, don't hesitate to ask, we can sort out a few scripts.

On the other hand, the other software part you'd have to look at for live playing is
- quickly getting Mididings, QSynth and any other synths set up,
- getting latency to a minimum without xruns.

For the former, there are quite a few blog posts on the internet about people's live setups. You can use 1) custom scripts to start everything, 2) session management (like Non Session Manager) or 3) you can start up everything manually every time you play live. Regarding latency, there's also good reading material out there on reducing your latency. Once you have these three things sorted out (Mididings scripts, session setup, and low latency), you're good to go for live.

Ok I got a little bit carried away on the live playing aspect, but I'm trying to convey that live playing through your pc on Linux might involve quite a bit of fiddling to get things just right, as opposed to using a keyboard workstation. But I assume you have considered that and are ready for it, since we are on a Linux forum and you've already decided to go for a midi controller. So in conclusion, for music notation input and your live needs, through your pc, I'm confident that one can make that keyboard work.