Buying Smaller Keyboard To Emulate Bigger Keyboard?

[Phree]

Hello everyone...

I have a very nice, Roland JD-800 keyboard that's practically new. This is because I barely use it, but I love the sounds!

I'm slowly setting up a Mac-based home studio and wanting to record with software.

I like a lot of the small (portable) MIDI keyboards I'm seeing, as I can sit one right in front of my monitor and hammer on it for tracks, versus using the JD-800 a few feet behind me facing the other way.

Is there an efficient and uncluttered way to have a small MIDI keyboard (i.e., Novation ReMOTE 25, Edirol PCR-30, etc.) connected to my JD-800 that will emulate the sounds in it? Of course, I would want to hook the small keyboard up to my Mac to record those sounds.

Tell me if this is a waste of time and money! Be brutally honest but nice about it.

Thanks...

[maximilians1]

have you considered a sliding under the desk keyboard tray so you can have your Roland on the desktop? i found a sturdy one at ikea for 20 bucks.But i think you can do what you want by sending a midi out signal to your roland from your sequencer , then patch the audio out from the roland to a seperate audio track

[the_nihilist]

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=k ... id/706432/

One of those.

And then just a few midi cables and whatever mini keyboard you want to use... set everything up in your host, and then things should work great.

[Meffy]

have you considered a sliding under the desk keyboard tray so you can have your Roland on the desktop?

This works well for me. Not so good for real playing, but I've got no licks anyway. ;-)

[Phree]

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=k ... id/706432/

One of those.

And then just a few midi cables and whatever mini keyboard you want to use... set everything up in your host, and then things should work great.

I appreciate this info - seems like an inexpensive option even with buying a $200 desktop MIDI keyboard. I'd hate to see my JD-800 sounds go to waste and spend money in buying software synths. I think my board can do me for another 2-3 of years since I'm starting out.

the_nihilist, my host that you referred to would be Ableton Live 4, correct?

IMO, the JD is too big for me to use comfortably under a desk.

Phree

[BONES]

I would recommend the MIDI version of my controller keyboard. You can see from this picture that it is very compact and fits easily onto your desk. You can shift the keyboard up/down 3 octaves and, unlike some other small keyboards I have used, you don't get stuck notes if you do it on the fly whilst playing. I am very happy with my PCR-1. The MIDI version is the PCR-M1. Check it out HERE.

[Phree]

Bones, ahh, Edirol, yes! I was reading about some of their boards a good month ago. I actually liked what I saw, so thanks for that suggestion.

Let me throw this out - Am I getting myself into a MIDI headache with wanting to do this?

Can I somehow extract the sounds from my board into audio files to save on my Mac, then play & record them in Live using a keyboard like the PCR-M1?

I've seen the JD-800 sounds on DVDs on eBay which is why I threw out the last question...

Thanks

[John Vulich]

Can I somehow extract the sounds from my board into audio files to save on my Mac, then play & record them in Live using a keyboard like the PCR-M1?

You can sample it but it will be a ton of work!

[the_nihilist]

Can I somehow extract the sounds from my board into audio files to save on my Mac, then play & record them in Live using a keyboard like the PCR-M1?

You can sample it but it will be a ton of work!

Or you can use some software like SampleRobot... From what I've heard, it sends midi signals out one by one, records every Nth key, and then names them all in order, so you can import it into whatever sampler you want. It would still be alot of work, but significantly less than trying to do it all by hand.