Completely Neophyte New Musician

[apexlocator]

I am hoping someone may guide me with some thoughts on starting my research on a topic that is completely foreign to me. I am a 64 year old keyboard player who only had experience with midi as far as building my own sound and recording tracks for live performance with a dedicated sequencer driven by a multitimbral synth.

I now own a Kurzweil Artis 7 keyboard and would like to use the sounds in it to send over midi to something, be it software on a computer or a dedicated hardware module, that will generate tracks using the sounds of my Kurzweil. I in no way want to sacrifice the sounds of my instrument to use the sounds of the module. So, my ultimate question is, does a system exist that has no sound of its' own and depends on a source (my Kurzweil)

I almost bought the Kurzweil PC3A with a build in arranger/sequencer/riff generator for this purpose but decided on the simpler more straight forward Artis because I hope to play it out live on occasion and enjoy simplicity more than the occasional workstation routine. I hope someone can help me!

[Michael L]

Simplest is to plug a recorder into the Artis analog out to record your playing. Or do you want to control your Artis with a sequencer?

[thecontrolcentre]

First off ... you cant send audio over midi. Midi sends note on/ note off information. You could use a DAW to send midi to your Kurzweil to trigger its sounds, and you will be able to send midi from the Kurzweil keyboard to a DAW to trigger VSTs. You may need a midi interface to get midi in and out of your computer, unless the Kurzweil has USB midi ... alternatively, if all you want is to record the Kurzweil, an audio recorder, or some software like Soundforge will suffice.

[apexlocator]

I understand how midi works, but my question is if the good quality sounds that are on my keyboard can be triggered by some external source which generates the riff/track/bassline, etc. My keyboard does not have a built in arranger, so I'm looking to buy a module to accomplish the same task as if it did have a dedicated arranger/sequencer built in. I'm sorry for any confusion in what I'm asking.

I bought the Artis because that's the keyboard I want to play.....even though it does not come with a riff generator. Now I"m thinking of buying such a toy. I say toy because fooling with these things prevent a person from perfecting their craft by mastering their own playing instead of pushing buttons. LOL

[Michael L]

So you want to use your keyboard to write a bassline midi track in your DAW, send that midi track into your keyboard through its USB midi, play the lead along with it, and record both tracks through the audio out in your DAW, yes?
If so, get the signal flow clear in your mind and then read the manuals for your Artis and your DAW of choice (perhaps the simple and free Tracktion 5) to see how to route audio and midi.

[trewq]

I bought the Artis because that's the keyboard I want to play.....even though it does not come with a riff generator. Now I"m thinking of buying such a toy. I say toy because fooling with these things prevent a person from perfecting their craft by mastering their own playing instead of pushing buttons. LOL

But I think some programs might convince you that working with buttons and settings can produce amazing results and can become an important part of your skill set.

Check out http://www.chordwarepa.com

[deastman]

Okay, so you want to do the writing and arranging on something other than your Kurzweil, but you want to use the sounds built into it, correct?

To spell things out a little more clearly than the previous posts, what you need is software to run on your computer. That software is commonly known as a "Digital Audio Workstation", or DAW. Its a silly name, really, but that is the terminology that has evolved over the years. Are you using a Mac or a PC? There are a number of excellent DAW applications available, but I'll leave it to someone else to list them all out.

You will also want a piece of hardware known as a "digital audio interface". That provides several pieces of key functionality. It allows you to take audio out of your Kurzweil and record it into the DAW software running on your computer. It also lets you hook studio monitors (aka "speakers") up to the output of the computer. You might think you could do all of this with just the built-in sound on your computer, but that is sub-optimal for a number of reasons which I won't go into right now. An audio interface will typically also be a MIDI interface, so you'll get MIDI in and out connectors on that box, in order to control the Kurzweil from your computer.

I hope that helps!

[bedjka]

For a not free but very easy to use DAW you can look at Mixcraft


For free, Presonus "Studio One Prime".