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Step
Hey! My name's Stephan Wells, and I'm a musician, mixing engineer, programmer, proofreader, gamer, aspiring game developer, audio moderator, and former host of the NGADM. Thanks to Youkos for the user image and profile icon!

Stephan Wells @Step

Age 28, Male

Student

Utrecht University

Malta

Joined on 11/4/07

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New MIDI Keyboard

Posted by Step - June 13th, 2011


My MIDI keyboard (Korg microKEY) just arrived last Friday, and dear God it's amazing. Wonderfully simple, just how I wanted it - 3 octaves, pitch/modulation knob, up/down octave transpose tool (giving me access to the full range of notes) and it even has 2 USB ports at the side in case I'm out of USB ports and want to add more USB devices (which already came in handy because I'm now using one of those ports for my iLok key).

I was planning on getting controllers with it too, but thought against it because the modulation knob does the job fine and I'll usually be automating one parameter at a time anyway. It's really fun to just go to one of your project files, mute the lead instrument and play it with the keyboard instead. It's also fun to doodle melodies with my left hand while browsing the internet with my right hand on the mouse. It's not the first time I absentmindedly let my left hand play random melodies while I'm on the Internet and I suddenly come up with an awesome melody, and I've only had this keyboard for three days.

Best 80 euros I've spent in a long while.


Comments

Mmmh, Microkey. Getting some heavy deja-vu as some other music-maker I knew upgraded to that exact same thing and had the exact same opinion of it. He even made a song to show it off - [ <a href="http://soundcloud.com/sunofwisdom/another-time-introducing-my">http://soundcloud.com/sunofwisdom/ano ther-time-introducing-my</a> ] - and his future material actually became much better due to this great keyboard.

Hope it works just as well or even better for you!

Haha thanks!

So far the first song I ever made which is making use of my keyboard is still a work in progress, but I'll finish it eventually.

By the looks of it I don't see how it improves your ability to create music.
But perhaps that's because I've never tried making music that way...

It just makes everything so much easier. You don't need to write stuff down in the piano roll, and it automatically humanizes every melody you do, making the song sound a lot more realistic and fun to listen to. It's also easier to make melodies with a MIDI keyboard in front of you rather than a computer keyboard in front of you.

Lastly, it's incredibly fun :P.