You Need This For Your Home Studio

Whether you’re recording other bands, making your own music, or simply even mixing, there’s one thing you need to have to make your life easier. We all like easier lives right? This can speed up your workflow, allow you to write songs much faster and more “realistic” sounding, and allow you to “play” your DAW like an instrument itself. It’s called: a MIDI keyboard.

Photo by Cedrik Malabanan on Unsplash

What is MIDI?

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Basically, it’s just a set of standards we as musicians made in order to make making music easier.

It’s a protocol, or more simply, a standard way to organize information; much like how a computer keyboard is laid out. We chose the certain arrangement of keys to be standard across all keyboards so that we can easily type without learning where the keys are every time we have a new keyboard in front of us.

What’s included in MIDI, is a note’s notation, pitch, velocity (how hard you hit the note), vibrato, panning left or right in stereo, and clock signals (which set tempo). When you have a MIDI keyboard, each note you press is converted into MIDI data and can be read by your DAW to play any instrument you load up.

This means when you have a MIDI keyboard, or MIDI controller, you typically do NOT have any sounds stored inside it, it’s simply a controller. Much like a computer keyboard, the keys control a certain function that can be changed within software; for instance, video games. W is usually used to move forward, S backwards, etc. MIDI just stores a lot of information as opposed to something like a computer keyboard protocol.

Why Use MIDI?

If you use MIDI, you can control software synths, virtual instruments, and more just using a MIDI keyboard. Because MIDI is a standard arrangement of information, you can use any MIDI keyboard you like and they will know what parameter does what right off the bat.

Usually the controllers are laid out like a piano, which makes it easy for pianists to play. Since pianos are SUPER expensive to have, and there are some hyper realistic sounding software that sampled real pianos, you can get a 99% realistic piano sound from your computer without spending $100,000 for a real grand piano.

There is a big difference though, and it’s how the keys feel when you press them. Playing a MIDI keyboard compared to a real piano feels vastly different, and it can alter how you play; feeling the keys definitely influences how and what you play.

The biggest benefit of MIDI is that you can record a performance, and since it is MIDI information and not recorded sound, you can manipulate the performance afterwards. You can change how hard you hit the notes, the timing, and even add a different sustain pedal performance.

Aside from instruments, you can also control your DAW, especially if you have faders. Instead of using your mouse to move faders, you can do it right from your keyboard! The benefit here is you can actually physically touch something, and it’s faster than a mouse, for up to 8 faders. After 8 faders, you’ll have to bank (move your selected faders in the software to the ones you want so that your 8 faders on your keyboard now control a new set of 8 tracks).

What You Might Want To Learn

If you aren’t a piano player, it might help learning some basic things on piano in terms of theory and how to play it from a physical standpoint. I’ve played piano here and there throughout grade school, nothing serious, but it has most definitely helped me when using MIDI keyboards.

Simply learning major scales and what goes into making a chord can help tremendously; if you’re playing a synth, you’re basically playing piano and it doesn’t hurt to learn more on how to play. Certain nuances carry over. When the software instrument changes, how you play is different, so there is some learning there, but it definitely isn’t as steep if you have some piano practice before that!

Another thing you might want to learn is how to make more “realistic” sounding performances; if you add notes from your mouse, they are definitely different than if you play from your keyboard.

Adding notes from your mouse usually inserts notes exactly on time, which in real life, no one ever plays every single note exactly on time; it makes it sound robotic. Moreover, it always places the note with the same velocity, which also doesn’t happen when you play on your keyboard; each note is hit with a different strength.

Unknowingly, certain styles of playing and things like swinging notes have certain velocity and timing characteristics that you might want to get familiar to. The “feel” of a sound is determined by the velocity and timing of the notes, and usually there’s a pattern. For example, for some hits on a drum, the second note might always be hit softer than the preceding note. It creates a feeling, and sometimes it’s hard to find out the right amount or what exactly should happen to get a particular feel. For this, it’s easier to play it on the keyboard, study it, and fix the mistakes or things that are out of place.

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MIDI has revolutionized the music industry, and it’s allowed the sounds of an entire orchestra to be available to bedroom producers. If you haven’t looked into a MIDI keyboard yet, do it!

-Michael