Tools

Hi! I've always composed with just a midi and Sibelius or Finale. I saw this video on youtube and It seems like a lot of fun to compose this way, instead of just typing in the notes in a computer. But what tools do I need? Right now I am using my Korg PS60 as a midi and Sibelius/Finale. Shall I buy Logic or proo tools to record? What is the little "box" with the buttons called? Other equipment I need to buy?

Please give me any suggestions!

- I've never used Sibelius or Finale, so pardon my ignorance, but don't they allow you to record live midi data from a MIDI controller (e.g. keyboard)?

- The little box with buttons is a type of MIDI controller called a drum pad. I personally don't write enough stuff with drums to miss having one (I either just play them on a keyboard or enter them into the piano-roll editor when I need drums.

- Depending on the the keyboard you have, you'll either be able to plug it in directly with a USB cable (easy!), or you'll need a special MIDI cable. If you need a MIDI cable, then you'll also need a MIDI interface to plug it into (and then that will plug into your computer via USB or firewire). See the part below about soundcards.

- The kind of software program you want is called a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). Reaper (which I use) is an excellent, fully-functional, and reasonably-priced alternative to Logic or ProTools. Their pricing plan stipulates that if you aren't using it "commercially" (i.e. to make more than $20k/year), it's only $60. And what's more: you can even download and try out a fully-functionally, non-crippled version for free.

- Once you get into live recording, you'll need to make sure that your system can play sounds with the lowest possible latency. Latency is the delay from when you strike a key, for that signal to get processed, converted into sound, and sent out of your speakers. For example, you may not notice a 500 ms delay when you're playing back from a notation program (because all the notes are delayed by the same amount), but if each key on your keyboard takes that long to make a sound, it's very disorienting. This is going to depend on your soundcard and soundcard drivers, but an external soundcard may be in order. These will often come with a MIDI input as well, so you can get an all-in-one "Audio Interface" which handles microphones, speakers, line in, line out, and MIDI input/output. For this, I use M-Audio's Fast Track Pro, which is a cheap piece of trash, but it usually does OK.

- As far as sound conversion goes, I don't know how much you might already know about using VSTi's or other virtual instruments to liven up the sound of your MIDIs (I tend to stick with free VSTi's).

I downloaded reaper, it's really hard to understand for me right now. I plugged in my synth and looked at this tutorial but I don't get how he is using the virtual instruments. Tried to choose the synth at 6.58 so I could start record but I could not even manage to do that haha..

So much more complicated for me than Sibelius or Finale, but I will do my best to understand it! Do you have any suggestions on good tutorials? I watched these one but I didn't really get it...

I have finale, logic, and Pro Tools. Finale does allow audio and real time MIDI. I've been using Finale since 1995 and ProTools since it was SoundTools. I dislike Logic because of its architecture.

I have Expand2 and Garritan for VSTs. They are ok. Nothing beats the real thing.

It does take a bit of initial set-up to get it working, but it gets easier after that. Also, that tutorial you linked didn't seem particularly useful.

First off, If you don't already have some type of virtual instrument plugins (Garritan, EWQL, Kontakt, etc...) then you'll need to download one before you can hear anything. Reaper doesn't come with built-in sounds. A Google search for "free vsti" should point you in the right direction. Here's a simple piano you could started with. In order to get Reaper to "see" this plugin, you can follow this tutorial.

After you've got a VSTi to play with, you might find

Also, here is the page for Recording MIDI from the Reaper wiki, which might be helpful (although you can probably ignore the section on hardware output, since we're using a VSTi).

Well said and a very informative post Caleb!