Which Midi Controller/Keyboard should I get for a beginner?

Y

Yatsu

New member
Hello everyone, I recently started producing and love every bit of it. I'm looking for a Midi controller/keyboard (not sure what the difference is) to produce my beats with. I am a begginer and will mainly be making hip hop melody beats, or just chill melodies with a bit of hip hop (like Nujabes) I am currently looking at the M-Audio Axiom 25 key keyboard as it has pads and a keybed and since I never played piano or an instrument before I think it would be good to have a blend in one. Does anyone have any suggestions on which Midi Controller/Keyboard I should buy and why? My budget is 250 or less and im willing to listen to any suggestion whether if its just a keyboard only or pads w.e etc.

Thanks!

Btw which beat producing software do you guys prefer? Cubase or FL studios for the music I will be making.
 
You have many types of midi controllers, and one of them is keyboard (we can say that it is a subgroup in controllers).

For the axiom I think it is good, it has good quality keys and you also have knobs and pads, but maybe if you want something cheaper you could go for mpk mini or for something with more keys (depends how much you need).

FL studio is (at least for me) simpler than Cubase (and other daws) and it's good for people who work a lot with mouse in piano roll, and cubase is just opposite. Cubase is better for working with midi, although you can draw in piano roll like in fl studio.
 
PekoTheProducer said:
You have many types of midi controllers, and one of them is keyboard (we can say that it is a subgroup in controllers).

For the axiom I think it is good, it has good quality keys and you also have knobs and pads, but maybe if you want something cheaper you could go for mpk mini or for something with more keys (depends how much you need).

FL studio is (at least for me) simpler than Cubase (and other daws) and it's good for people who work a lot with mouse in piano roll, and cubase is just opposite. Cubase is better for working with midi, although you can draw in piano roll like in fl studio.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. What do you think of the Novation Impulse 25 or the upcoming Akai MPK225?
 
I really don't know what to say about them. I haven't tried them and it seems that they have pretty much same controls. Read reviews about each of them and see which is better for you and what you get with them because with akai you get mpc essentials software and ableton, but don't know what you get with novation. I think that every of these 3 or 4 keyboard will do the job.
 
I would recommend going for something with more than 25 keys, preferably a keyboard with after touch, this is an additional control at the end of a key stroke which you can press down to alter the sound of a patch set up to respond to it, the other cool thing to have is an input for an expression pedal...not to be confused with the basic on/off latch type commonly known as a sustain pedal input.

Sometimes controllers ship with bundled software such as a lite DAW version which could potentially save you some money through an upgrade path, so that's well worth checking out.

I primarily use Cubase myself which is probably one of the most comprehensive DAWs you can get, and as Peko pointed out Cubase is better in regard to MIDI than FL Studio which really excels when it comes to mouse based composition in the piano roll.

In terms of my own workflow I find it's far more efficient to enter notes with a MIDI controller than with a mouse in the piano roll, for a comparative example, while I might play single notes with one finger into a MIDI plugin which produces chords someone using FL Studio might be more inclined to draw single notes into the piano roll and then select an option to generate chords from those notes....I can of course do that too, in fact I can do things in Cubase which are far beyond what is possible in FL Studio but it requires a bit more effort than simply selecting a preset....in other words FL Studio is more like a Fisher-Price toy whereas Cubase is more like Lego, there are more possibilities but some assembly is required.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top