Get Your Music Heard: Can I Play A MIDI Keyboard Without A Computer?

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 I recently received a question in my inbox asking me if you as a musician can play a MIDI keyboard without a computer? This sparked my curiosity as to the question's orgins and who would this answer benefit? The lessons I provide with this blog is for music production mostly and artist working in this field of music. This sometimes takes into account many different kinds of musicians and instrumentalists as well as bedroom composers and producers of music. The focus of this answer was more precise with what the reader was asking, i.e., the MIDI keyboard usage in music today.

The advances in technology has caused quite an impact on performers of all walks of life. I can even go further to say that these technologies have even disruptive how the entertainment industry conducts business on a day-to-day bases.

This new frontier of producers and performers may know much in the way of how music should be distributed and how to get the optimum advantages of the equipment and software needed to produce a new track out to the public domain.

This is becoming all too familiar to musicians and artist around the globe. We have the world of Youtube and other spaces where one only type in the keywords for learning how to use a computer for music production and the possibilities are endless and sometimes overwhelming. I digress.

The information we are seeking today has to do with a very widely known protocol that many musicians still find daunting and a mystery today, what is MIDI? How does MIDI work? Why do we need to know about MIDI anyway?

MIDI, musical instrument digital interface as it is known has been around almost thirty years and was developed to give musicians more flexible ways of connecting electronic instruments to one another for composition and performances purposes.

Guitarist had their pedals and effects devices to enhance sound and shape their respective instrument into a creative source that made them unique and allow for more expression. The keyboardist/piano player had little in the way of changing the sound of a say, a Fender Rhodes or a Wurlitzer 200 patches. What you bought you got and the sounds where all that could be enhanced through amplification and effects pedals as a guitar player did when enhancing their sound. The arrival of the synthesizer would change the game of keyboard instruments forever. The keyboardist owning a synthesizer became a solid match for any guitarist now! The guitarist took noticed and learning synthesizer was par for the course if you wanted to add sparkle and shine to your performances or mixes.

I still remember only recently a former Jackson Browne pianist asked me what do I consider myself, a pianist or a keyboardist? My answer was emphatically both and why should I be limited to only one instrument since MIDI makes it possible to have 16 channels of almost every instrument imaginable known to man and/ or woman alike controlled by one MIDI keyboard. This is akin to asking the great Herbie Hancock or Donald Fagen what instrument is the best choice for composing on or with! The synthesizer was placed in studios as a means to give the composer options of expression and sound design choices. The implementation of MIDI was founded on these principles alone. Musicians such as Stevie Wonder and Jean-Michel Jarre made entire albums with the synthesizer as the core musical sounds you would hear and the world became accustomed to the new sounds and shapes offered by these instruments and their performers.

The notion of controlling several different voices and instruments was in affect what MIDI allowed composers to do without having to pay for an entire orchestra or several groups of musicians to interpret what was inside the composers’ mind.

One of these synthesizer creators, Dave Smith invented a polyphonic instrument called the Prophet 600. This synth would later lead to the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 with five voices of polyphony and MIDI connections provided on the back panel. This gave the instrument more depth when connected to other similar synthesizer . You now could connect two or more instruments in tandem and play and perform several at once through one control source, the MIDI keyboard.

Dave Smith is still considered the Father of MIDI and I certainly think he along with other synthesizer designers such as Korg and Roland at the time was stretching the boundaries of our collective consciousness. Musicians do not live inside a vacuum it is said. Collaboration is what makes music great and these visionaries did what was needed to gain more control of expression and sonic variety.

Through five-pin MIDI connections you would enable MIDI devices to talk to each other with specific commands and mapping codes. You could connect samplers, drum machines, and sound modules to one MIDI keyboard and become and entire keyboardist on stage like a wunderkind, the band YES comes to mind along with Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. It behoves you to check out these power trios and small groups that created massive sounds with MIDI instruments. Dream Theartre is another bands along with NIN that have learned MIDI’s usage and what it can be do to make a band, well a Band! The synthesizer is now an integral part of todays’ music. Everyone is into them and for good reason, everyone should learn how MIDI works. Producer should learn the bases of synthesizers and sound design. We have not seen such an interest in synth since people like Dave Smith arrived on the scene to give us what we as producers need mostly, THAT SOUND.

The conclusive answer to this question is yes, yes, and thanks Dave Smith and synth goodness YES! One would have to go far back in time to find a keyboard instrument built without the five-pin MIDI outlets and connectors on its back panel. Even some of these pre-1983 keyboards can now be retrofitted to use in todays keyboard setups, DAW or Dawless. They can connect to other MIDI instruments and devices as well as the USB connections found on most of todays’ keyboards and synthersizers. MIDI abides and musicians are not only grateful but enriched by MIDI implementations.

I encourage you kittens to learn all you can about MIDI and how it works to make the “Keyboardist” life just a bit easier and fulfilling. Guitarist are welcome and I still find them willing participants in learning synthesizers as much as maybe more so than keyboardist. Five-pin MIDI and USB MIDI can and does work seamlessly into most performers kits and stage presentations.You would be hard-pressed to not find MIDI doing its thang!

Thanks for reading and taking time out of your day to explore the many ways we can get our music heard. 

The author wish to thank Dave Smith for his devotion to MIDI and all the great work put into making music a passion for so many synthesizer players and performers around the world.

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Will These 22 Famous Musicians Tips Give You Insight To Music Production?

1.Liam Howlett, Prodigy says "Buy Superman albums. Y'know, big theme tunes from films. You get a horn section playing a chord and just sample a short section of that. If I hear a chord I like I sample it."

2. Jamie Lidell, "Putting rhythm parts down simultaneously is the essence of capturing a human feel. And sonically, the spillover between the mics in the room is often your best buddy."

3.Nick Rhodes, Duran Duran, " Having a studio at home is like having a gym a home - sometimes you are just better off going out."

4.The Stafford Brothers, " Use high-quality sounds. If you are over EQing a sound to try and make it fit it's the wrong sound. Move on and find a new one. Plus, always try to read reviews about gear and then download demo versions of plug-ins to get an idea of what they are like."

5. Paul Hartnoll, Orbital, "Vaughn Williams: why does he always write in E minor? E minor always sounds so full of mystery and mood. You can almost smell it. Move your chord up a bit and suddenly its gone."

6. David Spoon: likes Reasons, but digs its 808, too." At Night(2006 single) was completely Reasons, I wrote it in about two hours. Reasons synths, and mixed in Reason, the works- it was a defining moment for me. "

7. Lifelike; " I  always take care to make my mixes sound quite old. If you try to do a record that's 'of the moment' you can't be sure that a DJ will play it in ten years time."

8. Steve Angello:" I use Logic's own plug-ins. I want to make it as simple as possible. I want a basic sound that I can create myself. If you know your tools then you're king of the studio."

9.Prok & Fitch: "We found this wicked reverb made by QuickQuak called Fusion Field. We've started putting pretty much everything through it other than the kick. We use it on the shortest possible setting so you can really hear it, but it started  giving our stuff loads of room and it really makes the sound stand out."

10. Will Gregory, Goldfrapp; "I'm all for progress but the time you spend upgrading your gear is time you spend not making music. We worked with Flood on our last album and he turned up with Logic 4.8 running on OS 9. The results sounded pretty good to me."

11. Alex Gopher: "it may seem strange working with a compressor on the master channel during the mix but you get a much better sound. It's hard to balance the sound if you mix then add compression later."

" Depending on what mood I'm in, I can get loads of beats going or just do tiny little bits if I'm not in the mood to do full-on tracks. You should keep everything that you do then there'll come a day when you finish 20 tracks in one day because all they needed was a little bit of arranging.:

13. Steve Lipson: " I can't understate the importance of food and parking when you are recording. So long as you've got good food and parking then nothing matters.  Technology is nothing without parking."

14. Trevor Horn: "If you want to get somewhere in the music business you should work really hard. That much is obvious. The important bit is that then, if you get some success, don't go out and celebrate. Get back in the studio and get the next stuff sorted out. Otherwise you're like fleas on a dog.You've got to remember that the dog rolls over every few months and a load of fleas fall off.,"

15. A Guy Called Gerald:" I have Sundays as my 'sampling days'. I go through old records and CDs and build my sample libraries.  Now I have got an entire planet full of sounds I can go through."

16. Arno Cost "To make a good lead synth, work  the sound with effects like reverb, delay and chorus to make it sound large and then add things like bit-crusher or a phaser or a flanger. After that , compression is really useful as it gives you the dynamic but it has to be tactful and well adjusted to sound good. I use the Classic Compressor from Klaerhus Audio. It is really easy to use and very powerful. I also put a limiter on the master at zero dB. Then, I put equalizers on almost every channel(leads, bass, kicks, snares, FX, vocal..) to adjust the frequencies. The more you work your samples one by one, the more your beat will sound good."

17. Sigur Ros: "The mic we use most is an old Neumann U47 through a Urei 1178 compressor/limiter. That's the set up we use for all Jonsi's vocals."

18. Vince Clarke: " Mistakes and accidents often make the songs. If I've got a musical part to be sequenced then I'll already have a idea of the kind of sound I think I'd like and would suit the track. But then, as you program a sound you'll invariably end up with something different. It keeps it fresh and innovative that way."

19. Fatboy Slim: "I always find a vocal hook. That's the most difficult thing because other things can always be programmed. I usually stretch a few things but the rule is if it is within three semi-tones I'll use it but if it's eight semis out I'm wasting my time."

20. ATFC: " I always start a session with iZotope Ozone strapped to my master channel. D. Ramirez

tipped me off about the CD Widener and Enhancer presets a few years back and it still beats everything else I have hands down for making your music jump out in front of you.

" Start with it on and run all your sounds really hot. A lot of the producers who know the theory behind engineering chastise me when they see my mixes.' You have to start with the kick at about 60% and leave a lot of headroom for mastering etc.' But they are also the people that who ask me how my mix sounds so punchy and loud. I've had calls from mastering engineers from the best studios in the country ask me how I did it."

21. Serge Santiago: " It seems everyone believes that FL Studio  is a child's toy.  It isn't, its useful interface is fantastic and fast - faster than Cubase or Logic- plus it now boast some of the best plug-ins around. It is also a great way to sound different.

To get good sound off the master channel, use Line's Soundgoodizer along with T-Racks' Brickwall Limiter. That keeps the sound clean without it sounding over compressed.

22. Gui Boratto: " Mot people usually solo things when Equalizing. I never solo a track when EQing. I am also a grid freak. When I create something in MIDI I always record and transform it into audio, to have total control of time and how to have other options such as EQing, dynamics, and effects."

Thanks for allowing me the chance to share the mysteries of the Universe with you.