A midi controller is going to be one of the really important parts of gear in your home studio. Now midi controllers come in a wide variety of different formats and are designed to meet a huge variety of budget points. Now you'll find that there will be midi control keyboard midi controllers that are drum pads for finger drumming. That are keyboards, like the one that we are going to be looking at here, that are a bank of faders which are designed to control the faders in a DAW. They are really designed in a wide variety of Formats. And you want to choose one that's perfect for you. kind of really do some shopping, and see which one meets your needs. that said, a midi control keyboard, like a piano keyboard type of input, is pretty much essential, essential. And I think that's going to be one of the ones that you're really going to want to purchase. The midi-control keyboard I have here is very simple. and it's so simple, it's what we call class compliant which actually is quite nice in that this can plug right in and just work right away. No drivers are necessary. A larger keyboard with more functions, with the drum pads, more faders, bunches of encoders and pressure sensors. Will usually require a small piece of software called a driver that tells the computer how to communicate with that device. so, if you do plug in your keyboard and it doesn't work right away. I would suggest first looking in the manufacture website and downloading the latest driver, that usually fixes most issues, with a keyboard. Now the midi specification does have it's own type of cable, it's a five pin den cable designed specifically for midi. But we don't really find ourselves using them much any more, instead the midi controller keyboards attached to our computer, with a USB. Which is nice a high, high speed and also, kind of, announces itself. In this nice handshaking function, where the computer immediately recognizes what's connected to it. Which we didn't have with MIDI cables. Also with USB, communication is bi-directional, it goes from the keyboard out to the device and from the device to the keyboard. MIDI would require two cables to have that bi-directional functionality. I'd like to point out some of the important principles and characteristics of this keyboard controller. And the first thing we notice is that it does have about two octaves of keys. And if you want to go outside those two octaves, there's a nice octave button to jump up and down. And one of the downsides of a device this big is it's hard to play kind of large chords you use both hands at once but the octave function can, can make it a little more nimble. We see this often on keyboard controllers is that we have a pitch bend and a modular/g. And the pitch bend is kind of a larger knob that snaps back to its middle state. And it really is designed to control the pitch of the patch that you're controlling. Now, there's no definite amount that that will control the pitch, on some patches, it'll go up a step and down a step. On other patches, it might go up an octave and down a step. It really can vary from patch to patch, and some patches, and some samplers and synths will completely ignore pitch bend. One important thing to know about Pitch Bend is it's a higher resolution then all the other knobs. We have a knob for mod wheel right next to it. This will send values from 0 to 127. Pitch Bend sends many, many more values. Their control change like modulation is a, a control change message and control change messages have two data words. One saying which controller it is , is controller 1 or controller 10 or controller 20? And the other data word is what value is it from 0 to 127. Pitch bend kind of combines both those words to make one really large number. And that's how it can be so specific in such a high resolution. So, it's perfect for pitch because we can detect fine changes in pitch, so we need the higher resolution for that one parameter. This knob next to it is the Mod wheel and in most cases it sends CC number 1 and that will often control a very important parameter within your [UNKNOWN]. But again is no definite thing that it will control. On some sense it might control the amount of [UNKNOWN] on others it might be volume, on others it might be something totally different. Each patch can change what that knob actually controls. If I go across this keyboard, I'll see a variety of different knobs, kind of a collection of eight knobs. And this is very very common on keyboards' control surfaces to have a collection of eight knobs like this and these are all going to send control change messages. Many synths and samplers are now designed with 8 knobs on them, often called macro controls. That will control the eight really important parameters within that patch. Now, these knobs are all numbered here. They have, they're numbered 1 through 8. And that really is just the number of the knob on the front of the device. It has no relationship to the CC that's actually being sent. in fact, these can, each of these knobs can be configured to send to any CC. I can have this one send CC10 and this 7 and this 12 and this 200. Well, can't do 200 can we? It's a 7 bit word it only goes to 127. So, if we turn this knob we'll that it has a range from zero up to 127 and that's the max. And we have 127 possible different knobs. There are many ways that we could adjust which one of these knobs is sending which control change message. Very often on the outside of the device itself there'll be some kind of advanced function that can be used to really control what this device is actually sending. I could configure this to send CC1, I could configure it to send CC 4 by using the advanced functions that are kind of written about the keys and many devices will have something like that. We hit like an advanced function button and then you use the individual keys to send different commands right to the device itself. So I could change the functionality of these knobs. Another way that's actually a little nicer to use, usually, is having a piece of software in your computer that adjusts what the device actually does. So it'll be a piece of software that you install when you buy the, buy the device, that will actually be able to adjust what the functionality of the keyboard is. One thing you do want to know, how to accomplish on your keyboard, is changing what channel it sends on. There are often issues when your keyboard is sending on a channel other than one. Most DAWs and synths and samplers will be expecting the MIDI data to come on channel one. But if your controller gets set up to send on a different channel, then you might find the DAW or the synth or sampler not to respond as expected. So I would suggest you take a moment if you do own a controller to kind of look through the manual and see what the different functionalities are and how you can adjust it. there are many other great functionalities like velocity curve, which you can adjust for your kind of playing style. And after touch curve or how hard you have to push on the keyboard before it will respond. So, those kind of parameters are great and it allows you to kind of customize the device, the device to your needs. So I would suggest go through your manual. Just explore it a little bit, and see how you can adjust the parameters on the device itself.
