Hello everyone-
I am wondering if anyone has any thoughts, opinions or
helpful info on getting together a laptop, a small musical
keyboard and an audio/midi interface to have a portable midi
and maybe eventually audio recording studio. I am currently
attending graduate school in electronic composition in
pittsburgh pennsylvania and I had to stay over thanksgiving
break to finish writing a composition for a final exam. The
reason was because all of my equipment is here at school,
desktop pc with software, yamaha motif keyboard and other
modules etc. I live about 5 hours away and I was thinking
even before thanksgiving of getting together a portable
studio so I can at least do midi compositions wiht sonar,
lime or sibelius on the go. That way, i could take the
laptop, perhaps a 25 key keyboard and some kind of firewire
audio interface anywhere i'd like to, to the music building
here at school, to a friends place, home for breaks etc etc.
In doing research for the laptop, i'm going to pick one up
from adk pro audio
www.adkproaudio.com
It's going to have all the bells and whistles I think, 2
gigs of ram or i might get less, 7200 rpm hard drive, i
think 2.0ghz processor etc.
I also might pick up the edirol fa66 audio interface and oh
yes some kind of USB number pad for jaws/sonar. What has me
indecisive however is what should i do about a keyboard? I
came up with a few choices.
Since I figure I'd probably have to plug in the laptop and
whatever else since even with a high capacity battery, who
knows if i'd have enough power to run everything such as the
audio interface. Anyhow since i will probably have to plug
in, I was thinking of getting a 25 key synthesiser that was
just released called the Korg Micro X. From reading online,
it can be used as a controller just like a midi controller
but it also has a full synthesiser built in, with a decent
amount of sounds taken from korgs high end triton
workstation. The mp3 demos sounded ok, my experience in
synthesiser sounds has been mostly roland and recently the
yamaha motif keyboard. The reviews also say that the
software editor for the board can be used as a vst plug in,
so if adapted with directizer, maybe, just maybe, it will
sort of work in sonar? If not, that's fine because i can
still access presets but it's always nice to hope right? If
the editor can be used, I would be able to adjust sound
parameters and use it just as if it was a software synth but
with out the CPU/ram usage.
My second option was this. Picking up a midi controller
such as the midiman oxygen8 25 key keyboard which connects
and runs via USB and in saying that, perhaps that and the
firewire audio interface can run decently off the laptop
battery. I would have to end up buying something for sounds
though and I was thinking either a small midi module such as
the edirol sd20 or a software synthesiser. For a software
synthesiser, does anyone know of one with pretty well done
sounds, a decent selection of presets or also one that will
let you adjust parameters with jaws using directizer so I
can design my own sounds? I was looking at something such
as cakewalk dimension pro, since it has lots of presets for
just about any genre of music and the system requirements
don't seem that bad since I will have a pretty nice system
anyway, shouldn't be a problem running it. However, if a
composition has 10 or more tracks, will i start having
problems such as CPU slowdown, audio cutting out or
something like that etc? My experience so far has only been
with hardware, keyboards and modules, mainly turning them on
and just using presets, i have no experience with software
synthesisers. I did use the cakewalk tts1 just to see if i
could insert it in to a project and it worked fine. Other
software synthesisers I had in mind were the massive 32gb
orchestral library called east west symphonic orchestra or
maybe the garriton personal orchestra. They seem like they
can be used in sonar as pluggins but who knows how well they
will run, especially the east west orchestra. For general
purpose composing however, dimension pro sounds pretty good
or hardware wise, the edirol sd20 module can be powered via
usb so one less thing to have to plug in.
I am not sure which route to take here. The korg does not
support aftertouch, however I could purchase a pedal in
order to use aftertouch and do i really need it anyway?
Probably not. Not only is it a controller and a small
keyboard but it has a synth built in which is great.
On the other hand, the oxygen 8 controller can run off of
usb, so a few less wires to have around. Software synths
sound quite good from the mp3 demos i heard, although i wish
there were downloadable demos of the synths themselves so i
could try them out. Even with a module such as that edirol
sd20, still might be quite a portable system since it will
run off the usb port. The oxygen8 does support aftertouch
however, which i do tend to use every so offen. I love
sounds that sound as realistic as possible and i know that
there are many opinions about different synthesisers and the
word realism. However, it's not really the sounds that
matter, it's the final composition and printed score that
matters.
Mygoal here is to get a portable studio going but also in
saying the word portable, maybe i should have as little
wires as possible? Like i said, i'm not sure what to do
here. I might see if i can get to a local store to try out
the korg micro x but if i don't get to do that, i'll
eventually have to make a decision on a setup.
Any help, opinions, extra info, heck anything that anyone
has to say would be greatly appreciated. I'd be more then
happy to talk to people over the phone or on an instant
messenger program as well. I will be getting the laptop
probably before christmas and I'd like to have all of the
equipment up and running with in a month to a few months.
Thanks again for reading and have agood day!
Sincerely
Jay Pellis
----------
Jay Pellis
E-mail: jalucard@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Aol instant messenger: ftealucard
Yahoo messenger: ftealucard
Msn messenger, jalucard@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Skype: ftealucard
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