midi keyboards for the mpc1k

what cheap, but efficient and simple to use keyboards would you recommend using with the mpc 1000?

I wish to be able to add melody to my music easily.

I currently have a fairly old Yamaha PSS-590 keyboard which has midi facilities, however I'm having trouble getting it working with my blue box. I guess I should keep at it cuz its an old keyboard and there's something cool about being able to use it...



I saw that a korg keyboard can be about 300 british pounds. that's way too expensive for me.

So any friendly advice?

Cheers.

What styles of music do you like to produce? I can help you figure out the best solutions for your money, given that answer. But also, you can use the keyboard you have as a MIDI controller and use software synths as sound modules as well.

However, it's really easy to use the keyboard you have with the MPC. Just get two MIDI cables and connect The MIDI OUT A from your MPC to your keyboard's MIDI IN, then connect the MIDI IN from your MPC to your keyboard's MIDI OUT. In the MAIN menu of the MPC, make sure you have the track set to MIDI (it's set to "drum" as default). Then set the MIDI channel in the main menu to channel 1A. After that, make sure that you have your MIDI channel on your keyboard set to channel 1. When you record notes into the track(s) of the MPC by playing your keyboard, all the note data will be recorded, and played back through your keyboard. Keep in mind that you're only recording MIDI data and the sounds are generationg from your keyboard (when its used as a sound module). Anything else you need to know can be found in the manual of the MPC as well as your keyboard manual. If you dont have the manual for your keyboard, let me know and I'll see if I can find it online.

thank you very much for your help. ill have a go at trying out your instructions in the morning.

the type of music i'm primarily interested in is hip-hop. i wont be using the keyboards to play out elaborate pieces of mozart or anything. just fairly short melodic sound bites.

will it be easy to record the sound of the midi keyboard so that the midi sounds are contained within the mpc. eg, when the keyboard's not about, its sounds are still a part of the track?

i have a manual for the keyboard but its quite a poor one. i'm quite novice to all of this and haven't a strong grasp of what you mean by midi controler and software synths.

i don't have any interest in triggering sounds on the mpc, with keys on the keyboard..obviously thats what i use the pads to do.

thanks again for your help.

will it be easy to record the sound of the midi keyboard so that the midi sounds are contained within the mpc. eg, when the keyboard's not about, its sounds are still a part of the track?

Only the note data is recorded into the MPC's sequencer. The MIDI data will be sent back out to the keyboard and play the same notes you orginally played from the keyboard. Just make sure you have the same patch or preset sound set on your keyboard, then you'll get the exact sound coming out of your keyboard's audio outputs into your mixer.

If you want to learn more about MIDI, audio, softsynths, etc., check out the "Newbie Forum", "MPC Studio Environments" and also try the search engine. There's a ton of info here that should cover just about anything you need to know.

thanks....so basically i can't have a finished track containing sounds of my midi keyboard, without the keyboard always being present? that kinda sucks.

Sounds to me like you want to record the actual audio from the keyboard, not the MIDI data. MIDI is a whole different thing. - a MIDI keyboard would be used to trigger the sounds in the MPC. You don't really need to involve MIDI for what you're doing.

Just plug the audio outs of your keyboard onto the 'Record In' on the MPC. Go to record mode, start the beat playing, press record, then play your melodies or whatever over the top. Save what you have recorded, then add the new sample to a program. Then you can trigger the recorded sounds on another track of the song. Add effects etc if need be.

ayo, D. good job with explaining that. this is how this forum should be. it's all about the help

thanks for your help. its much appreciated. at the back of my keyboard, besides from the 2 midi sockets and the power point, there is only one more socket, and this is labelled 'aux out/headphones'. Do you think this is the audio out which I need to link to the record in of the mpc? And what type of cable should I purchase to enable this? thanks once more. much appreciated.

buy a 2:1 cable, with stereo phone jack on one side and 2 separate mono jacks on the other. Stereo jacks have an extra stripe you can see when you look at the connector. This way you can get the phone signal into the MPC. Or use a regular instrument cable and sample in mono.

hi guys. just revisited this thread cuz im still tryna get my keyboard working right.

ive followd all the post and manual instructions, but i got a feeling my keyboard simply isn't up for the job. maybe it's just too old, or perhaps its software is totally mashed up.

whenever i press a key and attempt to begin recording, the key starts being repeated over and over, extremely fast and it doesn't stop until i switch the power off the keyboard.

i haven't bothered buying the 2.1 cable someone suggested, as i gather there's no point in being able to record straight into the mpc if i can't play anything worth having as a sample.

on the off chance, thought i'd ask if anyone has ever experienced something like this?

which brings me to my next question.

santa claus has offered to buy me a keyboard for 100 british pounds or less. obviously i wont be able to buy anything like a korg but digitalvillage.co.uk have tons of keyboads in this price range. can anyone recommend one?

i'm not sure if this is possible, but a midi keyboard with usb would be great so i can hook it up to my laptop as well.

thanks for your time. look forward to your thoughts.

How goes it Tee? I've been lurking for weeks but never had much to say- hopefully my first post can be a helpful one! Basically as Distorted mentioned, a midi keyboard has no sound. If Santa was nice enough to buy you one you'd still be stuck with no sound, the only thing you could do would be to create melodies out of sounds you have on your 1k. As for a usb one, that wouldn't help much unless you wanted to use soft synths on the computer and then sample them off the computer!

What you should try first is take out the midi cables from the keyboard and just plug the headphone cable into the mpc. Make sure it's pretty loud as you want a hot signal. Play away like Mozart and sample it on the mpc- if that works (which it should) then you can keep doing it and getting it perfect.

Just don't send Santa your request yet because I don't think it will do what you want it to!

Good luck with it all!

thanks very much for your post. highly appreciated.

i'm going to try and work out a couple of the suggestions. i dont think i have the 2:1 cable i need to see if i can record straight into the mpc as a sample.

i would be extremely grateful if somebody could locate the cable i need on ebuyer.com dabs.co.uk or digitalvilliage.co.uk

ive been trying to find one for ages but can only seem to find ones with the wrong sized mono jacks.

When i hear about a 'note repeating' problem, i think about 'midi feedback' situation. for that, the cure is::

find the 'midi thru' settings on the 1k and turn them to OFF. !


but i didnt read sh** too carefully so take it 4 what its worth.

Thank you ever so much. That has cleared up that aspect of my saga.

Now as to what cable I need to purchase.

In an earlier post someone suggests I can record in the mono or the phone signal of the keyboard.

What one is most desirable and which cable on www.ebuyer.com will enable me to do this?

Thank you ever so much,

Tee.

Nice!!! glad that worked.

As you can see Im too lazy to work that cable site for ya, but heres what i know::

your jack on the k/b is probably a 1/4inch stereo output... or maybe an 1/8inch stereo output (also called minijack.)

you want to run cable from that to the mpcs Left and Right audio inputs, which are each 1/4inch mono jacks.

So you need a cable where one end is a 1/4inch (or maybe 1/8) _stereo_ plug... and the other end splits into Two 1/4inch _mono_ plugs. Make sense??


Here's another hint:: fundamentally there are 2 methods to keep in mind.
You can SEQUENCE a little melody on your keyb., using the mpc... then record the whole melody as One sample.
Or, you can record a bunch of separate notes from your keyb as Separate samples on the MPC,,, then put those in a PGM and sequence the PGM.
Dig it...