Midi Keyboard?

What exactly does one do? I've looked it up on Google and I understand that it sends signals to whatever it is hooked up to, but what are the signals. What exactly does someone do with a Midi Keyboard if it doens't produce sound. I have heard a lot of people use these things, and i want to understand what it is and what it does, because it may make my work a lot easier.

(is the Midi keyboard the same as the Midi controller?)

Thanks Guys!!

It's like the keyboard for a pc. It's a tool to "get keys" on equipment whitout. You can use it to play the sounds on the mpc etc. If you make a program and assign a key to all 48 pads in a program you can play them as if it was an keyboard. Hope you understand my rather bad english .

ummm, are you saying somebody can play like, strings or a bass line, on the midi keyboard instead of trying to do it on the mpc? you can just transfer a sound from the mpc and play it on the midi keyboard?

Yeah. The MIDI keyboard is a "remote" for the mpc (or other equipment).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI

MIDI keyboards send MIDI data into MIDI compatible devices. What's MIDI? Musical Instruments Digital Interface, which is a standard for data interchange between devices like synthesizers, sound modules, sequencers, etc. MIDI data is basically a digital representation of music. Like notation, it is used to reproduce a piece of music. But instead of a musician reading it and playing it, it's the synth doing the work.

So, when you press a key on a MIDI keyboard, it sends: Note Pitch (like, say, C3 or F#2), Velocity (that's is similar to velocity in MPC: the larger the value, the louder the sound and vice versa), Note length (which is also called Gate or Duration, and that is the fragment of time that the note is being played) and finally the position of the note in relation to other notes (that's when it is programmed in a sequence).

Apart from the note MIDI data there are other types of data which can be transmitted via MIDI (like program and control changes, system exclusive messages and the like). But these are used rather to control the way sound module behaves (like automating the changes of its sound patches, for example) and the character of the sound (modulation, pitch bend, etc.).

Everything from the SYSEXE Standart can be send via MIDI and be recorded and saved in the MPC.

MIDI KEYBOARD(no internal sounds) = totally ******* useless!

runtildawn412 wrote:MIDI KEYBOARD(no internal sounds) = totally ******* useless!

Hmm. If you want to use the mpc as an music sampler it is a good idea to get a MIDI keyboard. Then you can have each pad on the sampler assigned to the keys on the keyboard and play it as if it was an synthesizer.

runtildawn412 wrote:MIDI KEYBOARD(no internal sounds) = totally ******* useless!