recording keyboards

[Fragle]

hi there,

maybe a silly question....anyways, i'll soon be recording a band that has a real keyboard player (prior to that i've always done synth lines etc by midi). i wonder what's the easiest or basic way to record keys?
their keyboarder has a board that's equipped with USB, midi, and regular line level outputs L/R.
i assume the most basic thing to do would be to hook up the L/R outs to the fireface line ins, done. what about the midi side of things? i've never worked with anything external midi (only got into the "internal" midi stuff like piano roll and whatnot, daw stuff basically), what kinda information can i pass through the midi ports?

thanks in advance!

 

[Morgan C]

MIDI would be better if you have good soft synths and/or you want to fix up any timing errors much easier than with audio. Good keyboards can also accept MIDI so you can use the keyboards sounds if you don't have great soft synths.

I haven't done this for a while, but I assume you just plug it in as an interface and hit record.

 

[Forceps]

I would recommend you record both audio and midi. If he performes excellent, you don't need the MIDI, but if he plays crappy, you can use the MIDI for getting things straight and you "reamp" the MIDI back into his synth and record the audio. In MIDI you capture everything the player does on the keys, like velocity, sustain, pitch bends, etc.

 

[vespiz]

I would recommend you record both audio and midi. If he performes excellent, you don't need the MIDI, but if he plays crappy, you can use the MIDI for getting things straight and you "reamp" the MIDI back into his synth and record the audio. In MIDI you capture everything the player does on the keys, like velocity, sustain, pitch bends, etc.

+1

edit: 500th post!

 

[Trevoire520]

I would recommend you record both audio and midi. If he performes excellent, you don't need the MIDI, but if he plays crappy, you can use the MIDI for getting things straight and you "reamp" the MIDI back into his synth and record the audio. In MIDI you capture everything the player does on the keys, like velocity, sustain, pitch bends, etc.

+1

It's also cool to have the MIDI for layering up other sounds, trying different synths etc. Go crazy!

 

[Jind]

Audio and MIDI from whatever synthesizer he wants to use. If it's a synthesizer you will no longer have access to after the recording, but the artist wants that synth's sound, you will have to use the audio recording. Otherwise, you always have the MIDI to feed into a softsynth to test out differing sounds, or to even feed back into the original synthesizer later on.

 

[Demonstealer]

Ideally midi so u can use that and trigger different sounds to layer.

But I always record only audio and make the fucker play till he gets it down. As much as possible make em work because they really value the effort they've put into the music then. This applies to guitarists and everyone else as well. Ofcourse if he is terrible at it then midi to save yourself headache.

 

[Fragle]

alright, thanks for the input!

will grab the audio, and the midi as a safety net. honestly i don't know (yet) what kind of player i'll be looking at, but just the thought of having everything midi with all the easy quantizing etc is very comforting lol
thanks!
btw, snyth is a korg triton something..one of the larger ones. are those any decent? looking at the price tag they better be

 

[Forceps]

Triton is a bad ass synth, let's just hope the dude knows how to use it

 

[Demonstealer]

Triton is a great keyboard