EXPERIMENT # 2I did the initial test with the KORG Triton Music Workstation (88-Keys) connected to the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid external digital audio and MIDI interface, and using the same settings as in the Behringer MIDI keyboard test there was a tiny difference, so I did a bit of experimenting with pleasantly surprising results, where I use the term "surprising" because this is the first time I have connected the KORG Triton to a MIDI interface, really . . .
Really! It took a few minutes to connect the KORG Triton to the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid and to do the NOTION 4 Preferences MIDI configuration to set the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid as the MIDI input source, all of which was very easy to do, but to put this into perspective the "easy" aspect comes after taking several video courses from Groove 3 and macProAudio on MIDI; doing a lot of reading about MIDI; and doing some experiments to discover how to connect everything and make it work, hence "easy" is relative . . .
This is the Intro to "You Like Me Too Much" (Beatles), and it is reasonably accurate to 32nd note granularity, where it is entirely possible that the non-distinct individual notes are the consequence of my piano playing skills (or more precisely, the lack thereof), since my general strategy for increasing my proficiency as a pianist basically is to stop playing piano and focus instead on imagining I am playing piano, which is the way I enhance the neural pathways in my brain that I developed during the time I rewired the frontal eye fields (FEF) region of my brain to increase the neural pathways to my auditory cortex, which in the grand scheme of everything is the only way one can play notes as rapidly as one note every 20 to 25 milliseconds or approximately 40 to 50 notes per second, which can be increased for playing kick drums if you use a pair of Duallist D4 Dual Pedals and can be increased for playing piano if you do something similar with your fingers, where the general idea is that each finger is like a drumstick and the keys on the piano are individual drums, cymbals, cowbells, and other Latin percussion instruments, all of which might sound pretty nutty, except that it works once you discover intentionally how to avoid nearly all immediately conscious mentation, since everything needs to happen so rapidly that there literally is no time to think about it in an immediately conscious way, hence you need to shift the thinking to your subconscious mind, hence rewiring the frontal eye fields to the auditory cortex, where for reference it is no coincidence that the frontal eye fields region of the brain is bounded by Brodmann areas #4, #6, and #8, which literally are located at the top center of the brain and is the anatomically and neurologically correct source of the colloquialism used by a musician when saying that they played something "off the top of my head", which is the case because the frontal eye fields region of the brain is the only part of the brain which is fast enough to do all the required computing in real-time on the fly:
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NOTE: The following instrumental version of "Starlight" is an example of composing and playing a grand piano part on the KORG Triton Music Workstation (88-Keys) using the aforementioned strategy where I suspend all immediate conscious thought and play the notes as if the keyboard was a drumkit, noting that this is one piano part but is run through cascading echo units, since I like the spatial stuff that cascading echo units do, where it also is useful to understand that while I can compose music using music notation, I cannot play anything by sight-reading music notation, although I can sight-sing just about anything so long as it is soprano treble staff and I have heard it at least one time on a record or whatever, which works better if I practice vocal sight-singing every once in a while. And for reference the Electric Bass also was a real instrument, so the only virtual instruments were the Kick Drum and the FOG, where the Grand Piano was done last, hence I knew the pattern of the song, which makes it considerably easier . . . ]
"Starlight" (The Surf Whammys) -- Kick Drum, Electric Bass, Grand Piano, FOG -- MP3 (approximately 7 minutes)Brodmann Areas of the Human BrainThese are the settings I used for recording:
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Metronome: checked
Count-in: 1 bar
Min velocity: 0
Min duration: 0 ms
Chord looseness: 1
Split point: Middle C
Tuplets: checked
Multi-voice: checked
Multi-channel guitar: unchecked
Preset: Keyboard
I tried several time signatures and tempos, with the following working best:
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Time signature: 6/8
Tempo: s = 400
And after trying this with an External MIDI staff, which was not working so well, I tried it with the Addictive Keys virtual instrument staff, where the notes are recorded as music notation, and this worked nicely, where I set the MIDI input in NOTION 4 Preferences to the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid, and NOTION 4 was able to connect the dots with respect to what I played on the KORG Triton being recorded to the selected staff, which was the Addictive Keys virtual instrument staff that for reference did
not have the "Sequence Staff" option checked, as shown in the following screen captures:
NOTION 4 ~ Addictive Keys VSTi virtual instrument staff optionsNOTION 4 ~ Preferences ~ MIDI Input deviceThis is the music notation in PDF format:
Beatles Song Intro -- KORG Triton, Standard MIDI Cable, MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid, VSTi virtual instrument staff -- PDF (41KB, 2 pages)And this is the resulting WAVE audio file:
Beatles Song Intro -- KORG Triton, Standard MIDI Cable, MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid, VSTi virtual instrument staff -- WAVE audio file (3.1MB, approximately 17 seconds)THOUGHTSConsidering that this is the first time I have done MIDI recording with keyboards, I am pleased with the results after discovering a set of parameters and options that works nicely, even though I do not understand all the logic and mostly made what one might call "educated guesses", where for example since the Beatles song Intro is a bit frantic, I thought it was logical to use a frantic tempo, which based on earlier experiments appears to increase the fine granularity, as does essentially setting all the recording parameters to minimum values (velocity, duration, and so forth) . . .
I expected the KORG Triton to work better than the Behringer 25-Keys MIDI keyboard, and I expected the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid to work better than a USB interface, but I was not certain of this, so it is nice to know that it was a good guess . . .
Keyboard players who work professionally for top musical artists like Miley Cyrus need to have equipment that works, and I think they use stuff like the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid and standard MIDI cables, because it is professional equipment and it works . . .
USB stuff might be fine, but it requires conversions from something that is well-defined (MIDI) to something which is not so well defined and then back to what ideally should be well-defined (MIDI), and the source of this perspective is the various MIDI video courses I watched and studied, where the MIDI experts presenting the video courses were not so enthusiastic about using USB because it required converting out of the well-defined MIDI universe and then converting back into the well-defined MIDI universe, which in their view was not the ideal way to do MIDI . . .
I think this works, but I plan to do the DAW application test, since I am curious to know whether Digital Performer 8 (MOTU) does a better job, as well as what happens when a MIDI file (*.mid) exported from Digital Performer 8 is imported to NOTION 4 . . .
Basically, if you set all the various NOTION 4 parameters required to focus NOTION 4 on recording MIDI at the highest resolution or finest granularity, then I think it works nicely, with the caveat that instead of using a MIDI sequencer staff, it appears to work best when you use a regular staff and set its input device to a MIDI keyboard, which apparently on the Mac occurs
automagically when you specify the external digital audio and MIDI interface to which the MIDI keyboard is connected as the MIDI Input source and specifically select the regular staff, which is assigned to a VSTi virtual instrument . . .
Since I do everything on the Mac here in the sound isolation studio, I cannot tell you how to do this on a Windows 8 machine, since I know that some of the MIDI configuration stuff will be different, but this is one of the reasons I do everything on the Mac, since through no fault of mine everything tends to work very nicely on the Mac, even though I have no idea precisely why, which is fine with me, since while I enjoy having a bit of FUN being a computer geek every so often, I prefer to focus on making music rather than on messing with computers, hardware, and software, which is fabulous . . .
Fabulous! P. S. Depending on the song, you might want to change the "Split-Point", but Middle C appears to be an industry standard "Split-Point" . . .