Musical Instruments

[shorty117]

I am currently in the market for a keyboard so I can start makeing my own techno, trance, and other rave types of music. What kind of keyboard will help me out midi, workstation, or synthesizer? Any and all advice is welomed thank you.

[Kyle-BBY Community Connector]

There a tons of ways to go about that.  Perhaps we could narrow it down a little more... are you going to be performing the techno/trance/rave music live?  A keyboard is not really needed to create that music but I can see why you would want one to perform live.  There are keyboards that can pretty much do it all (workstations) but they are going to cost significantly more.  You could potentially accomplish the same thing by hooking up a MIDI control keyboard to a computer for the same, if not lower cost.  Are you working with a certain price range?

I dunno, let me know more details and we'll keep the discussion going!

[shorty117]

Eventualy performing live is what I am wanting to do but for right now I am mostly focused on creating the music and leaning all about it. I do have a price budget of about $500 right now but I realize I need a bigger budget so I am going to continue saving up.

[Kyle-BBY Community Connector]

If you're just getting into it and more so interested in the creation aspect then I would recommend going the software route, at least at first.  Most everyone if familiar with the basic user interface of a computer and can navigate it pretty easily, whereas a workstation keyboard can be really tough to find your way around and not very forgiving.  I own a Korg TR and still get confused as to how to get through the menus, and it's not even one of the more expensive ones with a bazillion features.  I think it's complicated because they use all these random buttons to move through menus; one minute your pressing a button to scroll up and the next minute that same button is selecting a tone.  I think some manufacturer's are improving on this though.

Anyways, the program I use and would highly recommend for creating songs from scratch is Propellerhead's Reason.  It's got everything you'll need to hit the ground running for the genres you mentioned.  It's one of those programs that can be as simple or as complex as you desire to make it.  There are a bunch of video tutorials on Propellerhead's website and other places that would be a great place to start with getting familiar with the program.  Half of the fun for me is just putzing around with all of the buttons and settings to see how I can change the sound.  The best part is the program just dropped in price not too long ago to $299 so it's already in your budget.  It's backordered on BestBuy.com currently but you might be able to find it available at one of our Musical Instruments stores.

[shorty117]

okay thank you.

What if I wanted to go the DJ rout, what equipment and/or software would be needed there?

[Kyle-BBY Community Connector]

DJing is a whole different animal. My involvement with DJing entails selecting songs from an iTunes playlist and adjusting a crossfade setting. I’m not too sure what the best equipment is out there for that but I believe you’re either looking at a dual-rack CD player, turn table, mixer, or an all-in-one DJing package and we carry all of those here. Let me know if you have any specific questions about any of them.