keyboard player advice?

tony g · Post by **tony g** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:04 am

i know this isn't the place to be asking semi-unrelated questions like this but...since i got ableton i picked up a midi keyboard to lay down bass lines,drums etc... & being a guitar player it's a whole new ball game to me.does anyone know of a good forum to visit to learn a bit about this kinda stuff (midi,technique & so on)?i dont want to waste anybody's time by asking too many stupid questions here about something as in-directly relating to live & recording as this.i've learnt alot at this forum just from reading around & figured the same would apply elsewhere as well.

DeadlyKungFu · Post by **DeadlyKungFu** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:19 am

I'm also a guitar player, I learned a lot of music theory (enough to get me in trouble, certainly not all of it, I'm a hack) from http://www.wholenote.com .

Also, the scale and chord Live plug-ins can take care of a lot of this, you can play in key and not really pay attention, just feel it.

I'm looking to get a MIDI guitar for the same reasons, can't play keys but I can compose on the guitar.

tony g · Post by **tony g** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:28 am

i'm not concerned about the theory part,i think i've got that pretty well covered.midi still confuses the hell out of me though,and basic thechnique is kinda hurtin' me too.

DeadlyKungFu · Post by **DeadlyKungFu** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 5:29 am

It's pretty straightforward, in Live there's the device you're using, there's the channels for that device and in that channel you can send notes, control changes (called CC numbers or CC#s), or more rarely program changes, bank changes, etc.

Device > Channel > cc#, note, program change, bank change, the last 4 having equaly 'priority'

The only real place to burn yourself (that I can think of right now) is setting a MIDI input to ALL INs and ALL CHANNELS and wondering why this is controlling that when they shouldn't be talking.

Technique is practice, keep pushing yourself to try new stuff and finish tracks, I don't think anyone has the same work flow. That's one of the cool things about Live, it's very flexible.

my $0.02, hope that helps...

Wholenote is very much worth checking out.