Quote:
The kind of thing I'll be looking to do is mainly synth-based (including recording a couple of old analogues I have).
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What do you mean? If you mean a synth keyboard, and you'll be playing the sounds directly from the keyboard itself, then you'll want to send the analog signal to the computer:
Playing the synth, with cables plugged from synth output into the computer interface inputs.
Or,
Playing the synth, which is plugged into an amp and speaker. then have a microphone on the speaker, plugged into a preamp, which plugs into the computer.
Both ways have their merit, but you can see the principle.
Now, you have the keyboard, and you have a computer. Now you need to connect them together.
For this, you need an audio interface. This will do the job of converting the analog sound (sine wave) over to digital stream (bits and bytes).
This can be done with cheap cards, but I wouldn't advise it. They can be noisy, poor converters, large latency (slow conversion), etc.
Best to get a recording card to start off with, maybe a inexpensive 2 channel one, and increase later if you feel the need. M-Audio makes a few 2 channel cards that would work. The Audiophile 2496 comes to mind right away, for around 100$us. Great starter card, works great, sounds good, stable.
This will let you plug your keyboard into it's inputs, and record your signals in some software (like reaper). Then, later, you can play back the recorded signal, and record new signals at the same time, basically adding new tracks to your project. You can then adjust them later (called mixing).
MIDI is used for when you want to record just the ACTIONS of you playing the keyboard: like which note you played, how hard you hit the note, how long you held it, and some other things. If your keyboard is creating the sounds, then you don't need to worry about MIDI right yet.
MIDI is good for when you have sounds in the computer, that you want to play, either with your MIDI controller (also a keyboard, but doesn't play it's own internal sounds) or with the computer's midi pattern (sometimes a midi file, or a piano roll). You can have a keyboard control sounds inside of the computer. This is often less expensive than trying to purchase a ton of different hardware synths. Just buy a new soft-synth (or dl a free one) and start making new sounds.
Also, midi data can control soundfonts. These are packaged sounds, often samples of real instruments, that have different velocities for each note, so it sounds like you're playing a real instrument (piano, organ, tuba, etc). These can be controlled just like a software synthesizer.
hth