Old 11-24-2019, 09:11 AM   #1
lawnranger
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Default Midi in Reaper

I have a midi keyboard that I am using in Reaper. I am able to get one organ sound.I had been using another DAW that had a lot of choices for different organs, pianos etc.

So my question is: How do I get different sounds out of my midi keyboard? Do I need to get a keyboard with built in different sounds? Or can I download something that will allow me to do get different sounds?

This is the keyboard;
https://www.roland.com/us/products/pcr-m50/
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Old 11-24-2019, 10:29 AM   #2
toddhisattva
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Default MIDI has no sound

Quote:
Originally Posted by lawnranger View Post
I have a midi keyboard that I am using in Reaper. I am able to get one organ sound.I had been using another DAW that had a lot of choices for different organs, pianos etc.

So my question is: How do I get different sounds out of my midi keyboard? Do I need to get a keyboard with built in different sounds? Or can I download something that will allow me to do get different sounds?

This is the keyboard;
https://www.roland.com/us/products/pcr-m50/
Reaper doesn't include many synthesizers.

Here's a thread with suggestions for you to download and try.

The legendary 'Goin all freeware' topic

And I'll suggest Surge. It comes with lots of presets and capabilities, runs on Win/Mac/Linux, and can sound great and terrible!
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Old 11-24-2019, 10:40 AM   #3
lawnranger
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lawnranger View Post
I have a midi keyboard that I am using in Reaper. I am able to get one organ sound.I had been using another DAW that had a lot of choices for different organs, pianos etc.

So my question is: How do I get different sounds out of my midi keyboard? Do I need to get a keyboard with built in different sounds? Or can I download something that will allow me to do get different sounds?

This is the keyboard;
https://www.roland.com/us/products/pcr-m50/
Thanks!
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Old 11-25-2019, 10:51 AM   #4
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MIDI on it's own doesn't make sounds. A synthesizer is a type of keyboard that would make its own sounds. But a MIDI keyboard on its own doesn't necessarily make any sounds, until that MIDI information is passed to something that processes it... in your case, and my case too, that would be a virtual instrument (aka VSTi).

I highly recommend the aforementioned "Going all freeware" link Todd mentioned.

There's a lot of good free VSTis here too (many of which are mentioned in that freeware thread): http://www.vst4free.com/

There's a few good organ ones there, even.
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Old 11-26-2019, 11:48 AM   #5
lawnranger
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Default Keyboard

If I get a keyboard, as an example: Yamaha PSR-E263 61-Key Portable Keyboard Black

Will I then be able to use the voices from the Yamaha keyboard in Reaper? Mostly just want to have piano and Hammond organ sounds.

Cheers.
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Old 11-26-2019, 03:16 PM   #6
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that one has audio outs only and is not MIDI, so you'll have kind of the reverse issue here.. you'll be able to record just like any other audio source, but it won't record MIDI, and you can't do things (well, easily) like change sounds after the fact, or make MIDI adjustments like velocity/pitch changes / quantization, etc, and it also won't accept MIDI input (which can do things like sync tempo automatically or control keyboard controls automatically, on more expensive MIDI keyboards). With a MIDI keyboard, you can fumble your way through a song and edit it later to make it sound a little more pro.

Me, I really like MIDI keyboards, because VSTis nowadays are pretty damn good, and you have access to a gigantic free assortment of sounds from various free VSTis, plus some really high quality paid VSTis, if you can afford them (which are much more affordable than quality synthesizers). I don't think they're are on par with the high end, pricey analog synths, but even some of those are well emulated (for a price) by some VSTis like uhe Repro. In that price range you're looking at, I'd *personally* grab a MIDI keyboard and let VSTis do the job of making the awesome sounds. That is in fact what I already do. If you had a lot of money to drop on really nice analog synths, that'd be a different story for me.

There are also synths out there that do MIDI IN/OUT as well as make their own sounds.


I feel like Piano and Organ sounds, in particular, are very well emulated in many VSTis. There are even lots of free ones out there for piano and organ. So I'd say you're hindering yourself by going out and buying a non-MIDI keyboard just for some piano/organ sounds it does.

You really don't even need a MIDI keyboard yet to test what I'm saying too. You can manually enter the notes in Reaper in its piano roll or notation page (whatever they call it - i never use that one) and just start experimenting with some free VSTis out there.
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Last edited by nait; 11-26-2019 at 03:27 PM.
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Old 11-26-2019, 03:31 PM   #7
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Here's a demo video of some free VSTs.. I put really no effort into tracking this down, so there are probably better videos out there, and better free VSTs:

Piano:


Organs, do a search for "free organ vst" on YouTube and you should come up with several examples.
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Old 11-26-2019, 08:58 PM   #8
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I will look at the vsts. Hope they are easier to work with then Sonar. Cheers.
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Old 11-26-2019, 10:09 PM   #9
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Really, with anything in Reaper.. you want to learn it, you spend some time with Kenny.

Here's a video for how to use VSTis. This one explains with the built in ReaSynth VSTi, but this would apply to any VSTi. The big differences of course are going to be UI and sounds, but setup will be similar. This should tell you enough to get you going to where you can figure out how to do what you need to. You can skip a lot of this video, but really the big thing is knowing how to get your VSTi to make some sounds when you hit keys on the keyboard.

http://reaper.fm/videos.php#BvSC-6qq1vs

Then once you have that going and have annoyed your neighbors for a few hours, the next step would be finding more Kenny Gioia videos on how to record yourself playing!
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Old 11-30-2019, 06:40 AM   #10
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Might be worth looking at Combo Model F and Combo Model V as organ VSTi. Sound good to my ears and lots of presets and parameters to customise your own tone.
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