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Choosing a MIDI keyboard with built-in speakers

9 tweets · October 2021 · 28 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter

I am intending to buy a midi keyboard 🎹 help me pick one 😀 (or tag someone who can?) desiderata 🤔 - pitch-bend thingy - probably 61-88 keys - has built-in speakers - works with @bitwig - ??? (ask me Qs to help me figure out what I care about!)

@Bitwig for context, I got back into keyboard by borrowing a friend's keyboard for 1.5y, which was pretty similar to this one but 88 keys and fewer knobs (Yamaha; thought I'd written down the model but apparently not) this might be roughly what I want?

I value speakers because I'd like to be able to take it places & jam, or improvise on it while working at my desk, without having to have it set up to a whole DAW just to make sounds MIDI *keyboard*, not MIDI *controller* (maybe nobody says "MIDI kb" bc all electric kbs MIDI?)

so yeah, @midijeffg, I guess built-in sound card is actually more important—could have external speaker I don't have a good model of what's going on here, but I want the thing to work as a ~standalone device in addition to being an input device for Bitwig twitter.com/midijeffg/stat…

the idea of having extra knobs & sliders to control bitwig sounds pretty dope—dunno what I'd do with those yet but it has lots of cool plugins to control twitter.com/midijeffg/stat…

I don't know if I care about weighted keys—I think it's not a major factor, but ceteris paribus I'd prefer them

human age @human__age ·

@Malcolm_Ocean @Bitwig I haven’t heard of midi controllers with built in speakers - ya never know though. Weighted vs non-weighted keys is a big factor. I have a fairly simple Novation which works great for my purposes. The Arturia keysteps look really sick

in terms of hours spent, mainly playing but I do also want to actually record/produce some tracks using MIDI+bitwig! so needs to be multipurpose

εƭɦαɳ @neuro_stack ·

@Malcolm_Ocean @Bitwig Speakers on MIDI controllers is rare, usually you will find keyboards with midi plugs but each have different purposes. Are you mainly looking to play or to produce music?

saw a used listing for a ROLI seaboard and got really excited about that; is totally my vibe in terms of how expressive I want my instrument to be seems pretty different on a lot of the other axes tho

at @MasterTimBlais' suggestion, this is now my candidate-to-beat it's got built-in speakers, a pitch bend thingy, AND tech to sound like a real piano. plus other misc like bluetooth something and not absurdly expensive either! casiomusicgear.com/products/privi…