Media - midi keyboard - Page 1

A screenshot of the "King of VHS" app on the iPad. It's basically a screen full of nothing but knobs and dials, with a very 80s-looking feel to them.

I've discovered that there are a bunch of synth apps available on the iPad, and they work magnificently with my little Arturia MiniLab 3 keyboard. This may be a very large rabbit hole I'm about to fall down. :ohno:

(At least I'm not getting into actual physical synths though.)

Posted on 4 November 2025, 21:15

A selfie of me, a white man with a short red beard and short brown hair—although both are getting a bit scruffy—smiling at the camera. I'm holding a guitar and standing in front of my standing desk, which has an Arturia MiniLab 3 MIDI keyboard in black sitting on the desk. On the main computer display is Logic Pro with Arturia's Analog Lab plugin window open, and on my laptop's internal display to the left there is Toontrack's Superior Drummer 3 plugin window showing half of a frankly absurd number of cymbals and toms, partially covered by the window for Neural DSP's Archetype PliniX guitar amp software showing a cool-looking black amp with a red glow coming from inside it.

Current status: feeling inspired. 😎

(Of course, it's probably going to end up being another couple of months before I actually finish this thing. 😅)

our house selfie me music darkroom guitar midi keyboard

Posted on 18 May 2025, 20:47

A photo of my birthday presents. At the top is the box of an Arturia "MiniLab 3" MIDI keyboard, it's a small 25 key keyboard with a number of dials and sliders and buttons above the keys themselves. Under the keyboard box are four books, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, the Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, and The Killing Moon also by N.K. Jemisin.

And the actual birthday goodies! I'm really looking forward to playing around with the keyboard, the company that makes it has a big synth plugin that integrates specifically with all the dials and sliders on the keyboard itself so you can control all the various parameters of the synth without needing to take your hands off the keyboard itself.

books our house darkroom presents midi keyboard

Posted on 20 April 2025, 10:18

Sans Metronome

And the song is finished! I wrote up a full blog post with the details: https://blog.virtualwolf.org/sans-metronome/

guitar drums audio bass guitar midi keyboard ibanez jiva10 fender player ii stratocaster neuraldsp boss me-90b

Posted on 12 January 2025, 21:03

A photo of my standing desk in its upright position, with an electric guitar sitting to the left of the desk, a bass guitar sitting to the right of the desk, a MIDI keyboard on the desk, and Logic Pro showing on the main display.

Recording the bass and drums for @[email protected]'s upcoming Christmas song has gotten me into the mood to try record a short little something of my own. 👀

I'm trying to do some kind of cool minor pentatonic thing, we'll see how it actually comes out. 😅 I've got the bass riff recorded so far and it's sounding pretty good, next stop is some lead guitar over the top of it. (The MIDI keyboard may or may not end up being made use of in the final product.)

our house music darkroom guitar bass guitar midi keyboard

Posted on 15 September 2024, 21:12

Metal Tones in A Minor Pentatonic

I made another short little song! This one is 100% me playing all the instruments (guitar, bass guitar, drums, keyboard) rather than doing it via loops, and I'm very pleased to report that I didn't need to quantise the drums at all, I smashed the timing (the same can't be said for the guitar and bass guitar, they both need a little bit of nudging, though I didn't realise they needed it until I had recorded the drums).

The guitar was a bit frustrating to get right, I had most of it but the little "solo"-esque bit in the middle required quite a few takes. I also subsequently realised that if you have the loop mode on and are recording something, it'll just keep looping over and recording the whole looped section as a different take, so I did that for the drums and ended up recording it like nine or ten times through then listened to them back and picked the best. The guitar and bass sounds come from Two Notes' "Genome" software, I had quite a bit of fun dialing in the sound, and I used my Epiphone SG Standard rather than the JIVA for a bit of change.

guitar drums audio epiphone sg standard bass guitar midi keyboard two notes genome

Posted on 5 May 2024, 15:05

Alchemy

Granted I was already mostly done when I took that last photo and it mostly just required tweaking and mixing, but I present to you the finished product! Very happy with how this came out, and I'm even happier with the fact that Logic Pro's quantise functionality also works on audio files to get them into time as well. 😅

I called this "Alchemy" mostly because the genesis of it was me playing around on my MIDI keyboard with the "Alchemy" plugin when I discovered that female choir preset. I also played around more with getting the reverb right, added compression for the first time (I'd never really played around with that before), and made very good use of the new "Mastering Assistant" feature that came with latest Logic Pro update, it really made a hell of a difference in how good the final mix sounded.

drums audio torpedo wall of sound bass guitar midi keyboard ibanez jiva10

Posted on 22 November 2023, 22:29

A wide-angle photo of my standing desk in its standing position, my laptop and main displays both have various parts of Logic Pro showing, there's a MIDI keyboard on the desk in front of my regular keyboard, and sitting alongside the wall to the left is a bright orange guitar amplifier and an Ibanez JIVA guitar sitting on a guitar stand.

Aww yisssss. 😎

our house music darkroom guitar guitar amp midi keyboard ibanez jiva10

Posted on 22 November 2023, 21:51

A photo of a Roland A-49 MIDI keyboard in white sitting on my (also white) desk. As the name suggests it has 49 keys, and has a number of buttons and knobs on the left hand side.

It look longer than expected, but it's finally here! 🎉

The keys are very nice-feeling, there's a really good weight to them. And I haven't read the manual yet so I have no idea what this is about, but the very lowest key is marked "Panic".

our house music darkroom new toys midi keyboard

Posted on 27 October 2023, 14:59

A product shot of the Roland A-49 MIDI keyboard in white. As the name suggests it has 49 keys and has a number of buttons and knobs on the left hand side.

I've decided to continue my musical journey and get a MIDI keyboard and actually learn how to play it! 😁

I actually had an M-Audio something-or-other keyboard ages ago (nearly twenty years in fact) but in a similar story to my guitar from 2007, due to the lack of decent learning resources I never actually stuck with it. It turns out that the "Melodics" app I use for learning drums also includes a whole course for keyboard as well so I'm going to take full advantage of it!

I did a bunch of looking around and settled on this, the Roland A-49. The reviews are all glowing and apparently the key feel is very good as well. I could have gotten the black version and probably had it in my hands this week because the white one doesn't seem to be in stock anywhere, but I think the white looks far cleaner and sleeker.

music new toys midi keyboard

Posted on 2 October 2023, 19:42