brand new to the scene

[dafthuman]

basically im a complete noob to the world of music creation. ive played piano for 8 years now and im drifting into writing my own stuff. im not sure where to begin or what genre direction i should follow. i have a yamaha drum machine a casio keyboard and a kp3. all help is most appreciated

[dafthuman]

i also have a casio dg-20 digital guitar from the 80s. and everything ive mentioned has midi in and out.

[argiflex]

You seem to have a decent setup so far! What drum machine do you have, exactly? I have an RX-7 and I use it a lot, it's a great machine with great sounds and decently extensive editing capabilities!

My suggestion is this:
Get a Korg EMX.

And here's why:
5 monophonic synth channels and 9 drum sequences, plus motion sequences and 8 bar repeating loops make this a prime choice for getting started if you're trying to go the hardware route.

Here's an example of what I use mine for:
I sequence drums with the EMX and they're played by MIDI off of my yamaha drum machine so that I can mute and unmute them at will for added performance variety.
I have a lead synth part with tweaking and LFO playing off of the EMX itself from the EMX's internal synthesis engine.
I then have a Yamaha rackmount synth for 80s sounding basslines.
Then I have a yamaha toy keyboard that will accept 3 different MIDI channels with the same sound so that I can have 3-note chords.
That way all 9 of the drum channels are played externally by the drum machine, one of the synth channels is internal, and the other 4 are external. And I can have a pretty decently live/dynamic performance with this setup.
Here's a video if it helps any:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUrmXrlnFZg
(in the video I had a gated reverb on the drums and and a plate reverb on the chord synth)

So here's what I was thinking you could possibly do to make use of what you have:
Get the EMX
Sequence the drums with it, use one or two synth channels off of the EMX, use your casio keyboard on two or three channels for chords, and use the dg-20 for leads or basslines, whichever one you think sounds better.
And have fun with that, or do something completely different! Just experiment until you like what you have!

I hope this helped! If you ever have any questions about hardware music production or really anything involving music production just send me your email in a PM and I'll be glad to help! And send me your music if you ever record it!

P.S. if you want to use all of that at once you will need to get a mixer. Just a cheap behringer with a handful of inputs will work for right now.

[Darmin De'flern]

basically im a complete noob to the world of music creation. ive played piano for 8 years now and im drifting into writing my own stuff. im not sure where to begin or what genre direction i should follow. i have a yamaha drum machine a casio keyboard and a kp3. all help is most appreciated

Personally I think that buying an arranger is the way to go initially. These give you a backing band basically in many different styles. Usually the styles have different variations for use in verse-chorus-bridge. Using these and simple chord progressions will teach you how basic song structures are made.

If your talking instrumental though rather than song writing then you most keyboards have some sort of sequencer and usually a way to easily record what your playing. So say your playing a piano piece on your keyboard and you think ha I like this im going to record what im playing. Then you should be able to record and then save that track on the keyboard without to much problems.

So arrangers are usually good for using backing tracks, workstations are usually powerful expensive song creation tools, synths are for making your own sounds up.

Some keyboards are combinations of the above like an arranger workstation for example the Roland Fantom or the Korg PSR. Some keyboards are synth workstations for example the Korg Kronos.

If your intrested in mastering your own songs to improve the qualty of the mix then you may wish to go down the DAW (digital audio workstation) as well. You can get a reasonably priced USB 2.0 interface (focesright, m-audio etc.) that will allow you to plug your keyboard in and via there to your DAW. I recommend Reaper as a DAW as its cheap but highly profestional and has a tiny overhead for use on laptops or pc's. You can even trial it for free and only costs $60 US dollars.


My website is www.darmindeflern.com, or I am on facebook as https://www.facebook.com/darmin.deflern. You can hear my music on the website if you wish and I did start exactly like you classically trained in Piano before moving onto keyboards much later. Send me a PM if you have any further questions!