Zephyr

I'd say USB is even preferable, most midi devices use it nowadays. Go with USB, it's easier, more convenient, and no need for an adapter. You may still want the soundcard for just plain production reasons. I'd also recommend that you reconsider FL studio, it handles midi great and almost every know, slider, or just any sort of parameter can be instantly linked to a midi controller.

I'm not sure about how come the piano is showing up in all of the midi channels, but I can answer your question about panning in the piano roll. At the very left of the velocity window at the bottom of the piano roll, there should be a a grey box, right-click it and choose "panning" you can then set panning for each individual note. (I think that's the way it is, I'm not home at the moment but I'll check when I get there).

I'd say that at the moment, it's my home-made distorted piano. I often find my self stopping working on the mix and just playing around with it. It's a mix of my midi keyboard, FL Keys, some EQ, some reverb, some delay, and FL Fast Distortion. I'm kind of surprised actually that I haven't ever heard of anyone using it before... I also have it set up with my mod wheel so that as I turn it it filters in and out the amount of distortion, up is pure piano with reverb and delay, down is mostly all distortion. I even set it up with a low-pass frequency LFO. If anyone wants the *.fst just let me know.

I wish all of life's questions had such simple answers.

I can't help much in regards to most of what you're talking about, but I have an Axiom 61, so I'll talk about that. Firstly, the Axioms are well done, they work well and are quite nice, no complaints, the keys are about as good as action as you could expect from a midi keyboard (one that's not fully weighted that is) the 61 has 20 programable banks, and you can program every controller on the keyboard. The trigger pads work all right and everything too. One thing I should point out though is that the dials are endless, they don't stop, it can get confusing when there is no start or end point, plus since they go from midi levels 0-127, it takes over two full revolutions to go from 0 to full which is really annoying. As for price point, it's not too tricky to find one for less than the listed price, I ordered my axiom from kelly's music and computers (canadian online retailer) for $343.45 CANADIAN. That was before the big economy shift too, that's 40$ off, on a new product in canadian dollars. I also scored free shipping. (They list free shipping for orders over 100$, but the keyboard was too big so I wrote a note asking about it, they paid for the shipping after I complained). Hope that helps a bit.

I personally am pretty clueless when it comes to recording sounds built into a midi device, but as for what you need to start, pick yourself up a good ol' DAW and get started. Some ones to check out are: FL studio, Reason, Cubase, Sonar, plus a bunch more, but these are the main ones. Most if not all have demos so try those out and pick the one you think you can work with best. It's totally personal preference. I chose FL studio. As for other hardware, chances are you won't need anything else to start, although a good pair of headphones is always a good investment. Most people these days (myself included) are choosing to use mainly digital equipment, it saves money and space. It's also very convenient to have all of your synths, effects, and all that jazz in one place. Look around and see which DAW you might like. Watch some tutorial vids too, but most important is too fool around. Good luck,

I went with the Axiom 61, it's a nice model, but I'd recommend the edirol pcr 800 strongly too, I tried one in a store and it's really sleek as well.

If you like you can get the fruity edition, but you miss out on some key features, envelope automation is a favourite of mine, and though I haven't used it much yet I love having edison which you wouldn't get. It's also a lot less of a hassle to add 1 use samples with the audio playlist bit. You don't need to waste patterns on them.

Interesting idea, I'd be interested in the "add little things" section when it's all close to done.

I recommend producer, I don't remember the limitations but it's not very expensive so if you want to make any investment at all, go with producer. XXL can be a tad overboard and is entirely unnecessary if your just starting out, but I'll probably upgrade to XXL eventually, as it is a bit cheaper than buying the things seperately.

It just imports the midi, not the sounds, so if you want to you can just drag and drop a sample or instrument over the channel to make it have sound.

I wish we had the popularity to be able to do that, but from the looks of it, only people who participate in the contest are interested enough in it to vote. But I think that the write-ups everyone does is great for making everyone better. Maybe if anyone eventually does something good enough, (although fat chance of that due to time restrictions) somebody could get a mix started in the competition onto OCR then bring some interest to the competition. We can always dream. Congrats smenelian!

I sequence by hand and I like it that way, I just don't get the accuracy I like when using a keyboard (even with quantising), I set velocity levels after to achieve a more human performance.

I could vote twice if you like

Could you be a little more specific, I've personally never heard of the series, but just looking around at them there is a bit of a difference beetween the $700 workstation and $99 midi controller. I also don't know what you want to use it for, that plays a big part in deciding. What's you're budget? From the looks of the keyboard though and the cost (the 99$ one) I wouldn't recommend it.

Sounds great, I love this game, I'll see if I can get an entry in on time seeing as I'll be gone this weekend when I'd normally work on something. Haha, my first entry in on the anniversary, that's interesting (why is the anniversary 104 anyways?). I hope to be competing here. See ya around.

Either be lazy, or unsatisfied with what you buy, it's really your choice. I can fix one thing though, if you want to be able to hear a sample part way in without starting from the beginning, load them into the audio track playlist, not into patterns. If you don't know what it is, open the playlist in FL (what you said you've been using) if you see to sections to it (top, bottom) then instead of dragging the sample into a new channel, drag it somewhere into the bottom half of the playlist. It'll add it as an audio clip channel and then will play from any spot you start on. If you can't see the bottom half, then at the very bottom of the playlits window, grob onto the top part of the bottom set of bars and drag up. There, that's solved, now download more demos unless you're happy with what you have.

We should just put up huge download demos signs all over the place. After downloading demos, watch some videos and learn how things work, then you can pick your favourite, I went with fruityloops, and I'm extremely happy with it, it comes with a load of stuff. I play piano so I also picked out an Axiom 61 midi controller keyboard and I love that too, really speeds up midi input. It totalled up to just under $600 Canadian which was about my budget range. Hope that helps a bit.

Well, so long as it's selected as the midi device in the midi settings menu and you have the proper firmware then I'm not entirely sure. Here's something you could try though, I'm sure you've already thought of it but make sure that your keyboard is turned on before booting up FL, it really bothers me that unless mine is on when I enter FL, I can't get it to pick it up if I turn it on afterwards.

Hey there everyone, Zephyr Here, sorry to barge in here around voting time but I was just wondering how often you have these PRC competitions, I fully admit that I'm much to lazy to look around any where to try to find out. I'd just like to know when the next one will be happening, I'd like to have a go at it. Thanks.

I think I'll ignore the first sentence and just give you some tips about pitch/time stretching, I really haven't worked much with samples, I've only really had FL for around 3 weeks, but the first problem is easy to fix, it play's all the way through every time because it's a sample not a generator, to fix this to how you like it just go to the sampler channel's ins tab and set the volume envelope knobs all to zero except leave sustain at full. As for the time stretching and pitch problems, you could try using the sample in the fruity granulizer, it does a much better job at preserving length with pitch adjustments because it splits the sound into little bits and does it like that, plus, the granulizer has a bunch of awesome effects. One last thing you can try is to put your sample into edison and try to make good loop points, then the sampler will read them and once the sound gets there it will loop, lengthening it, but good luck doing it on a... never mind.

True, but aside from those few things I have absolutely no problems with it, haha.

I didn't want to be too harsh but they're right, like I said, way to much Frequency LFO and it sounds like just a midi rip, keep learning though, you'll get better.

Haha, nice one Kirby, the second I hit play my computer exploded, I can't say you didn't warn me though. I'm judging as I type, I'm going to for sure be in the next FL competition, due to the mix-ups with El Pollo I guess I didn't make the deadline, I'm still finishing the re-mix though, I'll send my votes in right away, but since we're all her to learn anyways, I'll give a bit of constructive criticism while I go through the songs. Rocket Sniper-untitled Some harsh sounds start this one off but they work, I like that explosion, it works well for the transition. I love the ringing sound effect. A bit repetitive seems to do the same thing for too long. Some of the transitions good use a tad of work, I like the FM on the drums, nice use of the source. Nice building near the end there. Sosadagr8- project metroid Nice funky beginning, I can hear a bit of clipping on the the bass hits, it kinda ruins the quality of the song, I fixed it quite easily by running a soft clipper on the kick and also turned off one of the kicks since you had 2 of the same going at once.. nice organ bit (are we allowed to use simsynth though?)... Nice transition to the next part I like that little background downward chromatic thing. You could probably have changed up the drums for some of these parts, all the parts aren't the same style so it should probably change. Also, this mix doesn't really build on itself enough, it's mainly sections split by crash cymbals. Nice job overall. Bundeslang-red item I love that beggining and the groove on the hats. after that, a lot of the melodies seem to clash, I'm not a fan of the main melody line that you used. not too much to say about this one, nice bass sound, some of the melody is off time 3/4 of the way through. Some of the sounds sound out of key a bit, not a bad ending though. Nice job, but I think it's just not my style. Smenelian-Smenelian Brinstar Nice smooth transition from intro into the song, I love the guitar's panning echo, nice use of a mix of 2 sound effects there, nice little bit of moving bass, perfect use of pads and harsh sounds around 1:40. Melody at 2:00 is nice. Nice use of slayer in this song. Good panning all throughout and you got 3xOsc to do pretty much everything you needed, I need to learn how to use it like you. Good drums too, Great Job. DDR Kirby-SuperSaw Haha, nice building and I suppose I have to give you full points for use of FL's 3xOsc, but just a tad short, on the upper side, I have no complaints, so that's a plus. I give this one a lol/10 My decision is made, votes sent. Great job everyone and good luck, and don't take my criticism too seriously.

Probably shouldn't be in this forum, Try WIP next time... but besides that you may want to do more than just take the midi and apply way to much FM. Frequency modulation can add a lot but this has about 3000% too much of it. A song should depend on melody more than anything else. I'm not sure if this is a midi rip or not, but it's hard to tell because of way too much FM. Tone that down and work more on melody ok?