Using VST and VSTi

[mikf]

When I started in music, even playing as a pro, there was little l technical aspect to it. I turned up, played piano and went home. I started getting into building speakers and amps as sound systems became important, and I moved to electronic instruments, but not much. But nowadays it's almost impossible to be involved in making music especially for keyboard players, without getting at least a little bit into the technical side. I respect that we have different interest levels in this, for me it's generally about knowing as little as I need to know, and for some it's all consuming. Spending a few minutes making a fairly mediocre played recording of a relatively simple piece of music, then spending hundreds of hours trying to make it brilliant with effects, mixers, and all the acronyms DAWs,VSTs, VSTi, is not attractive to me.
But in the spirit of trying to be current I recently decided to try and educate myself on VST and VSTi and what it could bring to my playing.
I found an excellent article on the internet by an expert. It started at the right level of incompetence for me then moved into great detail about how to create actual music, layering, cutting and pasting, stretching, mastering etc etc. Then came the show stopping line something like - 'of course those of you with the musical knowledge and expertise to input the original music by playing it directly can avoid much of this, but that is beyond my own abilities'.
Are you kidding me, a supposed expert on creating music who has no musical knowledge and cannot play an instrument even at the rudimentary level of plonking in notes in a studio???
I stopped reading at this point😂😁😂
Mike

[Joe H]

Mike,

I think the explanation is... some people only know how to make computer music.



Joe H

[Normanfernandez]

Well there are advantages over the Keyboard.
But most so called music producers don't have any music theory and knowledge what so ever.
The VSTi and DAWs does most of the part. 
How do you ask..
There are tons of samples libs with loops. 
Welcome to the 21st Century of music.

[mikf]

Music without musicians!

Mike

[janamdo]

There are musicians and there are computer musicians too
I got here a book Harmony for computer musicians

On the way, the computermusician is learning the needed theory/skills for his composition to make.

[Normanfernandez]

Soon we'll see Computers walking down abbey Roads 

[Dave Nuttall]

Music without musicians!

Mike

And songwriters without notation.

[Normanfernandez]

And songwriters without notation.

That's actually fine XD

[Toril S]

I make melodies all the time, and I cannot read music. I even do not know the names of all the chords. But ai do know how they sound. And use my arranger to make a whole pagkage of it, flesh it out. And I will try a little of making music on the computer, but suspect I will find it tiresome and boring compared to playing my beloved arrangers!

[ygx]

Well I guess this has been happening all the time throughout the history of music. For example, an orchestra composer doesn't need to master all kinds of instruments in an orchestra in order to write orchestra pieces. Even music theory are not strictly required for writing music, as technically speaking music theory always come after music practice, like jazz theory was established long after the genre jazz was created. The computer music production software just makes this phenomenon more pronounced.

Generally speaking, VSTs and DAWs are just tools to help musicians achieve their goals more easily, and the specific goal here is to produce music rather than perform music. Therefore it is perfectly fine if a producer does not know how to play the keyboard and can only punch in the notes through mouse clicks, as long as he or she can produce interesting music.

[Toril S]

As long as music is made, it is all good. 😀

[Joe H]

While some artists like Enya and Billie Joel come with a background of Classical training, it's my understanding the pop stars like Paul McCartney, Barry Gibb and other well know artists play by ear.  They don't seem to have ANY trouble making good music.!



Joe H

[mikf]

Joe - playing by ear is perfectly fine, many highly competent musicians play by ear. But not being able to play any instrument at all and making the music only with keystrokes on a computer ...... hard for me to regard that person as a musician.
Mike

[TiasDad]

I feel that even with 'manufactured' music, there is a lot of skill, knowlege and musical intuition involved.

I try not to judge as having tried using a daw and an MPC One to create music, it's not quite as easy as it sounds. Samples/loops need to be trimmed to perfection, then processed and integrated with precision.

Yes, almost anyone can knock out a simple beat or melody but to do it well and to stand out in a very saturated market takes a lot of luck but a great deal of skill also

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi

If you have recorded a song on the Genos through it's own sequencer it is virtually the same as Cubase.  Only difference is that you can make a song on the Genos with the human touch and you have to play the song.
I just use Cubase to tidy up flaws and strive to get a good mix.
Now i am tempted to do some vst track playing and multi-track to do my own music
You can load a midi file that you have made into Cubase and select instrument tracks to play vst instruments to enhance your song or multi-track.
You could also get another smaller keyboard with midi and ins and outs to link with the Genos and play vst live with Genos sound.
The sky is the limit with what you can do today.
In my view all this technology is at our fingertips but it is a waste on edm and modern rubbish today, all to repetitive and sampled loops. Not to mention the quality of singers today.The 80's was great for tech music , but everything for me declined in the 90's onwards.
Music has to be played as it can sound too mechanical if relying on too much quantization.
All this is just my pennies worth or opinion.


All the best
John

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

I feel that even with 'manufactured' music, there is a lot of skill, knowlege and musical intuition involved.

I try not to judge as having tried using a daw and an MPC One to create music, it's not quite as easy as it sounds. Samples/loops need to be trimmed to perfection, then processed and integrated with precision.

Yes, almost anyone can knock out a simple beat or melody but to do it well and to stand out in a very saturated market takes a lot of luck but a great deal of skill also

I agree using Cubase Daw  and all the things that go with it is not easy, but satisfying if you put the hours in

All the Best
John

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

I make melodies all the time, and I cannot read music. I even do not know the names of all the chords. But ai do know how they sound. And use my arranger to make a whole pagkage of it, flesh it out. And I will try a little of making music on the computer, but suspect I will find it tiresome and boring compared to playing my beloved arrangers!

Hi Toril

Music comes from within and if you have the notes in your head that can only be great..
Nothing wrong using computers as they can tidy up songs and enhance your imagination.
Most bands through time recorded tracks separately and stuck things together in studios instead of one takes.
I think it is great if you can produce a song that has no mistakes in it as you can keep a copy of your own work.
I find if i put a lot of work in recording a song ,by the end you can play it without a sheet of music in front of you as it sinks in the old brain.
Once it is there ,it is there.


All the Best
John

[BogdanH]

Old thread resurrected, but topic is still relevant I think. Basically I agree with everything said here and I just wish to add my old fashion view on this.

Get a laptop (which you already have), install DAW (also available for free), buy 300€ midi keyboard and you can start playing music. Result is comparable to arranger keyboard and you just saved 1000€. And not only that. If it happens you're not happy with midi keybed or it's built-in features, sell the one you have and buy better one for 500€ -and again, you saved 2000+€.
Looking from that perspective, DAW is a godsend. So why doesn't everyone go that route (although many do)? I think because pressing predefined buttons on arranger keyboard is much more practical than fiddling with DAW. Arranger keyboard is ready to be used instantly as we turn power on -because it's a standalone instrument. And that's even more important for live events.

I have an impression that many (majority?) are using DAW not for playing music, but for creating/producing music. In DAW music can be created which is impossible to be played by a single person -unless 90% of music is actually a backing track (karaoke).
Of course, DAW can also be used as content (i.e. style) creation tool. And from this point on, some will probably disagree with me. Let me explain...

Arranger is a one-man-band instrument. That is, an instrument that replaces the band. However (and this is important for me) it should still sound as a normal band! By "normal" I mean a local band that plays in town nearby. How many members has an average band? Drums, bass, guitar, piano/organ, sax.. yes, 3-4 members. I.e., legendary Emerson, Lake & Palmer was 3-men band only! What I'm saying is, to sound authentic, we should not present ourself bigger than we are. If we do that, audience will start thinking "that's not real... he's playing karaoke" -is not really a compliment for musician. Yes, with an arranger you can sound like J.M Jarre, but audience won't believe that you're actually playing.

Because of what I just said, I only use styles that I create from scratch. Not because they are better than others.. it's opposite actually: I don't want them to be perfect. For example, usually I only quantize one or two main rhythm instruments (bass or drum, etc.). The rest of style content I just try to play as good as I can -you can guess: is never perfect. Of course I make additional adjustments (velocities, duration...) but not to cleanup everything -I just make it good enough.

My point being, I don't need DAW for that.. for me it's just waste of time. Arranger keyboard has built-in everything I need. What I need, is to become a better player 

Just sharing my thoughts,
Bogdan

[Divemaster]

Whilst I could, and have in the past travelled many hundreds of miles to see some of the world class older rock bands performing, would I do the same to see 5 or 6 geeky looking guys sitting behind computers on stage?

Not a cats chance in hell!!

[robinez]

...

I have an impression that many (majority?) are using DAW not for playing music, but for creating/producing music. In DAW music can be created which is impossible to be played by a single person -unless 90% of music is actually a backing track (karaoke).
Of course, DAW can also be used as content (i.e. style) creation tool. And from this point on, some will probably disagree with me. Let me explain...

Because of what I just said, I only use styles that I create from scratch. Not because they are better than others.. it's opposite actually: I don't want them to be perfect. For example, usually I only quantize one or two main rhythm instruments (bass or drum, etc.). The rest of style content I just try to play as good as I can -you can guess: is never perfect. Of course I make additional adjustments (velocities, duration...) but not to cleanup everything -I just make it good enough.

My point being, I don't need DAW for that.. for me it's just waste of time. Arranger keyboard has built-in everything I need. What I need, is to become a better player 

I always envy people that are capable to create styles on the keyboards without using a DAW. I can't do that, I need a DAW to create the styles I want. So in my case I use cubase as a Style creator for my keyboards. For me this goes much more quickly than directly on the keyboard due to the fact that indeed I have all those midi manipulation tools to my disposal with a few mouse clicks. Of course I play the parts in directly, but the editing is done with the mouse instead of the features on a keyboard.

So my respect that you can do this all live. I wish I could do this too.

Here is an example of one of the styles I created in cubase for the korg pa5x last week for one of my tutorials, it's the song Higher Ground from Stevie Wonder.
Skip to 5:43 to hear the style in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Talrm3_qC4k&t=343s

[BogdanH]

hi Robinez,

I always envy people that are capable to create styles on the keyboards without using a DAW...

haha.. no need to be envy. I think it really depends on what kind (genre) music we play. As you can see on my few videos (link in signature), I play relative simple music and so I can still manage making all that on keyboard. But I'm aware that for more complex music using DAW can be of big advantage. Or in case when special expressions (i.e. portamento/glissando) are needed. Actually the whole process of managing style (i.e. copying content from one variation to another, etc.) can be done on DAW much faster. Not to mention that DAW is much more forgiving in case of mistakes! -there's no "undo" on keyboard.

Truth to be told, maybe I would start using DAW (and maybe I will in future), but I so hate all those additional cables. I guess I need to physically rearrange my keyboard-interface-PC setup first

Btw. Very nice sounding rhythm on your video! "I always envy people who have Pa5X" 

Greetings,
Bogdan