Another half-baked question

[Deep Thought]

My band is a 4-piece, lead vocals, drums, bass and guitar. We don't have a keyboard player and are unlikely to be able to find one. What can we do to get keyboard-type sounds into the setup? I believe it's possible to do with our setup, but haven't a clue, in my ignorance, what's required. I assume we need something where we can set up patches/samples and then one of us (probably me) triggers them at the appropriate moment. Anybody give me a clue as to what I should be looking at?

[tayste_2000]

It can be done but it can be very costly depends what exactly you are aiming for as in synth sounds or actual piano sounds.

Cheapest way might be Roland GR-20

[Musky]

Like tayste says, it really depends on what you have in mind. A band I used to be in managed it with a midi foot controller and a sampler, though you could equally use a synth workstation. Old samplers can be picked up for a pittance, and are quite usable live in conjunction with an external hard/zip drive.

[Geddys nose]

Roland PK-5 > Rack Synth if you just want pedal tones or PK-5 > Sampler if you want Preset passages, I use the Rack Synth method and it does fill your sound out.Also Thomann were knocking out PK5's for £225 a month ago great price! Si

[bnt]

I like the idea of triggering samples etc. live and un-sequenced, but then I would: I'm a huge fan of Rush, who pioneered that and are still one of the few bands doing it today.

A far more common strategy is the use of a sequencer, which the drummer follows. I have an Akai MPC1000, which is not just a sample-based drum machine. It can be used to trigger samples at the correct points in a song, control external synths, or let you play samples live via its pads & external keys or pedals. There's now a less-expensive version, the [url="http://www.akaipro.com/prodMPC500.php"]MPC500[/url].

edit: there's an MPC500 on ebay UK, auction ending Saturday lunchtime, currently at £150 - [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Akai-Professional-MPC500_W0QQitemZ320209574488QQihZ011QQcategoryZ38070QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem"]link[/url]. A word of advice, though: don't bring a drum machine in to a band without the drummer's permission!

Edited January 25, 2008 by bnt

[tayste_2000]

[quote name='Geddys nose' post='127815' date='Jan 25 2008, 03:44 PM']Roland PK-5 > Rack Synth if you just want pedal tones or PK-5 > Sampler if you want Preset passages, I use the Rack Synth method and it does fill your sound out.Also Thomann were knocking out PK5's for £225 a month ago great price! Si[/quote]

Best option but hard to play maybe I'm just a co-ord

[dr.funk]

You could run Ableton Live on a laptop and then pick up a cheap roland JV or XV sound module on ebay and a midi foot controller. That way you could use an average laptop as it wouldn't be processing audio (you may already have one). Infact if you had a friend who had Live you could get him to create the clips and simply play them using the demo version (free).

The advantage of using live is you can change tempo easily by continuously tapping in the tempo and you can trigger the loops so allowing you to pull of live (pardon the pun) extended sections or jams etc. It is much less restricting than playing to a backing track.