Budget beginners va synth

[CidFX]

I've been looking around for some resources to help me in my aspirations to learn and create electronic music, and the conclusion I've come to is that i need to learn to play the piano and i need a VA synth to start with.

I've been browsing the forums a bit and found a few suggestions but a lot of them are for older models of synths. Does anyone have some suggestions for a good beginner keyboard that is of say a newer model and that i could use to learn to play piano on as well as use as a synth? I am thinking round 500$ is a budget amount anything less is better but without skimping on quality to much.

[elektro80]

I dunno about that piano requirement. I think you would be better off with a dedicated keyboard for the piano stuff. Perhaps you can get a Kurzweil SP2X secondhand for a nice price?

There are many VA synths out there. One older but still extremely nice is the Alesis Ion. It has a very decent user interface, lotsa knobs, and it basically covers a lot of terrain. If you plan to learn how to use a synth then the Alesis Ion offers a lot of good stuff. There will be some menu diving going on, but far less than what you will have to cope with on some comparable products.

The Waldorf Blofeld is very good, and it can be argued that it is more advanced than the Ion ( which is true, but the total design of the Ion is so good and everything in the Ion makes perfect sense that my personal verdict is that it is simply different.. not truly better) , but the interface is very different. THere have been some reliability problems with the Blofeld too. I dunno if recent software upgrades have addressed all the known problems.

Roland sells a few products around the price mentioned, but I haven´t yet decided how good these things really are. A real synth? Get an Ion!

The Korg minikeys products are kinda nice, but if you want to learn the piano well you might not want any of the small Korgs.

It would probably be smart to rely on a computer for rythm and sequencing and stuff like that.. at least for the time being. THis is far less expensive compared to buying reasonably good hardware for these tasks. You could of course simply get a midi keyboard controller or two and then simply use a computer? Reason? Logic? Cubase? They all cost less than a decent synth.

The Korg Radias is of course really nice, but I guess it is still fairly expensive secondhand.

[CidFX]

Cool, thanks man for the information, I had been looking into getting a midi controller. I am not really familiar with what i should get, i was looking on guitar centers website and they have a few on there in the 100-200 range that looked decent for beginners.

For the software, i was looking into cubase and it looked pretty interesting, Ive been toying around with a few demos from different programs. For beginning, i should probably just pick up the cheapest version... then upgrade from there, would that be a correct assumption to make?

[elektro80]

Another possible hardware synth of interest could be the Novation UltraNova.
Still.. the interface looks a tad less smart than the Alesis Ion.

As for software, I reckon Reason 5 is what you really want. You can later "upgrade" by adding their Record app. Reason contains a silly lot of instruments and effects.
You´ll also need an audio interface and a USB midi keyboard controller.

What makes Reason sensible is that you are paying for the stuff you need which are instruments and not for a pretty advanced DAW suite like what Cubase, Logic and the rest are all about. Logic, only for OS X, does of course come with a lot of instruments and such and it is priced extremely competitive. Anyways, I don´t use Reason so you better get advice from seasoned Reason users instead. Carlo?
One thing about Reason, AFAIK it isn´t directly expandable in the sense that you can add third party plugins and instruments, but IMO this is not really a problem.

Personally I use Logic + mainly a whole lot of hardware instruments. Mind you, there is nothing mediocre or virtual or demeaning about software instruments. You don´t need to spend a lot of money on hardware at this stage. You simply need access to decent instruments in order to learn and enjoy yourself while making music. Software instruments will do just fine.

[Keysandslots]

When you mention that you want to learn to play the piano, what do you have in mind? Are you hoping to learn to read some music, a bit of theory and be able to play some notes and chords, or are you really looking to build some piano chops?

If it's chops you're after, you'll need a weighted keyboard, at least 73 or 76 keys, and some practice time. The Kurzweil recommendation is a good one, Yamaha also makes some really nice weighted piano action keyboards. Practice the first two Hanon exercises to build up your finger strength.

If it's the first option, you can get away with a much lighter and much less expensive keyboard. An older Roland A-37 or something like that would work fine. My A-37 weighs less than 15lbs, my Kurzweil with the flight case weighs close to 100lbs, with nearly half of that being the keybed!

Randy

[CidFX]

I'm more interested in learning theory and things like that, I just figured that piano skills would just be a benifit to that. At first I just want to learn the basics about learning to play so I can use that skill to use a synth and/or a sequencer.

If I got a say 60-88 key MIDi controller, could I use that with some software to learn piano or some techniques?

[Keysandslots]

Yup. Knowing some piano is very handy when you're learning theory. When I went to a music college, everyone took a theory course and all non-keyboard students took an intro piano course.

Randy

[fengland]

If I had that money to spend on a synth I'd definitely get an actual analog one like a juno 106 or something. Why would anyone get a virtual analog when they could get an actual analog? convenience? flexibility? cause I haven't heard a virtual analog that sounded as good as actual analog - I guess they might have more features though.

[Keysandslots]