| The wonderful world of midi. What's it good for? If you have the money to hire a live musician for each part then, by all means, do so. If money is an issue, you must turn to midi. I found this keyboard in a Nashville pawn shop and paid 1/8th of the retail price. It features 4 sources for each single patch, multible parameters for both common and individual, pitch and mod wheels and one drum kit. In all, I can run up to 8 instruments (9 with drum sect) at once with Cakewalk doing the sequencing. It is a Kawai K1 II made in 1989. You can find them on the net for close to what I paid. If you have one collecting dust, here is a wave forms chart and a free editor download for the K1II. Above the keyboard we find the brain of my midi setup, the Proteus 2000 from EMU. A 1998 production that offers 32 channels of midi. Expandable up to 128 mb of sounds. This means mega presets fully loaded. 4 user banks of 128 presets each. The sounds are very realistic from the factory but if you choose, you can dive into the edit parameters of this machine and create literally any sound imaginable. For example, 4 layer presets with 24 patchcords per layer, (12 more cords per preset), 50 different types of 2nd to 12th order resonant and modeling filters. You can find an owners manual for the Proteus 2000 at EMU. If you plan to edit the proteus from your PC, here is a great editor called PatchPro. The little yellow box on the right side of my keyboard is a MidiMan MidiSport 2X2. This unit provides 32 channels of midi via USB. If you want to get the most out of the Proteus 2000, you'll need extra midi ports. |