I set myself the goal this year to write an original song to perform and/or record it. I have multiple ideas in the works.
Bass seems limited in writing a song. Should I get a keyboard to help with song writing?
I am a good vocalist and can sing melodies competently. I played piano some way back when I was a teenager. I could brush up on those skills.
I’m not writing or playing all of the parts. I’ve got a band, and figure the drummer and guitarists will be better at writing those parts than me. But having a keyboard can help me communicate chordal ideas more easily.
Would a keyboard make this task significantly easier? Or mostly just be an extra bit of gear to take up space?
You gave plenty of good reasons for using a keyboard.
You could also use it with a DAW for synth bass and other instruments.
I also doubt that many people here would try to talk you out of buying more musical gear.
If space is a major concern, there are plenty of 2 to 3 octave keyboards available, (as long as you dion’t need all 88 keys at once.)
Have fun expanding your sonic palette!
Oh, boy. You’re opening a can of worms with those questions. I give it go.
First off, I have no idea what your budget would be and what genre of music you’d like to write, so I’ll try to be more general.
I have owned several different brands of MIDI keyboard/controllers. I have graduated to “less is more”. I don’t want to use my keyboard as mixer as well, so no sliders. Trying to use non-motorized sliders was way more work than it was worth, especially when the DAW/virtual instrument you’re using does NOT support “soft pickup” (nothing changes when moving the slider until you hit the current value of what the slider is controlling). If it’s not supported, the current parameter value will instantly jump to the current value of the slider. Nasty. The same thing happens when you have fixed knobs (min to max). The parameter value jumps to the current knob value when you start to move it. Infinity knobs (yes, I watched too many Marvel movies to call them by their regular name) are great. They send incremental values (negative (CCW) or positive (CW)) when you move them, just incrementing or decrementing the parameter value that they are “MIDI learned” to.
The quality of the key action on the really cheap keyboards is? Yup, cheap feeling.
I don’t want to dump on brands I’ve come to hate, so I’ll suggest the brand of my last two keyboard purchases: Native Instruments. They have 3 different ranges that vary in price point. From the low end, look at the M32. Up one price level are the A25 and A61. If you’ve got the money, you can’t go wrong with the S series. I had an S61 Mk2 that’s now in the box my S61 Mk3 came in. I wanted polyphonic aftertouch; the Mk2 only supported channel aftertouch. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then the A series will give you great bang-for-the-buck.
This will depends on what your preference. I just now saw @TheMaartian post. That would be your start. He recommended a few solid ones.
I have a couple of Stage Piano the Yamaha CP40 and the Roland as well as some Roland Synth but they are huge.
I love the MIDI keys and they are tons of them to choose. If you are doing song writing it doesn’t matter much as long as you have decent key range you are good to go.
I’m just throwing an idea almost out of topic: why not a guitar? Acoustic or electric, doesn’t matter much in this context
Sure, you already can/could play a piano, it would make things easier at the beginning. But learning a few chords on a guitar is not difficult either… and possibly cheaper
And there are ofc some similarities between bass and guitar that could come in handy down the line…
Edit: when I need to figure out the chord progression of a song, an old classical guitar does the job ok for me. That’s where the suggestion comes from
I don’t know about genres. I’m all over the place. So something general “rock” use.
Budget… I’m flexible, but this isn’t going to be my primary instrument. I like hitting “sweet spots” as far as quality/$$ goes, and I don’t know where those are with keyboards. Let’s say, I’m thinking probably $100-$300, but could go up to around $500 if there is a strong value argument to be made there.
I would be looking to purchase used from MGR or FB-Market.
We have a keyboardist in the band already, but having the option to bring a keyboard along would be good.
Also, do I need any additional gear to connect a keyboard to a PC?
I mean, not a bad idea. And I already have those. Mostly what you said about the initial difficulty.
The one other practical thing is that a keyboard would let me write keyboard parts, and our keyboardist is primarily a singer and least capable of writing her own parts.
The only bummer about NI is you kind of buy in to their whole ecosystem. I mean you don’t have to get Komplete with one of their controllers, but it has to be tempting.
They make great gear though.
I would suggest Novation and Arturia controllers. I love Arturia myself.
Yep! I actually prefer 61 and 49 key over larger keyboards. YMMV but 61 is my sweet spot.
I don’t know what you know @BeerBaron but one of the cheapest ways (It’s what I did) is to buy an inexpensive midi keyboard that hooks up to your laptop / computer.
It essentially assigns notes to the keyboard. The Arturia came bundled with a huge range of software. In fact more sounds than I’ll ever use for about $100.
Downside is you can’t use it independently of your computer i.e not standalone.
Unless you have a very specific desire and a lot of knowledge of synthesizers, in 2025 I would 100% start with a MIDI controller and software synths. They are much cheaper, actually easier to use with modern DAWs, definitely sound as good or better for recording, and are really just as giggable. You just need to be at peace with the fact that a computer is a very capable musical instrument platform too (which it has been for decades now).
I’ve owned several hardware synths, three of which I have bought (and sold) in the last three years, and for me, IMO software is 100% the way to go for digital synths and really a great way to go for (virtual) analogs too, unless you really want a purely analog workflow, and are cognizant of the pain/inconvenience involved.
@howard is the synth guy not me. He can answer any of your questions. But here’s an example of what I made using just the Arturia midi keyboard and my bass in GarageBand. This is only using the sounds with the free software than comes bundled.
Is it any good? Not really, but it is original and I made it from scratch.
That’s pretty awesome. Don’t sell yourself short. It’s got a very 80s industrial thing going on, almost a Front242 vibe. Any idea if you can hook one of those Arturia’s into a pedalboard? I’m picturing running it through some crazy reverbs.
It’s a MIDI controller, not a synth. The synth is in the computer (I am guessing @Barney is using Arturia Analog Lab there, comes free with the controller).
You run the effects in the DAW. All DAWs come with builtins, and many more are available as DAW plugins. Most modern music software is sold as plugins for DAWs. These work great for bass tracks as well of course.
For hardware synths, sure pedals work great. Much less convenient though.
I’m pretty sold on a purely ITB workflow for synths, especially after investing in some recent hardware for a while. Like anything else, mileage varies here - this is just based on my experience.
It’s cool! Like @faydout says, don’t sell yourself short here. Nice work.
All synths, drums, and effects (on all instruments and vocals) in these covers are purely in the DAW, for example:
those are both all me, I was messing around with them without my bandmate so no difficult guitars in either. Bass was a lot of fun for both, though. The Cure song doesn’t actually have a bassline, I added one in addition to the bass solo.
Man, we need a real vocalist. Maybe I’ll go back to using vocaloids
