Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Tone to learn on? Also, basics of synth.

I got myself a synth. Being as I am very intersted in tone and electronics. I play bass as well, and I am quite audiophile about my tone. (my bass distortion I try and emulate fat synth tones with)

But I have no idea what aftertouch, LSB, MSD, or all these words mean!

I have a Miditech, MIDISTUDIO 1 keyboard. And I am using synthedit as my software synth. I have made a few synths on that, but there are alot of things I do not understand.

Also, I want to learn how to play this thing like a piano. What is the "best tone" to use? (to get an ear for pitch, etc)

'aftertouch' is usually referred to the feel after you pressed a key on an acoustic piano (which might not even be implemented on any DP yet).

Aftertouch is what happens after you've pressed down the key. You don't have to release it all the way but you can move it up and down a bit. It can be used to control certain MIDI parameters such as vibrato. It has nothing to do with the aftertouch on acoustic pianos.

LSB and MSB stand for "Least Significant Byte" and "Most Significant Byte". It's a way to divide data that requires 16 bits of precision into two separate bytes (which are 8 bits). One MIDI byte can hold the values 0 to 127, but certain MIDI messages require more precision than that so the messages are split up into a "course" (MSB) and "fine" (LSB) message. This is all very technical and you probably shouldn't care less.

Hah, is there a site I can go to that explains the basics?

Sounds like YOU are a fellow synth head!
This could be interesting to ya: http://shazware.com/piano

You're going to want a better keyboard than that.
Matthijs explained aftertouch pretty good.
You've got the noteon velocity (how fast you pressed the key down), then aftertouch is how much you "lean" on the keybed while the note is held down (0=lightly..127=heavily) then you've got the noteoff velocity (sometimes - it usually defaults to 64 - half of 127, sometimes it's 0)

Outside of the keys there are controllers that tweak the sound like pitchbender, modulation wheel, program change, pedal, slider and knobs and buttons, oh my!

Try em out - figure out how to edit patches for your softsynth (or audigy like me) and put those sliders and knobs to work like those analog synth guys do.

Anyways, welcome to the site.
This place rocks hard!

...Steve

Sadly, my keyboard has no aftertouch (THE MANUAL LIED TO ME!) I learned after toying with my virtual synth for a while.

This keyboard has a modulation, pitch bender, and a bunch of assignable controls! (8 of them to be specific). Though my pitch wheel resets SLIGHTLY above where it is supposed to be. It isn't that noticeable, but can be kinda annoying...

Also, http://www.synthedit.com/ Check it out!

Are you sure it doesn't have aftertouch?

Aftertouch would need to be assigned to a control for it to work.

There is an aftertouch out for the midi module in that program. Hooked stuff up to it, doesn't do a damn thing.

On your controller, you can probably assign pedal to generate aftertouch events. That's probably the next best way to do aftertouch.

Keyboard pressure is another term meaning aftertouch. (poly aftertouch=key pressure / mono aftertouch=channel pressure.)
poly aftertouch is VERY rare but someday I'll get a controller with it or die trying

No pedal. Gotta buy one. :<

Though, I can probably make one! Is it just like any other controller? Tip = send, ring = return, and sleeve = ground?