Maybe this is best addressed to Gminor7 (or, as I imagine guitarists call him, XX5766) but . . .

I'm a sort of Rock Band 3 nut, and have started getting a little bit good at Pro Keys. But I'm frustrated that the MadCatz keyboard doesn't make any sound.

I think I want to buy a keyboard. Plus, since I got myself that Squier pro guitar and a Fender DSP amp, I think tweaking knobs and making various weird sounds is pretty cool. So I think I want a keyboard with a lot of tweakable things.

If I didn't have anybody to ask, I would say I'm leaning toward a Korg R3 vocoder/synthesizer/keyboard/thing. But before I go trade a kidney for a keyboard . . . what does Gminor7 use, or recommend?

(Also I just got paid today and bought the new album. Frontalot discovered autotune?! But only uses it sparingly / appropriately, thank goodness. I've only listened through the first six tracks so far, but I'm loving it. :-) )

Hmm, spambots everywhere.

Hi spambots! I am not interested in your products, services, or pagerank link farms!

(Though I half expected one to reply to my thread with something vaguely keyboard product related. That may have been a little funny.)

spambots excised (for the moment)

maybe gaby or ken or mike will hit this thread for you.

Hello mspencer-
I'm Mike, aka Mike Lombardo, micro-relevant internet singer/songwriter aka "56K", the current Frontalot touring keyboardist.

My rig for this tour is a Roland RD300SX and a Yamaha MM6. I would recommend neither of those for you.
My solo act consists 99% of piano-based material and I don't have much need for a synth-based project. Look into either Roland or Korg, my money is on roland.
There is a third possibility to which you should be hip:
software synth.
For the same price, you can get a copy of Reason or something similar and synth till you can't synth anymore. If you already have a midi controller / midi keyboard you can use it with Reason to play all the sounds, and it's way more flexible and fun than a hardware solution.
This will probably help you figure out what you like / don't like and once you are a little more experienced playing with synth stuff, you can look into a hardware solution, maybe a Juno series.
Just my 2 cents. Both Ken and Gaby are more keyboard-y than I (I am quite piano-y) so if they say something conflicting, they're probably right.

What's up mspencer! Vic-20 here.

If you're interested in physically manipulating the sound with knobs and hearing what you're changing in real-time, you have a number of different options.

The Roland Gaia, Novation UltraNova and Dave Smith MoPho Keyboard all have more knobs and sliders than the Korg R3 for around the same price point. The MoPho has the advantage of being all-analog but the disadvantage of being monophonic. The Gaia probably has more advanced synthesis capabilities than the UltraNova but the UltraNova is going to have a smooth VA sound that always sits well in a mix.

You can also, as 56k mentioned, go for the soft-synth route which opens up a world of possibilities. In that case you would need a controller, and I would suggest the Novation 25 SL ($299) or 49 SL ($499) since they have the AutoMap feature which takes care of mapping the various knobs and sliders to the parameters of your soft synth.

In terms of soft synths, I have found Ableton Live to be a monster of a program for sound design as well as song construction, which you'll no doubt want to dabble in. For extra tweakability you can get Max for Live, which allows the deep programming capabilities of Cycling '74's Max MSP software to be applied to the Ableton sound engine.

I hope that helps!

Cheers,
Ken

Holy cow, what awesome responses. It was rude of me to let this thread go six days (!!) without checking back.

I'll read through the responses, download some manuals and see what I can figure out. Thanks very much, both of you!

Edit: Hmm, I'm liking the Ultranova and Gaia. I have to confess that I really don't know what I'm looking for / talking about.

My brief experience with keyboards follows: as a young kid my Mom tried to teach me the piano. Around 12 years old (late 80's / early 90's) I got a Casio keyboard with miniature keys and "100 voices!" I think I was never up for the challenge of learning to play piano where the piano is the only instrument.

At some point I found a Korg DS-10 .NDS file and tinkered with that. I'm a ham radio operator (LOLnerd) and computer science grad student (LOLsupernerd) and I think I have a good handle on analog signal processing, so I was able to tinker with the various knobs and tunables on the DS "game" and make some fun sounds.

I recently got Rock Band 3 in a bundle with a cheap MadCatz 25-key keyboard that doesn't make any noise itself, but has MIDI out and acts as a wireless Xbox 360 controller. I've figured out I really like it, and can play most songs on Hard, some on Expert.

My hand seems to have gained some chord shape muscle memory somehow. And while becoming some kind of concert pianist feels like way too much -- I don't want to be responsible for everything the audience hears -- I think I would enjoy playing along with a band. Plus I really enjoy, for example, playing a Johnny Cash song in Rock Band 3 with the guitar also hooked up to an amp set on "Metal 2000" with a ping pong delay and octaver, and LOLing childishly at the absurdity.

Other than that, I have no idea what's good for a keyboard. Without truly understanding what I'm saying, I feel like I'd much rather have a keyboard that would let me imitate some of the interesting synth sounds from various rock / hip hop / electronic music tracks out there.

On that subject, have any of you real-life-keyboardist types ever played Pro Keys on Rock Band 3? What did you think?

Wait ... what?
"Good luck ... with your idea" ??? The whole point of his post is that he has NO IDEA about which keyboard to get and he wants advice.

"I love to enjoy ..." ??? Doesn't everyone love to enjoy things? Isn't it impossible (by definition) to behave otherwise? What do you mean by this?

"Thanks anyway" ??? Huh?Thanks for what? Are you implying that normally you love to enjoy things but the previous post has somehow made you hate to enjoy things, and yet you still appreciate the previous poster's effort in posting? Or does the "anyway" refer back to your first sentence where you wish the dude good luck? So, like, you don't really wish him good luck.

I'm so confused! Please elaborate.

I think the super relevant links explain it.

Now that I've deleted kizi's spam, TripleDigitFan looks insane! Talking to people who aren't there!

Inventing people to talk to even!

Really, does one love that they enjoy fatty foods, sleeping in, or having one-ways?

I love to enjoy seeing Gm7 on stage. I wonder who's on keys for the Cambridge show.

Ken Flagg was pretty bloody super the 5 times I saw him with Front

The last one sure!

[quote="aceupmysleeve"] What's his stage name?

Vic-20

Oh yes! Vic-20 played at the previous Front concert I attended. Indeed, he was abundantly proficient.

If you enjoyed him in the past, you will not be disappointed to discover that the most recent News from the Front contains the following words in this order:
"See Front and his band (Bl4k Lotus, Vic-20, and The Sturgenius) in... Cambridge (MA)"

Yeah, I was like... huh?

Yes, Ken's got a great voice too, which we've heard from the chorus of Jacquelyn Hyde on Zero Day.