Midi Controllers & garageband

holbrood · Joined: Aug 25, 2010 Posts: 2 Location: Australia

I've been trying to decide which midi controller to get to use with my macbook pro and garageband. I don't have any musical knowledge and what I want to do is use garageband to learn to play the piano/keyboard and also have some fun with garageband.

I see positive and negative postings or reviews for most of the (fairly low price) controllers I have been looking at, and am not finding it easy to make an informed choice!

The latest controller I thought would be good is a Behringer UMX610. Would this be suitable (anyone used one with garageband), and is it pitching at the right level or is it too complex?

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

Dave

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 7:11 pm Post subject:

The Behringer keyboard might be OK.. or not. I have no idea. scratch

However, pretty much most of the inexpensive M-Audio and Boss/Roland/Edirol products are just fine. Basically there are are two issues you have to consider. Do you want a keyboard with lotsa keys ( like 88 ) or one ( possibly less expensive ) with fewer keys.. like 49 or 25... and do you want a controller with both traditional midi connectors and USB or just USB.

I suggest you choose a simpler keyboard with many keys .. at least 61.. and with both the trad midi connectors and USB.

This allows you to:

1. At least try to learn to play sensibly with both hands at the same time.. not a bad option really..

2. Set up the keyboard with several splits.

3.And later have the option to be able to use the same device as a controller for midi devices like sound modules or what have you using the traditional DIN style Midi connectors.

I suggest you pay less attention to all the controllers with umpteen drumpads, a trillion of sliders and pots and ribbons and blinking lights.

holbrood · Joined: Aug 25, 2010 Posts: 2 Location: Australia

Thanks for the advice - the behringer does seem to meet all the points you mentioned. I have noticed less negative comments about the behringer controllers than some others such as M-Audio, so I am leaning toward the UMX610 at the moment... (There are a lot of posts concerning M-Audio controllers just stopping working - perhaps not on this forum, I picked them up googling).

regards

Dave