Question

Being a total newbie with Studio One 3 Artist, or any DAW & home recording, this is a very steep learning curve.

I'd like to be able to use the virtual keyboard thingys, Mai Tai & Mojito and the drum pads but I don't know how I'm supposed to use them, heck i don't even know how to ask for what I need....am I supposed to use the mouse & keyboard from my PC, or do I need to use some kind of MIDI keyboard and play that as if it were the Mai Tai? My philosophy is to just play with Studio One until I understand it a little better and practise makes perfect. I have recorded my guitar through the mic but that's as far as I've got and trying to play the Mai Tai and make drum sounds with the mouse is really difficult so I need to ask so as I don't lose my enthusiasm and give up with it. Thanks very much for any help. Jason.

Answer 1

I definitely suggest a MIDI keyboard controller (I believe one can assign a regular qwerty computer keyboard to control notes also, but that seems very limiting - another option is to use the mouse to click on the virtual keyboard or drum pad of selected instrument).

You'll need a hardwire connection for your MIDI keyboard. If you only run one keyboard, something like iConnectivity's mio would be enough; it's a MIDI to USB cable and goes into a USB on your computer. It would not go into your interface. Then you need to configure your Studio One to recognize your MIDI keyboard in order to use it with virtual instruments.

Virtual Instruments are like MIDI, but MIDI is being less and less used as computer processing and memory have become better.

It is also suggested you eventually bounce or render these virtual instrument tracks (i.e. events) to actual audio if you want to ease the strain on your CPU.