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My two are taking piano lessons and we have a piano - my wife's from back before we got married - so I got the Yamaha Piaggero NPV80 to let them practise with headphones on if necessary. The Yamaha is 'graded soft touch' - the bass keys get progressively harder to press, but I don't think it counts as semi-weighted. It does have flat fronts to the keys which makes it a piano rather than a synth though.
But, when it's plugged into FL Studio, it's my Moog and my Jupiter 8 
Being soft touch/semi-weighted you can still do Rick Wakeman-style arpeggios. Yeah, in my dreams but the keyboard would allow it.
My wife frowns a bit when the kids want to practise on the Yamaha rather than the piano (it lets you play dog bark notes, so naturally there's no contest). Which is fair enough I suppose because there is still quite a difference in the action. Plus they'll be getting exams soon enough.
The Akai Fire looks interesting - I already had FL Studio waaaay before that came out and people have been crying out for a proper FL controller for ages. I got the LPD8 and the nanoKontrol just to see what they could do. They're both small portable things aimed at laptops really. They do make certain things easier/quicker on the laptop - e.g. the mixer. That said, at my desktop it's not loads quicker than with a mouse, really.
What the Fire does do much better is integrate properly with FLStudio e.g it allows you to directly edit the step sequencer for drum loops, which is great for beginners. Later on users will most likely progress to using the Piano Roll, but it will still come in very handy, particularly in a band situation.
There are keyboard controllers that come with a few faders and knobs, but the smaller ones are kind of doing a bit of everything, but maybe not enough of anything, so the keyboard-plus-Fire combination looks pretty good to me.
Re. the licence, you might want to look at Producer edition, because you need that for audio recording and handling, so vocals plus anything else that makes its own sound. You also get the Sytrus synth which is great, and a few other plugins like Edison and Slicex for manipulating samples (see here for the differences). Maybe for later on though.
If you're considering getting a Mac for FLStudio, have a read through the FL forums because there are different issues with this first Mac release of FL, it having come from a PC background. In fact there are a few people sticking with FL12 while certain issues are resolved. Which would mean a PC-based machine.
I would also recommend eventually getting an audio interface - dead handy for plugging in mics and guitars and other stuff (mic'd kazoo, anyone? Yes, thanks son that's enough. Oh look it's bed time...). Good audio interfaces will most likely also let you cut down the latency so your live playing is more in sync with the sound you hear from your computer. Lots of choice in that arena and a lot depends on your setup, but I looked at the smaller end of things and can heartily recommend the Zoom U44 I bought.
Christmas looks like it'll be bangin' choons round at yours then. Loads of fun for your youngsters - and you - to come!
PS don't let her quit the piano - stick with it and keep her interest by getting some simplified sheet music for modern tunes (you can buy books, maybe download some, or download midi files to play in FL - you can print out basic music notation from there). That Bobby Shafto stuff that music teachers dish out is nice and simple for learning but kids want to play the hits.
Sorry for the long post... |
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25-11-2019 21:05:50
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