It’s rare nowadays to find a recording setup that doesn’t use a digital workflow. A good digital setup simplifies music composition, engineering, and production, letting an artist create whole tracks in their bedroom that could have come from a studio. This is partly due to free and low-cost digital audio workstations (DAW), but tons of other devices also help music go digital. Most importantly, there’s MIDI.
****
MIDI — Musical Instrument Digital Interface — goes back to the 1980s. By itself, MIDI is just a communications protocol, code allowing instruments to talk to each other and send input to computers. MIDI controllers are input devices allowing the player to control an electronic instrument either in the form of an external sound generator like a synthesizer or music software on a computer. They usually look like keyboards, but they’re as different from each other as keyboards and pianos are. MIDI controllers don’t make any sound themselves; they just operate other instruments. If you’ve heard a string or horn arrangement in a pop song sometime in the last decade, those parts probably came from virtual instruments played with MIDI controllers.
****
If you’re looking to get into digital music production, you need a MIDI controller in your arsenal. Here are five controllers to get you started composing.
