I want to make some tunes on logic pro. I have this electric piano
http://www.rolandcorp.com.au/products/productdetails.aspx?p=1164
Is it possible to hook it up and if so what cables would I need? Many thanks.
You need more than that.
First what KIND of keyboard do yo want? Do you want a piano hammer action that has the feel of weighted piano keys? Do you want an un-weighted synth-action type keys that have only light springs under them? There is a pretty radical difference. It is are used to playing an acoustic piano you are going to want the piano action keys. This is a big decision point: piano or synth action keys. The better piano style keys are rather complex and have many moving parts. Some synth action keys are velocity sensitive and some are not. I can't imagine playing on non-senitive keys but every pipe organ is that way
You will find that most synth action boards have mod wheels that allows for note bending (pitch) and tremolo. But piano boards will have piano peddles that piano players need.
If yu have never played any keyboard instrument then just go with a way-cheap keyboard and plan on replacing in in 6 months.
It both styles you can buy either a "stage" or "home" style. The sets types are portable and set on stands that you can fold up. The home type are made more like furniture and not meant to me moved around.
There are two ways to connect them to a computer:
1) using the industry standard "MIDI" plugs. These are two round five-pin connectors and these are universally comparable with "everything"
2) USB. Some boards use USB but then you need special drivers on the commuter and you hope they will be abatable after an OS upgrade.
OK. That is just the board itself.
How to connect it? There are three things you need
1) A way to get the MIDI data from the board to the computer and
2) A way to get the sound from the computer to your speakers or headphones
3) software to record the MIDI data and convert it to sound. Apple's Garage Band is a good start. Use this until you have good reason not to.
If your keyboard is "real MIDI" with those two round plugs you need a pair of MIDI cable and and MIDI to USB interface. The best plan is to buy an audio interface that has MIDI also all in one box. Like this:
http://www.presonus.com/products/AudioBox-USB
Then you need speakers and headphones.
But notice that the Roland piano that you picked out also can make sound all on it's own. In fact that model is very good at it. Better than the software that comes with Garage band. So there is a completely different route you can take. MIDI data is jet key presses. MIDI is not sound it just says "key down" and "key up" and then software generate the sound. But with this Roland the internal sons is good so you might want to record tis audio output. You can do that also with the Presonus AudioBox but you need a pair of audio cables.
A third option: Do both. You can record the audio and MEDI data at the same time. Then later you can mix it down and have many options.
In short you need:
1 Keyboard of some type (piano or synth)
2 An audio/MIDI interface
3 Audio and/or MIDI cable from #1 to #2
4 Speakers and headphones and audio cable to/from #2
5 DAW software, like Garage Band or Logic
At some point you might want to add a microphone. If so then plan for it now and make sure you have enough audio input channels in the audio interface. A stereo piano takes up two channels and a mic takes one
Will you play with other musicians, they need inputs also. Guitars take only one channels drums take "many"
