MIDI keyboard, controller? What?

[Spiral]

Not really sure where to post this but, whatever.

After listening to lots of electronic music, I feel like I've got the vibe to make some high quality tunes!

Some questions first,

Whats the difference between a MIDI keyboard and a MIDI keyboard+controller?
Do you need some sort of special MIDI input for your computer to connect up the MIDI keyboard?
I barely know anything about Music theory, just learning online will do? (musictheory.net)
I'm on a Macbook and theres no way to fit in a sound card, will an external sound card do, like (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackPro.html)?
Where can I get those stuffs?

Thanks,

 

[grarrgrarr]

If you buy a strictly MIDI keyboard, it has no sounds in it.

eg http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Keystation88es.html

Meaning, you plug it into your PC either via MIDI cable or USB, and you will still need a software synthesizer (Native Instrument's Absynth / FM8) to produce the sounds you want.

If you do choose this path, you will not need an external sound card if your MIDI controller is USB based.

 

[Cheez]

Hi, check out the sticky at the beginning of the section of this forum for definitions. Most keyboards will come with MIDI capabilities. If your aim is to produce electronic music, suggestion will be to get a keyboard with built-in sound. For simplicity, you'll need something that's at least 8-16 multi-timbral (so you don't have to mess with recording tracks one by one and bouncing etc), at least 64 notes polyphony (so you don't run out of voices), and you'll need a sequencer software (something simple like Cubase LE or Sonar Home).

But since you're on the Mac, you may want to experiment on Garageband. You don't need an external sound card. The internal card should suffice for simple music creation. In this case, a simple M-audio midi controller like what grarrgrarr suggested would do. One thing you need to know - no one plug-in covers everything. Once you go the plug-in route, you'll almost certainly need more than one. Which means increasing your budget.

 

[hardpan]

A basic MIDI keyboard would only have a volume fader, pitch bend, modulation wheel and maybe basic transpose functions.

The better MIDI keyboards/controllers will give you additional knobs, faders and even trigger pads which you can map to different MIDI parameters.