If you want something more specialized but free, the Spitfire Labs VSTs are great, lots of weird experimental sounds. You can find all kinds of VSTis out there to allow you to actually make noise with your MIDI keyboard, but I like AIR Xpand2 as a cheap, lightweight, and utilitarian bundle of instruments-all the stuff you might find as presets on a keyboard, eg piano, strings, pads, horns, etc.

Lots of support resources out there for learning to use it. REAPER is an inexpensive (or free, if you don’t mind it nagging you) but fully featured DAW that will let you record MIDI or actual noises w/the mic. The sound is surprisingly good for a $30 microphone, and I made decent-sounding recordings for years on one before upgrading my setup. The Samson GoMic condenser USB mic allows you to skip buying a separate interface, mic, and mic cable. Posted by SpiffyRob at 6:30 PM on īest answer: My suggestions for a cheap and simple setup on PC: It's akin to an old-fashioned 8-track device but in a slick digital package. If you want to do stuff totally separate of any kind of computer, I've heard really good things about the Spire.

If you have a iOS/Mac, Garageband will almost certainly do everything you're looking for. I think you can import MIDI files, but you'd need to sequence them elsewhere (again, I may be wrong.)Īll told: You can definitely do *something* for free whether you use iOS Device, Mac or PC. Audacity is fantastic (and free) for pure audio DAW stuff, but I don't believe there's any built-in MIDI support for instruments. If you have a PC I don't think there's anything nearly as easy to use.

It's also very, very easy to use out of the box and quite easy to learn the advanced functions of. Garageband is free and a fully functioning DAW including a bunch of MIDI instruments that you can use the MPK with, sequence, or use 'musical typing' which allows you to use your qwerty keyboard as a MIDI keyboard. With or without that: If you already have a Mac or iOS device (iPhone/iPad) you can pull it off for zero additional dollars. It's about as good as it gets in terms of bang for your buck. If you do need one you can pick up an Akai MPK Mini MKII for $120.

Best answer: Do you have a MIDI keyboard? Depending on what you want to do you might not need one.

Akai mpk mini bandlab