extending a keyboard?

[Glenn Mitchell]

My wife bought a 66 key board and wonders if there is a way to extend the lower end electronically.
I was thinking of the ability of the BR800 COSM FX to make a bass from a guitar by dropping it an octave.
Her key board is Midi and I do have MIDI on the BR800 and MIDI cables but that's as far as i can go with it.

[cuthbert]

Quite possibly.

Many keyboards have an octave setting control built into them - see if hers does. If it doesn't, it may still be possible to drop it an octave via MIDI, if you have another MIDI controller with the octave controller, or a sequencer in which you can transpose the notes down. Kind of takes the bloom off the rose of the keyboard, though...

However, if the sound banks don't go any lower than what's on the keyboard, you'd have to somehow pitch-shift it with a real-time pitch-shifting effect or VST plug-in after the fact. The worst possible solution, as far as sound quality goes.

[64Guitars]

My wife bought a 66 key board

What make and model?

[Glenn Mitchell]

It's a Roland EP70, no pitch adjustment. She got it second hand for a few hundred

[TPB]

If you play it regular you edit the key change on the midi see picture this is how it is done in sonar
Tim

[Glenn Mitchell]

Huh!. well that's pretty cool. So it's possible but not likely practical for setup each time nor will it sound very good according to Cuthbert?
I imagined something like hooking up cables to the BR800 and playing thru it in Pitch Shifter Modulation (Page 73) I guess I couldn't use the Guitar to Bass Bank because chords would not sound good, but Guitar Bank Multi P-shifted down might work. I haven't tried that on the guitar yet either so I can't comment on quality.

[cuthbert]

Huh!. well that's pretty cool. So it's possible but not likely practical for setup each time nor will it sound very good according to Cuthbert?
I imagined something like hooking up cables to the BR800 and playing thru it in Pitch Shifter Modulation (Page 73) I guess I couldn't use the Guitar to Bass Bank because chords would not sound good, but Guitar Bank Multi P-shifted down might work. I haven't tried that on the guitar yet either so I can't comment on quality.

You misunderstood my meaning - pitching down via MIDI (even through a sequencer) will allow the best sound quality, provided the keyboard sound samples have the range to play a lower octave or two. The worst quality will be had by pitching down with a pitch shifter - although that might still render acceptable quality. Usually pitch shifters introduce audio artifacts to the sound - use them with care.

Looks like the EP-70 has 76 keys. If you're looking for live access to the lower octave sounds, look for a keyboard with a full 88 keys - the full range of a traditional piano. The EP-90 features that.

[Glenn Mitchell]

Ok thanks, that makes sense. The Pitch shifter would degrade the signal whereas a sample would be clear.

[64Guitars]

My wife bought a 66 key board and wonders if there is a way to extend the lower end electronically.

It's a Roland EP70, no pitch adjustment. She got it second hand for a few hundred

If you don't have the manual, you can download it here:

http://media.rolandus.com/manuals/EP-90_70_OM.pdf  (Owner's Manual for EP-90 and EO-70)

http://media.rolandus.com/manuals/EP-70_90_MI.pdf  (MIDI Implementation)

As cuthbert pointed out, the EP-70 has 76 keys, according to the manual. The EP-90 has 88 keys. Five of the EP-90's 12 additional keys are at the top end, and seven are at the low end, giving the EP-90 a range of A0 to C8 versus the EP-70's range of E1 to G7 (see the diagram on page 31).

I couldn't see any octave shifting feature on the EP-70, but it does have a key transpose feature (see page 22). Its range is -6 to +5 semitone steps, so at its lowest setting the bottom note on the keyboard becomes A#0 (just one semitone higher than the EP-90's bottom note).

If you want a full octave shift, it would be best to do it in MIDI. Using a USB MIDI interface, you can connect the EP-70's MIDI Out to your computer and record your playing with a sequencer. You should be able to change the octave in the sequencer. As Tim pointed out above, you can do this in SONAR using the key offset feature. A value of -12 will drop the pitch one octave. But this only works on MIDI data, so you have to first record the MIDI data using the EP-70's MIDI Out connected to your computer with a USB MIDI interface.

[Glenn Mitchell]

Wow thanks. It didn't come with manuals and I didn't think to look for one.
That worked fine. It doesn't do an octave but will go down from C to G below