EmeraldEcho

Supposedly, Mozart heard every note of a composition he was thinking of crystal clear in his head and just transposed the imagined pitches and rhythms onto paper, which he could do easily. I suppose he didn't need a keyboard. For most of us, we have to play with ideas by hearing them with our ears and then try variations or refinements. So the issue then is: what is the most efficient way to experiment with melodies and beat rhythms? The (piano-style) keyboard was invented to be a reasonably effective way to produce musical sounds and once they get used to it most people find it more natural and convenient than using a mouse to draw notes or other similar ways of adapting non-musical devices to music data entry. So, for most people, it is very helpful for music composition. Most trance-type melodies and bass lines can be played with a couple of fingers (and those that can't are probably just arpeggiators anyway ) so keyboard virtuosity is not really required, and the lines can be cleaned up in an editor if they were not played perfectly. Personally I have my eye on the Akai MPK49 which will be out soon. There are lots of (cheaper) alternatives though from such comapanies as Edirol and M-Audio, for example.

Thanks. I like to read the great reviews that you folks on this site write, then find the music, but very little of it seems to be available in those stores. Perhaps I should get more adventurous.

There is some truth to this. I am new to psytrance (as a genre I think it or whatever it evolves into has a very interesting future because it can make use of all the new software synthesis ideas) and I'm buying lots of stuff from amazon or napster, but I'm not patient enough to order something from Europe and wait who knows how long to get it on CD (I live in the USA). I'd buy new releases in pretty big quantities. Is it so hard to get them onto iTunes or somewhere similar? Odd that such a futuristic genre can't figure out modern music distribution!