Hi all, I discovered zynthian a few days ago, and I am so much impressed by what your community did!!
I am myself a beginner musician, and I bought a midi controller that I plug to my PC to learn piano.
I wonder if I could replace the PC by my Pi3.
Midi controller → pi3 -->headphones.
I believe this is a basic use case but I would like to go with something a little more integrated.
My midi controller, an arturia keylab essential has a small screen that displays banks, instruments, and I’ll nstrument settings when connected to the computer. It has also knobs and sliders.
I am a noob about midi communication, but it looks like all in and out from the controller use the midi protocol.
Can I imagine that I could control everything from the midi controller itself, with its basic display?
Thanks for your feedback, and congratulations for the amazing work you have done here already!!!
Hi flamspower and welcome!
You will probably want the zynthian to have it’s own display as the keylab wont display the zynthian menu items. However, you can try it out with an hdmi tv or hdmi monitor if your PI3 doesn’t already have a display. You can also use a usb mouse to navigate the zynthian UI if you dont have a touchscreen. This would let you test it out to see if it’s what you want. If you find you like it, then you can buy the parts to upgrade or just purchase an official kit. You can find plenty of ‘how to’ info on the zynthian wiki and this forum to help you with the initial setup.
A Zynthian and your Keylab should make a nice setup.
I use a Novation 61SL MKII with a Zynthian PI4 and an Arturia Minilab with a Zynthian PI3 . I’m very happy with both.