Newb Question

Alright, I have a 13 year old Yamaha Clavinova digital piano and have come to love it, but I am looking to find a way to use it as MIDI controler (I think that is the right expression) and get some more sounds.

Is there a hardware box or somthing to that extent that i can hook it up to to get more sounds??? (expecally hammond organ sound)

or do I have to go through the software route??

I do have it hooked up to my computer with MIDI

Thank you sooo much for the help.... Really love the action of this thing and do not want to go and buy a cheap synth to replace it.

can someone help me??

Dont roland do a hardware hammond modeller?

Othewise find rompler box of your choice - Motif Rack ES, Fantom XR etc...

Yeah, here's some advice: don't name your thread "help" or "newbie question" or "I have a question" - we know you have and if you're a newbie, explain this in your post (or it'll become clear anyway ).

Rather, title it "Hammond organ module?" and watch the replies pour in of people who're going to recommend a Nord Electro Rack or a Voce V5 or a Hammond XM2 or a Roland VK-8M or a Creamware B4000 or a laptop with Native Instruments B4. But that's for organs only. If you need more, you should get a general purpose thingy like the ones above. No drawbars, but lots of usable sounds.

Also, specify your budget otherwise folks are going to assume that you have a money tree.

Thanks to you both, and yes money is an issue i would not like to use spend $1,300 but if it will last me for ever I will spend my graduation money on it...

The laptop way sounds very appealing, if i were to go the Laptop way would there be latency, Like to much to jam at a show with??

Could I just set it up screen next to me and pick my sounds and and jam in a reasonable amount of time???

Thanks this sounds like it would be great!!!

Hang on to your money!! You can find a used sound module for $300 range that will work best for "live". Roland module such as JV XV series. Korg anything ending with "R" ie 03/w R... Yamaha has some good modules but a little harder to fool with. Kurzweil has brilliant sounding modules. You can try recycler.com, Ebay, local pawn shops, local music stores (consignment items), local pro audio sometimes sell old gear. Whatever you do make sure to try it out before you buy it.

Good resource for reviews and pricing:

http://www.synthsite.com/

If you put down the kind of music you are playing you will get more specific responses.

If you dont have a laptop I whole-heartedly recommend getting one because you can use it as a digital multitrack recorder, a sampler, a sequencer, beat maker, virtual synthesizer, etc...

Having a decent laptop is super important as far as I am concerned.

by the way, jedi mind tricks is the {censored}

Casper I am into everything from jazz funk to Dave Matthews to underground Hip hop (Hence my user ID- and yes skunk3 they are rhythmicly and lyrically the {censored}) and thanks for the link seems to be like a great site to have bookmarked.

Casper, I do not have a laptop but but do own a Decent PC (Duo Process, 2 Gig Mem) and will deffinatly be buying a Laptop In the future, but I am having huge issues with already having a nice pc, and wanting to make the switch to Mac...... and not sure how having a PC DAW and Macbook laptop will be in comparison to PC DAW and laptop (for compatibility reasons)

Obviously the person asking the question is new to all this and has a limited budget so unless you're willing to tell them specifically how to accomplish this modern miracle I don't think you're doing him any favors. Stage laptops opens a huge can of worms, and the worms are not included.

Yoozer nailed the answer the first time. Get your first midi module and then grow from there. The Roland VK8m is a killer organ module.

Any module can be be controlled with your Clavinova, with or without a computer. In fact people now look for old digital pianos to use as controllers because many have great actions.

Modules are just synths without the keyboard. Simply connect the midi-out of your Clavinova to the midi-in on the module. Then make sure they are both set to transmit and receive the same channel.

Many have good Hammond sounds. I have a lot of modules, but the best Hammond is my Korg TR Rack - plenty of nice organs, and loads of other sounds. I paid $240 for it about 18 months ago from ebay - just to give you an idea of what you can get with a little patience.

There are many other good Hammond sounds too - Casper's recommendations are all good. And as someone already mentioned, the Nord Electo Rack - excellent at Hammonds and Rhodes pianos, however, it's not cheap.

Yes - you could use a laptop, and a bunch of soft synth plugins and a plugin host application - its a lot of cash if you have non of that allready.

And yes - latency could be an issue. The actual latency would depend upon your audio interface card - the best (and probably most expensive) can yield lower latency relaibly - *if* your computer is also powerful enough.

Personally I would steer away from a laptop for what you want and instead look at a decent sounding hardware module as then its a simple case of plug it in, plug in the midi cable and away you go - oh - and layency free.

I would love it if I could just take a laptop and a controler on stage and run it in real time. IMO I don't think that the software and hardware to do this is quite there yet.As some have stated here the latency and reliabilty of a laptop SYSTEM can be a deterent. Lots of hidden costs. I didn't want you to blow the whole $1300 just to find out you need all kinds of other equipment to make it happen.

I would not expect to get a useful live latop rig for $1300. In fact not even 1300 UKP!

Depends what soft synths you want to use (ie are they CPU hogs), how you want to host/manage them etc.

Also many plugins have their own latency as well on top of the audio interface and hosting application.

VK8m....I second that, if you're not gonna go the B4/laptop route.

Wow thank you all for the insight...... I will wait around for a decent module route...

THANK YOU ALLLLLL!!!!!