another helpful use of them, is when you are sending notes from your DAW's own keyboard or your external controller is to see what keys are actually being triggered on the plugin synth. Say for example, you have an external controller or synth connected which has octave up and down buttons. Maybe you are using a Transposer plugin like in Logic that can shift Midi Note On messages up and down the span of 4 octaves. Or you use Transpose values in your Midi Region Inspector menus. You could even be playing in keys on a Midi channel that is triggering a drum kit in Kontakt or something, and quickly switch to another channel that contains a synth plugin playing notes again.

The "C1" you think you are sending from your midi controller can be hitting the plugin synth with Note On messages which are anything but a real C1, and all you have to do is look at the plugin's virtual keyboard to see where those messages are actually landing.

 

Sometimes I play the MIDI keyboard with a software synthesizer in the DAW, but no sound comes out. The first thing I do is click the mouse on the virtual synthesizer keyboard. If the software synthesizer outputs a sound, I know where the problem might be.

The Melohman Octave is likely to be a novelty for many users, proving extremely practical during gameplay. It allows for the easy creation of numerous individually desired sound manipulations, which can be triggered with a finger press or MIDI command.

 

sometimes when i am testing out a brand new (to me) soft synth on my laptop, and i just want to try out a few presets to see whether i even want to keep said soft synth, and i don't want to go through the trouble of connecting and firing up my controller and/or load my daw i like having the ability to click on a few keys on the gui to see how it sounds. yeah, sometimes i get lazy.

 

i cant believe nobody has brought up the fact that keyboards are an important part of the modeling process. Keybeds have components, diodes, resistors, etc. They are arguably just as important, if not more important than a synth's filter, envelops, or oscillators.

 

0.2% more of 0.0001% is almost 0.000102%!

 

Useful feedback, can spot & resolve issues.