MIDI keyboard controllers have become an important part of the music-making process for contemporary musicians and producers due to the increasing use of virtual instruments onstage and in the studio.

One of the original purposes of developing the MIDI specification was to allow live performers the ability to control the sounds of multiple synthesizers from a single keyboard. That concept has been a smashing success! Today, live performers, songwriters with laptops, studio musicians, sound designers, and others can all benefit from the flexibility a keyboard controller offers them.

Technically, a keyboard controller is a device with piano or synth-style keys, and usually a selection of knobs, buttons, and sliders. All of these transmit MIDI data to external sound modules (synthesizers), computer software synthesizers, or a hardware or software sequencer. Most keyboard controllers themselves have no internal sound-generating capability, but almost any keyboard synthesizer/workstation can act to control the sounds and parameters of other devices.