Portable, silent practise instruments?

Living in shitty flats with crappy walls, you cant really get away with practising any instruments which dont use headphones.

Even tapping on midi drumpads while using headphones can be too loud for long daily ( and nightly ) practise sessions.

Also if you want to travel to another place to get away from it all you cant really practise guitar, drums or any instrument that makes a sound in a hotel room either. It just makes too much noise. Plus, while travelling you need an instrument that is lightweight and portable.

Of course, you can always use a laptop with renoise ( if your keyboard and mouse are not too loud and clicky ) or a tablet or PDA with sunvox or milkytracker, those things are silent to use. But for live useage, which instruments can be practised in near total silence?

Does anyone know of any silent practise instruments for live useage?

So far I think the best I have seen are:

  1. Good ol’ midi keyboard

  2. Linnstrument

  3. Chromatic midi harmonica

  4. Theremin ( but you cant rock out and move around without changing the pitch while playing, so you might look like a dweeb when you perform )

A Electric (Accoustic is to loud) Side Instrument with Flatwounds. (Jazz Guitar, Baritone, Bass)

A big Amp + Box

No Joke, many Watts can be better regulated

Have 300 watts in my 1 Room Apartment now is Silence enoiugh, before 5 and 30 Watts, there was to loud

Aquarium Safttey Base / under the Drumpad, is cheap and dumps a little

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AQUARIUM-UNIVERSAL-SAFETY-BASE-MAT-UNDERLAY-BOTTOM-PROTECTION-FISH-TANK-NEW-/171999078629

Hey, thanks for the suggestions.

Thats a good tip about the aquarium safety foam under the drumpads.

Unfortunately, strumming any kind of strings or using an amp is definitely not going to be o.k where im living.

I thought about those cheesey fake guitars for a while but they are going to be too loud even just plucking those fake-ass strings, and they are not that portable to travel with.

yeah you can see the fake guitar stuff here, I think it will still be too loud ( if it was just pressing the buttons on the fretboard without plucking the strings it would probably be o.k, but also they are not portable…here they are :

If you are interested and have a Guitar dealer near you, give it a try.
Its not louder as our Akai MPD 218 Drumpads.

Of midi or fake Guitars, I do not think so much (the acoustic expression is missing) then rather a small Keyboard.

I thought about a electric Kalimba / Likembe.

The Band Konono No1 from Congo build themselves from Car parts.
https://www.cyclicdefrost.com/2012/03/konono-no1-interview/

Would probably take something protected collapsible like a Gameboy SP or Pandora Handheld and Books / Pdfs on Rhytmatics, Harmonics and Bodydrumming
Less baggage is more fun when traveling

now that you bring this topic i remember the industrial radio midi bass/guitar shame they are out of the budget

Peavey had built a Series with Industrial Radio in the Eighties

In America is sometimes offered reasonably affordable used

i am a big Fan of the old Peavey T’s, would love to try the Midi Bass

the insdustrial radio midi bass sounds pretty good i mean the pitch tracking its excellent

Yes Insdustrial Radio have a very good Reputation
However, I also read that you need a different bass playing technique for Midi, the sounds behave differently.
I think that’s very difficult (for me)

I would also like the Industial Radio Peavey without Midi :dribble:

I love electric guitars and basses with real strings, nothing beats the expression you can get from touching a real string, but its still going to be too loud where I live, whether it is hooked up to midi or not. Even tapping on drumpads is too loud.

When I said I was looking for silent practise instruments I really mean ‘silent’, you know? Completely silent.

I like the idea of gameboy advance SP with nanoloop, but it is not a live instrument ( just a beautiful sounding synth sequencer ).

Also, I cant sample out from it as it does not have true BPM.

For sure though, if travelling, a laptop with renoise and sunvox and for me, its my personal preference, a PSP with LittleGameParkTracker and PSP-SEQ.

That takes care of the synth, sampler, sequencer side of things, but what about truly silent live instruments?

MIDI keyboard and Linnstrument are looking the best to me right now, but Linnstrument is outside of my price range…so it will probably just be MIDI keyboard.

I really want to get out of here to the countryside again, over the hills and far away.

Its red hot down inna babylon right now, shit it unpalatable and ugly right now…

Those electric kalmbas look nice yo, I love that kind of thing, but it still makes a sound unplugged…its a shame

Lettuce I’m about to turn a video to compare unplugged Drum Pads / Bass :smiley:
I snore louder when sleeping than when play awake Bass with Flatwounds

more Dreams: (also outside of my price range)

Hey, maybe your right. Bass with flatwounds might be just about o.k, possibly.

Bass is still too big to travel with though.

Anyway Hakken continuum is more what Im looking for ( completely silent practise sessions ).

It is too expensive and too big to take travelling, but check out this tannerin.

That looks about right to me, fits the bill…silent practise, small and portable, expressive enough.

Better than theremin I’d say, body movement ( nodding head etc ) wont fuck with its pitch.

Best tannerin in I can find is called therevox.

Still a little too big for travelling but perfect design.

Would be cool if there was a backpack / hand luggage sized one.

have you seen the ROLI seaboards?
they need a sound source like a midi keyboard but theyre infinitely more expressive - and squidgy too so as silent as it gets!

That seems like a good option.

Tried one in a store, very squishy.

They must take some getting used to because they register not only how hard you press but also how high up on the key you play.

Not sure if they register side to side wiggles or not?

They are certainly portable, silent and expensive, pretty much the same idea as K-board pro 4 by Keith Mcmillen instruments.

The K-Board seems to have less squishyness but it is also silent and expressive ( maybe less tearable / breakable if putting in backpack ).

Maybe Linnstrument is better?

Makes me wonder though, are these options really better than say, a midi keyboard with aftertouch, mod wheel+pitch wheel and two pedals?

Midi keyboard with aftertouch, mod wheel+pitch wheel and pedals might be more playable.

Its difficult to slide chords up keys like your supposed to on k-board and seaboard…or to play higher up / lower down on keys in general.

However, you do have control per key with seaboard, k-board and Linnstrument.

Some people might prefer the small linnstrument, but even that has disadvantages…as its based on guitar fretboard layout, how do you play chords that are usually barred on guitar? If it uses some different tuning, do you really want to spend time learning a new fretboard layout ( it can probably be tuned in any way you wish ). Also I suppose it depends a lot on if you play it with it held up against your chest with a guitar strap or play it while it is placed upon a table surface.

For an all-in-one lightweight portable keyboard music-making station, it’s hard to beat the OP-1. My buddy has one and uses it to make beats on the go. I borrowed it for a week and found it very nice for making music on the train. Unfortunately they are very pricey, otherwise I would get one for myself!

Besides the price, my main complaint is that the limited octaves and lack of dedicated octave up/down buttons makes it not the greatest keyboard for playing live. Also some people might not like the lack of velocity sensitivity, though personally I don’t mind.

I was looking at those too.

They look cool but the price also made me look elsewhere.

They should put a tracker into it.

I hear you must record ‘live’ and that there is no sequencer.

If you don’t wanna play live, why ask for an instrument?
Just get an app like Sunvox (assuming you already carry smartphone everywhere)

I do need an instrument to play live silently but I’m also making an observation about the OP-1.

You must record like 4-track, there is no sequencer. Anyway the keys are too small for real live use ( other than drumming and simple tings ) and the price is not reasonable.

Why did you name your studio after airstrikes?

Oh it was a famous/shocking quote from a weatherman from when we started it.

Anyway, in that case - I quite like this for playing when travellinghttps://www.korg.com/us/products/computergear/nanokey_studio/…how silent it is depends on how hard you hit the pads though. Works with a laptop on USB or iOS by bluetooth (I haven’t tried that though, I have an android)

Hey, thanks for the suggestions.

Thats a good tip about the aquarium safety foam under the drumpads.

Unfortunately, strumming any kind of strings or using an amp is definitely not going to be o.k where im living.

I thought about those cheesey fake guitars for a while but they are going to be too loud even just plucking those fake-ass strings, and they are not that portable to travel with.

yeah you can see the fake guitar stuff here, I think it will still be too loud ( if it was just pressing the buttons on the fretboard without plucking the strings it would probably be o.k, but also they are not portable…here they are :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7isN_WUyuo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzALfPUYhs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADXrUZmggIY

Its time to share my article on midi guitars http://alijamieson.co.uk/2017/02/13/midi-guitars-ever-done/

Oh cool, that korg nanokey studio looks pretty decent for silent practise and small enough to travel with.

I cant say how playable it is until Ive checked one out in real life. To check how sensitive the pads are.

Sometimes pads like that wont register the lightest hits. It looks like it would be fun. Kaoss pad would be good for recording automation in renoise.

That synth axe looks like it would be interesting to play, with the option to use the six keys as well as the strings to trigger notes.

It would be an interesting way to write music in a tracker, with six tracks, each one representing the range of one string from guitar.