Can you really get a Mac mini for free? The short answer is: Of course not! Here’s the long answer.
- Free Mini Machine Embroidery Designs
- Mac Mini Support
- Free Mini Mandala Crochet Patterns
- Apple Mac Mini Support
You’ve seen the ads, possibly even on this site: Get a Palm, a gift card, an iPod, an iBook, or an Apple Mac mini for free. The list of these “free” items is endless. Maybe you’ve even clicked on one of the ad links and decided it was just a scam to get your email address.
This is the kind of ad that you may see three or four times and start to become intrigued. What if they really are giving away Mac minis? A mini would make a fine replacement for my battle-weary old beige G3 desktop.
I set out to determine just how too-good-to-be-true this offer was.
This article chronicles my one and only experience with these “gift” offers. It’s intended to help you decide if offers like these are for you.
Update 7 Feb 2018 (since this post seems to have got some attention recently for some reason): Numbers is now free in the Mac App Store and has been for some time. If Preview isn't doing the job or you do need to edit the spreadsheet, give it a try. 13.3” Retina display1. Up to 16GB unified memory.
If you find it tedious just reading this account, you probably shouldn’t participate in these gift promotions. They require your time, patience, attention, determination, and, yes, your money.
This Mac mini is my first venture into owning a computer since it's the first time I have the money to buy an actual computer, even if it is 2020 and the mini is the 2012 model. After lots of research and installing a hybrid drive, now I think im cool LOL, I wanted to make sure I was staying on top of keeping the storage and everything running.
Although I imagine my experience with this promotion was fairly typical, your experience is likely to differ from mine and could be much worse. I do not endorse these gift incentive programs in any way. If you choose to participate in them, the risk is entirely your own.
If you have any reservations about providing your Social Security number to the operators of these gift promotions, stop right here. The items they offer are considered gifts by the IRS and are taxed as such. Read the terms of the agreement carefully.
The Choice
The first step was to set up a throwaway email address. I expected spam when I signed up, and my expectations bore fruit – but more on that later.
There is more than one company making the “free” Mac mini offer. Some promoters expected me to refer my friends in a pyramid-type scheme with the emphasis on getting valid email addresses.
Since I value my friendships, I chose one that just required me to accept offers from sponsors. They seemed to be honestly representing the offer and had a knowledgeable description of the item they were offering. One promoter had referred to the mini as an “Apple Desktop PC”. For me that is a misnomer, but with Apple poised to put Intel inside, the gap between Macs and PCs may be closing a bit more.
Armed with my new email address, I waded in.
Although I had the ulterior motive of getting a column out of this experience, at no time did I reveal that fact as attempted leverage to speed up the process. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to at times.
Signing Up
Signing up was quick. I am at least 18 and have a US address and zip code, so I qualified. I had to give my real name, phone number, and shipping address.
Interestingly, my postal junk mail has not increased, but I did get a slight increase in telemarketing calls initially. They returned to normal after a couple weeks of screening with my answering machine.
Prior to taking me to the requirements page, I was presented with some pages of optional offers. A few looked interesting, so I clicked on them for information, like many people would.
I finally got directed to the obligatory offers pages. As I suspected, the “free” Mac mini was to come with a price. I decided beforehand that I would be willing to lose $25 to find out for myself if the offer was for real.
The Offers
The deal was this: I only had to complete six offers from their lists of online merchants, and a new basic-model Mac mini would be mine to keep. Six is not a lot, and there were quite a few offers to choose from.
I would spend a few hours going through the sponsor sites deciding what offers I was willing to pay for. I was required to choose two from each of three pages of offers. There was absolutely nothing I even remotely wanted, but the carrot was dangling, and I was prepared to follow it.
Okay, Let’s Spend
I bought a trial day’s supply of vitamin pills, signed up for a DVD movie club, and filled out applications for two credit cards (0% APR the first year), which I got. These had to be used once or have a balance transferred to meet the requirements of the “free” Mac mini offer.
I paid for a DVD tutorial on how to use Photoshop on a PC, which I never took out of the package. Be careful with offers like this one – if you don’t call and cancel within a certain time and return the DVD, you will automatically be charged the full amount for it. That would have been $80 in this case. Additional shipments and charges will also occur automatically (autoship).
Lastly, I paid a dollar, or so I thought, for a trial membership in a discount buying club.
Of all the offers, the credit cards are the best way to go if you qualify for them. At least you can buy things you really want. You can always pay off the cards and cancel them as soon as the offers register as complete, but make certain that you cancel them the right way. Do a search on: “cancel a credit card” (in quotes) to find out how to keep your credit report unblemished.
It’s also not a bad idea to have one paid-off card with no annual fee that you don’t ever use locked away for emergencies. Do this only if you don’t plan to apply for a mortgage any time soon. Mortgage companies may consider this “free insurance policy” to be a potential debt. Go figure.
Pure Genius
I have pretty good sales resistance. I hang up on telemarketers, refuse long term maintenance contracts, and even tell the Watchtower people I have no time for them and close the door. Is that mean?
I had just spent $38 (including postage) for several items, real and conceptual, that I definitely didn’t want. I had also agreed to buy three more DVD movies in the next year at their regular price. In addition, I still had to use the credit cards.
So much for the $25 idea. These guys are marketing geniuses!
The Wait
After a week, only the Windows Photoshop training DVD had appeared on my completed offers page. It had been there since the first day. I was now getting an average of 156 spam emails a day at my throwaway address.
I activated the spam filter on the mail server and waited.
Three weeks had passed. The discount buying club and one credit card company had validated my purchases. After the first 10 days, the buying club, which had sent me nothing (not even an email), billed my card an additional $19.95. I found their site and emailed them to try to get the charge removed. They agreed to do so with no argument.
I was halfway done with the requirements. The hassles were minor so far.
After nearly a month, the second credit card company came through and confirmed my completed requirement. There were just two merchants left to check in.
The Last Two
The vitamins had arrived a few days after I ordered them, but the purchase had not been reported to the promoter. I revisited the company’s site and filled out a customer service form, asking them to please validate the purchase. A day later, a representative emailed saying they would take care of it right away.
The DVD movie club had not sent the DVDs or charged my card. I navigated to their site and used their form to ask about my order. A day later, I received a list of answers to possible problems which had no bearing on my question. That being the case, I was to reply with my original message quoted, which I did.
In two more days, the DVD club emailed me again. They wanted my shipping address in order to verify my membership. I had already provided this in their form but I re-emailed the information.
At this point, I was hoping my credit card number had gotten eaten by their site’s JavaScript. If it was this complicated just to find out if I had a membership, I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be to get an order completed.
A Woman’s Touch
My wife had been watching this whole process from a safe distance. Figuring that at least one of the two outstanding offers would not be verified, she got into the act. She selected an offer for 12 music CDs for the price of one plus inflated postage, and it validated instantly. It was now one month since I had first signed up for the free Mac mini, and there was only one more purchase left unconfirmed.
The completed offer from the vitamin company had still not registered. I decided to email them again and wait a few more business days. If the results were not positive, I would have to consider giving up on them and the DVD club and selecting another offer.
Two more days passed, and the movie club confirmed that my order had indeed evaporated into cyberspace. I didn’t reorder from them.
The Carrot Was Starting to Outpace Me
Here’s how the operators of these gift promotions make a profit: Your guaranteed valid email address is worth money. Spammers will happily pay for it.
These promoters also have revenue coming in from both optional and required sponsors, whom they charge a fee to be listed in their promotions. They also make money from the sponsors when you click on a link, whether you complete a transaction or not – and still more if you do.
They are banking on at least some people deciding to cut their losses and bail out before completing all of the requirements for their “free” gift.
Many of the offers on my uncompleted page had changed since I signed on. It may have been coincidence, but I was suspicious that I was now being presented with only the most expensive, least desirable ones.
At this point I was really hoping that the vitamin folks would do the right thing and make it unnecessary to order something else. If I had to choose another offer, the least expensive options were mostly diet pills and herbal “enhancement” products with substantial hidden costs. I could also sign up for web access and pay for a month of service before canceling it unused.
I had already invested more money in this project than I wanted to.
Now the vitamin people emailed me to tell me my message to them was blank. If I still needed assistance, I should feel free to contact them again. I checked the plain text message in my sent mail, verified that it was not blank, and pasted it into a new email to them. Again I waited. At the very least, I could make them waste time answering my emails.
I should mention here that it is nearly impossible to get some of these sponsors on the phone. They already have your money. They will put you on hold. They may take your number. They won’t call you back.
My third and fourth emails to the pill company had gotten through intact. Each time they assured me that my purchase would be reported. Their fourth response to my request was identical to their first, even though it came from a different representative. They had a form email to deal with these requests.
It was clear at this point, that they had no intention of validating this purchase. My next email gave them fair warning that I would report them to their state’s Attorney General’s office. When I didn’t hear from them again, I filed the report. There would undoubtedly be nothing gained from doing this, but it made me feel better.
Before choosing another offer, I emailed the gift promotions company, explained the situation and asked if they could confirm the offer from a receipt. This didn’t seem likely. It’s not in their best interest to be helpful.
I was pleasantly surprised when they emailed back a day later with a fax number. I faxed the invoice from the pill shipment to the number they provided, and a day later my gift voucher was available on their site.
I printed it, filled it out, and mailed it on the same day.
It was now just a five days short of two months since I had signed up and completed the requirements for my gift.
A Good Sign
A week after mailing the gift voucher, I returned to the promoter’s site, logged in, and found the following message:
Current Status: Fulfillment In Progress. Our records indicate that you have qualified for a Apple Mac MiniWe have received and processed your Gift Redemption Voucher, and a Shipping Request has been issued.
Your gift will be shipped to you via Federal Express or UPS, however it can take up to 30 days for the Fulfillment Center to assemble, package, and ship a gift after your voucher has been received.
We appreciate your patience. Your gift should arrive in the next few weeks.
Although they made it sound like they were building the mini from scratch, this made me optimistic about receiving it. Until now, I really hadn’t felt that way.
There was absolutely nothing to do now but wait, and considering that it was now early December and peak shipping season, the wait wasn’t long.
Just 11 days after mailing the voucher, I was in possession of a brand new Mac mini with OS X 10.4.2 installed. I removed it from the box and realized that I was holding the first Macintosh computer I’ve ever had that wasn’t preowned.
It wasn’t exactly free, but it can be a low-cost way to get a Mac mini.
Is It Worth What You Have to Spend?
Subtracting the cost of the failed DVD order and adding the music CDs, my total outlay, excluding credit card purchases, was $70. I used the credit cards to purchase items I would have bought anyway. If you want to, you can add $60 to the total for these items.
A Mac mini with the features this one has retails for $499 shipped from The Apple Store. If you can be happy with these features, it’s definitely worth the cost.
If you need to install a larger hard drive, more memory, Bluetooth, or an AirPort Extreme card, it may not be. Apple doesn’t consider the mini to be user-serviceable. You may pay almost as much to have it upgraded by an Apple certified center as you would for a faster mini that comes with exactly what you want.
One well known third-party parts supplier offers an installation service at a cost of $99 for any number of mini upgrades at one time if you purchase the parts on their site.
There are also instructions for opening the case on the Web, but unless you are extremely skilled with your hands, doing the upgrades yourself is not recommended. It’s quite easy to damage the case if you don’t really know what you are doing, and you will void the warranty.
Is It Worth the Time You Have to Spend?
It took 66 days from signing up to holding the gift in my hands. Actual time spent was about 5.5 hours. This included setting up an email address, signing up, examining and Googling sponsors, ordering, emailing, phoning, reviewing statements and receipts, weeding through spam, printing and mailing the voucher and discontinuing the email address when the gift finally arrived.
There is gleeful satisfaction in knowing that all of that spam is now bouncing back to the senders.
Unless you can easily earn about $80 an hour, it’s probably worth the actual time spent.
Is It Really Worth the Aggravation?
You really have to be the judge of this. Some people are less patient than others. I think I have documented the hassles I had fairly well. As mentioned, your experience will undoubtedly be different.
Some Final Notes
If you’ve made it this far, you may be considering signing up for one of these gift promotions. If you do, use caution when completing offers.
Use the current version of a well developed browser. I had good luck with Firefox 1.0.7 and 1.5 and Internet Explorer 5.2.3 on my Mac. Other browsers may choke or crash on the scripts of some of the less compliant sites.
Examine all of the pages of offers before you start buying. There might not be enough offers on a given page that you are willing to complete. That’s good to know before you get to the last page and discover that it consists of things that you are unwilling to buy or might not qualify for. In some cases it may be necessary to at least click on the required number of offers before you can progress to the next page.
An ordering page is not secure unless your browser tells you it is. This usually appears in the form of a small lock icon in your browser’s status bar or navigation bar or both. Don’t trust any security logos or icons that appear on the page itself. A popup security message from your browser can be easily spoofed by the site. Always check for the lock icon.
Even if a page is secure, it’s no indication that your information is safe with the sponsor you are ordering from.
If you aren’t absolutely certain about the integrity of a particular sponsor, by all means Google the company name and the home URL for pages that contain it (enter the URL in quotes). Finding no mention of the company at all is cause for suspicion.
Watch your credit card statement like a hawk online. Don’t wait for it to come in the mail. There is some raised potential for identity theft in these programs.
This should go without saying: Read all of the fine print. This can come in the form of popups, so don’t disable them in your browser. Some of the agreements I read included some very surprising punitive charges for canceling autoship programs, like the entire cost of the next shipment. Keep copies of all agreements as either saved web archives or printed copies.
Be aware that the gift promotion company will usually reserve the right to substitute an item of equal value or cash for your gift. If the promoter of your choice has done this in the past, people will have complained about it on the Web. Do a search.
If you don’t plan to do business with the sponsors again, once they have verified your purchases, return to their sites. Many of them will give you the option to delete your account, and you should do so. There’s no point in having your credit card information sitting there for no good reason.
If you’re really paranoid about this, make your first completed offer a credit card application. Once the card has arrived, use it for the remaining offers, pay it off, and cancel it.
Finally, These offers can have a gambling-like addictive effect. Some people have spent small fortunes trying to get things that they don’t really need because they were “free”. If you’re at all compulsive in this way, keep a restrained eye on yourself and your credit balance.
These promotions aren’t likely to disappear any time soon. Don’t sign up for more than one gift at a time. It’s difficult enough to keep track of a single promotion. There may also be a limit of one gift per household with some promoters.
I wish you luck!
Further Reading
- One Year with My ‘Free’ Mac mini, Hardy Menagh, Empowered, 2006.11.20. “For something the size of a fruitcake, the mini is a powerful little computer.”
Keywords: #freemacmini
searchword: freemacmini
I received an email from a blog reader who had recently bought a MIDI keyboard so they could start practicing a bit of piano at home.
My previous blog posts on MIDI keyboards had all said something along the lines of “plug in your MIDI device and open up you DAW software to play”. But what if you don’t want to purchase any expensive software for writing and producing whole musical tracks? What if you just want some free software for practicing piano or messing around?
So following that I set out to find the best FREE MIDI keyboard software out there on each of the most common platforms Windows, Mac/ Apple and Android so you can plug in your MIDI keyboard and start playing straight away. This article summarises what I found.
But first, some context:
How does MIDI Work?
First things first, I always find it useful to briefly explain how MIDI works. If you, like me, came from playing a traditional acoustic instrument such as a piano or guitar, the world of MIDI and digital music production may be a little confusing. If you already know how it works feel free to skip this section!
MIDI is a digital signal, basically a series of 1s and 0s that allows different electronic devices to communicate with one another (I know, it sounds very dystopian!). This code communicates all manner of things from the note pressed, to how hard it is pressed and when it is released.
This is different to traditional instruments that produce an audio signal you can hear either straight away for acoustic instruments or through an amplifier for electric ones.
With a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI device not producing an audio signal, it needs to be plugged into another device which can convert the code into something we can hear. In the modern era this is usually a laptop or computer.
Modern MIDI devices pretty much always plug in and communicate via a USB connection. But simply connecting the device isn’t enough. The computer will receive the code but to produce a sound it will need software of some sort.
That is where I hope this article will help.
Best Free Midi Keyboard Options – Windows
1) Piano Time for Windows 10
Piano time is a nice option if you simply want to plug in and play the piano.
It is an “app” but that doesn’t mean you need a tablet or phone to use it. Windows is changing to become more similar to Apple in the way they present software creating less of a disconnect between computers, tablets and phones. This means if you have Windows 10, you can now head to the Microsoft store and download apps to your computer.
There are paid apps in the windows store but as with the Apple and Android “stores” that you may be more familiar with on your phones and tablets, many of the apps are free to download and use.
Ease of Use
Piano time is really easy to plug in and get going. I plugged in my Novation Impulse MIDI keyboard and it instantly recognized it without me having to go into the settings.
Features
Piano time is meant to be simple and for mimicking the sound of a piano. For this reason, you can’t really adjust the sound. You won’t find different instrument sounds, reverb or delay for example. But this might be a good thing if all you want to do is play the piano.
You can record and save clips of what you are playing which is a nice feature, and this allows you to record one part, play it back and then play something else over the top. Handy if you are doing a bit of songwriting. However, be warned, on the free version these clips will only remain in place whilst the program is open, to save or export the tracks you record as MP3 files you will have to pay a small fee to upgrade.
It comes pre-loaded with a few very basic tracks for you to play along with, think Amazing Grace or Mary Had a Little Lamb. The keys will light up and show you how to play along and you can slow it down or speed it up to suit. Perhaps this is most suitable for the absolute beginner or for a child learning the piano. Also useful for anyone using this to learn the piano are a few basic scale exercises you can play along with.
Other features include a metronome that can be adjusted. I did find the clicking a bit annoying but it does the job.
As with most pieces of MIDI software, you can use your computer keyboard to play if you don’t own a MIDI keyboard. I would not recommend this as it is very hard to do, but Piano Time does have a feature called “key mapping” which will show the corresponding keyboard letters above the relevant keys to help you play.
Sound and Performance
I found the sound to be ok. A nice bit of sustain and reverb make it sound quite realistic. However, the lower notes can sound a bit quiet compared to the higher notes and chords don’t sound that great. This is annoying if you are trying to play notes with the left and right hand, as the right hand notes tend to drown out those of the left.
This can be frustrating as a quick ‘stacatto’ press of a key isn’t any different from when you hold it down. This makes notes merge together when you don’t want them to or not ring out for as long as you might have hoped.
For me, the app had virtually no latency (time between pressing a key and hearing the sound). This is partly due to the app, but will also be due to your computer. If you are trying to use it with a computer or laptop that doesn’t have much RAM or has a slow processor then this may not be the case. If you are experiencing MIDI delay check out this article.
Other people have noted that when adverts load it can cause the app to crash. This did happen to me once which was a pain. You can get rid of the ads by paying just a small fee so this might be worth doing if you are having this issue.
2) Piano 10 for Windows 10
Piano 10 is very similar in many ways to Piano Time. It is available for download from the Windows app store on any windows device.
Ease of Use
I plugged my keyboard in and it didn’t work straight away this time. The menus in the app are also not the easiest to find with a series of symbol buttons to press, so I had to do a bit of random clicking to find out how to do it.
A button saying “general MIDI” brings up a menu when clicked where you should be able to turn MIDI support on and then select your MIDI keyboard from the list.
So once you figure out what each button symbol means it isn’t too hard to use.
Features
Different to Piano Time, Piano 10 has a few different effects and amazingly 126 different sounds for you to chose from. Including reverb, sustain and echo but unfortunately only one of these can be turned on at once.
An auto-chords function is pretty cool and is a great way to help learn different chords and chord types as the keys of the chords light up whilst you play.
As with piano time you can record short clips of yourself playing. You can save these clips but only as .xscore files to re-open in Piano 10 another time.
A metronome is also included with adjustable bpm.
Sound and performance
When testing the default piano sound it was ok, but pressing the keys too lightly meant no sound was played. So if you are trying to practice playing softly you may find this frustrating.
However, when the sustain effect is turned on I thought it sounded much more realistic and it felt nice to play.
Although it is cool having 126 different sounds to choose from, be warned, most of them sound pretty terrible. Fun to mess around with but you would never want to use them in a performance.
Probably the most annoying thing about Piano 10 is the fact you can’t change the key size or get more keys to show on the screen. The whole keyboard will still play but you won’t see all the keys light up on screen.
Being a free app it also has a banner with ads at the top but these are fairly standard and don’t really interfere with the usability.
3) MidiEditor
If you want something a bit more advanced which will allow you to edit and export your MIDI tracks then MIDI Editor is free software that is a great introduction to some more advanced techniques.
Ease of Use
In terms of downloading and installing things are fairly simple. However, unlike the previous two options, this is a more traditional piece of software that you download from a website rather than the Windows App Store.
Once downloaded the settings are easy to find and here you can select your MIDI device and connect.
Free Mini Machine Embroidery Designs
You should then hear a basic piano sound.
So in terms of getting a sound, it is fairly simple. However, if you are not familiar with MIDI you may find the software slightly confusing due to the more advanced features it has….
Features
The screen shows what is known as a ‘piano roll’. This is something to get familiar with if you plan on using MIDI in production.
As you play on your MIDI keyboard and press record you will see lines appear on the screen. This is a visualization of the digital code for each note. You can see it shows which note was played, how long for and other parameters such as velocity (how hard you played that note).
This is what separates digital MIDI data from a traditional audio recording. It is stored as a series of numbers (note, note length, etc) and then a sound is ‘overlayed’ on top of that. So you could play the original notes with a piano sound but then change that to strings or a flute for example.
Features such as quantize, which automatically moves mistimed notes onto the correct beat are cool to mess around with.
Sound and performance
As a basic free introduction to MIDI editing software, MidiEditor does a pretty good job.
There are a couple of things that frustrated me though.
For example, when you record a track you can’t see the notes appearing on the screen, you have to wait till you have finished recording and then they will appear. This just felt weird compared to the MIDI input I’m used to in a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).
There are also no other built-in sounds to test apart from the piano and I couldn’t find a way to import my own sounds either. Perhaps I’m expecting too much from free software.
Best Free Midi Keyboard Software on Mac (and Apple devices)
1) Garageband
Garageband has to be my favorite of all the free music making software available. I’ve written entire songs on the bus using this software on my iPad and have been happier with the sound than some tracks I spent weeks on in the studio!
It comes pre-installed on most Apple products but if not it can be downloaded from the app store for free.
Ease of Use
Garageband is quite a bit more advanced than some of the simple piano apps already mentioned in this article.
It is the closest you are going to get to proper a DAW without having to pay. A DAW is a Digital Audio Workstation. It is where all song artists create songs by piecing together tracks. There are many different ones with different people having different preferences. But if you are new to the music recording world then Garageband is a great place to start.
For this reason, it has massive potential but it does make it a bit confusing for the beginner. For example, when I connected my keyboard, it didn’t work straight away. I had to navigate to preferences and select my device and I also had to change the output so I could hear the sound.
It is a similar process when connecting to an iPad, however, you will have to buy a USB to lightning adapter (such as this one).
All that said it is still very easy to get started in comparison to most DAWs which can be very overwhelming. There are plenty of great videos on Youtube to help you if you get lost.
Features
This is where Garageband excels over the other simpler apps. The possibilities are almost limitless.
You can choose from hundreds of pre-loaded MIDI sounds. There are pre-made drum loops to add in and play along to. Then when you want to add even more sounds or effects you can download free ‘plug-ins.
Because it is a DAW you can layer up multiple tracks, MIDI or Audio to create full songs and there are great built-in features such as EQ and compression so you can even try your hand at mixing!
Sound and Performance
The pre-loaded sounds do sound quite robotic and it is hard to compose a full song that will sound professional using just the MIDI samples. That does, of course, depend on your genre, for some electronic music you can do a pretty good job.
This may not bother you if you just want to practice the piano.
The performance is pretty good, I rarely ever experience any latency when playing. This is dependent on your laptop age and spec.
2) Pianu.com
This option technically applies to Windows too but I couldn’t find another free app on the Apple app store that wasn’t either terrible or tried to give me a virus.
So Pianu.com is actually a web-based MIDI keyboard and is a great option if you don’t want to mess around downloading software and just want to get playing right away.
Ease of Use
This software is so simple to use (at least it was for me anyway!) Just head to pianu.com/keyboard-page and there you will see a big yellow button that says “Detect My Keyboard”. Press this and you will see the following screen.
You are then ready to start playing
Features
Pianu is not very complex and won’t give you all the features of Garageband. But many people have written to me to say they don’t want something as complicated as that and just want to play some piano. For this it is perfect.
What Pianu is really meant for though is learning the piano. For this it has lots of built-in lessons, starting with the absolute basics and building you up from there. What I like most is you can play along with a lot of contemporary songs (Coldplay, Taylor Swift etc.) rather than the usual Ode to Joy or Amazing Grace which you get on most apps.
Sound and Performance
You would never want to use this piano for recordings or live performances, but it sounds fine for learning. The one annoying thing is the notes don’t fully ring out and eventually just stop suddenly. But this is a minor issue when you are just practicing.
For a web-based application I expected performance to be dodgy, but it really wasn’t. In fact I would say I noticed less latency than many other apps and my laptop fan was whirring away.
Best Free Midi Keyboard Software on Android
Yes, that’s right, these days you don’t even need a computer to use a MIDI device. You can now plug your MIDI keyboard directly into your phone or tablet and use that to create music.
Mac Mini Support
I bought this simple USB C to USB adapter for under $10 and it allows me to play my 49 key MIDI keyboard through my phone.
As with the other devices mentioned above, you will need to download some software (an app) to do this and there are plenty of great free options to choose from.
1) Perfect Piano
Ease of Use
You may already know how to connect your android device to a MIDI keyboard, but if you don’t it is very simple (you can find out in this step by step guide).
Once plugged in the Perfect Piano app should automatically detect that a MIDI keyboard is connected and it should work straight away without you having to mess around with any setup! A real bonus for those who just want to plug in and play.
Features
The app has a keyboard that is set as default to a piano sound. But additionally, you get the choice of many more from strings to synths and loads of additional free sounds to download.
There is a sustain button to create the effect of using a piano pedal and you can record your efforts either in MIDI format or in audio format.
The app has some nice additional features such as ‘learn to play’. Where you can play along as notes descend on the screen, very similar to guitar hero (if you remember that game) except you are actually learning a real instrument.
Sound and Performance
With my android phone (which is a few years old now) I had no noticeable lag which amazed me. I’ve experienced many issues with MIDI latency using computers and laptops over the years. I can’t guarantee you won’t have issues but if your phone is newer than mine I’m sure it will be fine!
The sounds are really quite impressive. The piano does have that programmed sound but no more so than most other MIDI pianos out there. The synths and strings are great fun to mess around too.
I like how you can adjust the number of keys on the screen. A feature often lacking from many mobile MIDI apps.
Concluding Remarks
Nowadays there are plenty of free MIDI apps and software programs to choose from. The key thing is to ask yourself, what do I need the software to do? If it is to simply practice piano or mess about then stick to something simple. But if you think you might want to create full tracks or use more advanced techniques there is probably something out there for you too.
Free Mini Mandala Crochet Patterns
Once you are ready to progress the best option is to move to a DAW of your choice. I personally use Ableton Live which is particularly good for MIDI. But there are loads of others to choose from. My suggestion would be to download a free trial, watch a few ‘how-to’ videos and see which one you find best.
Apple Mac Mini Support
The possibilities of music production using MIDI are pretty endless!