Midi Sampler Question Options

[pinemarten3]

So, I'm totally new with the whole MIDI thing. Been using mostly analogue keyboards etc. It's gotten to the point where I just can't take all this stuff to shows anymore. So I'm thinking about getting a sampler (AKAI S2000, EMU ESI2000 something like that).

Here's my question, can I, using MIDI, run two keyboards into one sampler (with only one MIDI input) and play different parts on them? Do I need some sort of MIDI mixer?

Basically what I'm trying to do is replace a main keyboard with piano/string type sounds and a little MOOG synth, which I play during different parts of the same song. The idea being that I don't want to switch out MIDI ins for two separate controllers duing the middle of a song.

As I said, I'm completely new to this, so please be gentle.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Synthetic]

beware... the EMU ESI2000 is not mac friendly.... you can't use mac CDROM to load samples to it... you can connect it via midi or scsi and use with some sound editors like recycle though. I sold mine because was too much of a pain to load and store my samples to zip.