Within the next few months, I'll be purchasing a MIDI keyboard. I was wondering a few things.
 
1. What MIDI keyboard with no less than 61 keys would you recommend I get for recording music? (that costs $200-$300)
2. If the keyboard had its own range of instruments and stuff like that, would all of the keyboard's built in instruments still work if I set it up with MusicCreator, or would MusicCreator replace the sounds with its own sounds?
3. That's it actually...
 
Please respond with anything you can!
 
Thanks!

2)  Once you have recorded your MIDI tracks, you choose whether to play them back using soft-synths in MC or your hardware synth by outputting the Midi and recording the audio.
 
A piece of general advise, as you seem to be just starting out, hardware synths of half decent quality can be expensive.  Soft-synths, on the other hand, are very cheap by comparison.
 
Since the 1980's when hardware synths went digital there is basically no difference between a hardware synth and a soft-synth, other than the physical hardware.  Unless you're the keyboard player in a band and already have or need 4 or 5 synths to stack on stage I would recommend buying a good Midi controller and using soft -synths.

Arib510.... welcome.
 
Any midi keyboard will work with MC6.  So it's simply a matter of you finding one that you like and buying it.  A  $300 budget will limit you somewhat on the features you get like weighted keys and touch sensitivity. I have two 61 key keyboards and use one of them for getting the musical data (midi ) into the computer. The other is in a closet. Check in the local music stores because I have seen a number of inexpensive keyboards there....also local classified ads in the musical merchandise section as well as E-bay & Craigslist may offer some good deals on used gear.
 
Lets back up though for a minute. 
 
There's 2 ways you can use a keyboard.
 
1. You can record the audio from the keyboard directly into the audio input of the sound card. This allows you to capture the built in sounds of the keyboard.
 
2. Record the midi data and use it to trigger a softsynth with a patch or sample set that you like.
 
An important thing to realize and deal with before you dig too deep is the computer's sound card.  If you are using the midi route.... many of the newer keyboards allow you to use a built in USB port on the keyboard to output the midi data to a DAW program like MC.  But no matter how it gets in, if you plan to use the "inside the box" softsynths to play it back, you will very likely need an aftermarket sound card running ASIO drivers to get smooth playback and properly synced tracks.
 
Many folks use softsynths with samples because with the midi data, changing the piano from an upright to a Steinberg Baby Grand is as easy as a few clicks. If you went with audio, you need to record the entire track over. And..... while it may be possible to find a way to get the native sounds of the keyboard into the computer, trust me when I say, it's not easy to do. Many have asked that very question here and to my knowledge, none have done it successfully.
 
So... if you are currently using the computer's built in sound card, I would recommend that you seriously consider setting aside around $200 or so for a nice aftermarket sound card to handle the musical chores for MC6. Just about everyone here, who does this as a serious hobby or in some other professional way, uses an aftermarket sound card "interface" as opposed to the factory sound chip. The difference in performance is literally like day and night.
 
 

I bought a brand new Yamaha YPG-235 portable digital piano for around $250, and it has about 400 on-board sounds, as well as USB port to connect to your computer and use to either trigger sounds from soft-synths, or you could record its audio output (I bought a Radio Shack splitter for that, which takes the single 1/4" output from the keyboard, and splits that into two 1/4" mono jacks, which I then plug into a right and left input port on my audio interface).
 
The Yamaha keyboard is 76-notes, which as a piano player, I like better than a 61-note controller.
 
Please note that you would get many more features in a mid-line or more expensive midi controller, but if you don't mind clicking on things in Sonar with your mouse, something like this Yamaha keyboard works fine.
 
There are also pretty good basic midi controllers available, if budget is an issue.  I just bought an 88-note M-Audio midi controller from Guitar Center a few days ago, for $149, which I got them to knock down to $129.  No real midi controller features, except for volume, but it gives me a full piano keyboard set of keys to use, and I can carve it into 4 zones for triggering different sounds in Sonar.
 
Bob Bone