Subject:Trying to Use Keyboard to Record MIDI and Audio

Posted by: the levitationist

Date:7/28/2014 10:22:10 AM

Hello, I recently decided to incorporate my keyboard (Yamaha PSR-E233) into my music making for increased flexibility however I've not been having any luck getting audio or MIDI. As far as MIDI recording goes every time I try to record something all I get is an empty file, no data at all. I'm doing everything right that I know of, the MIDI out and in are plugged into the correct ports and the USB is being recognized, the driver software is properly installed, in Acid Music Studio 9 I have Real-Time MIDI enabled and I create a MIDI track to record on, I click "arm for record" but when I click record and start playing no data is recorded, or at least it doesn't look like it is, because every time I try to record I get a blank file, shouldn't it look like every other loop with the sound data being displayed on the representation of the file in ACID?

And for sound recording my question is how exactly should I go about that? What types of cords, etc.

Some other stuff that may be helpful:
The computer: Toshiba Satellite C675D
Running Windows 7 Home Premium
The processor: AMD E-300 APU with Radeon Graphics
The memory (ram): 4GB
The operating system: 64-bit

Thanks and sorry for getting so detailed, but maybe it'll help.

Subject:RE: Trying to Use Keyboard to Record MIDI and Audio

Reply by: mike_in_ky

Date:7/28/2014 10:30:41 AM

Before you arm the track, are you selecting the appropriate input device for that rack? On the track header, there's a little green spring-like icon that allows you to select the input device for that track. As an alternative to recording midi, your keyboard may (or may not) have either a USB or headphone output, plug a patch cable from the headphone jack to a microphone input on your computer's sound card.

Subject:RE: Trying to Use Keyboard to Record MIDI and Audio

Reply by: the levitationist

Date:7/28/2014 12:44:03 PM

I looked around but don't see a spring-like icon, there may not be one for MIDI. For recording audio my keyboard has an output jack but it's bigger in size than the microphone jack on my laptop, are there patch cables with different sized connector on each end? Or some type of converter?

Subject:RE: Trying to Use Keyboard to Record MIDI and Audio

Reply by: pwppch

Date:7/29/2014 3:26:42 PM

To use this keyboard to record MIDI you will need a MIDI interface for your PC. You then connect the keyboard MIDI out to the MIDI interface in to record MIDI, and the reverse to play MIDI. Note that doing it this way - using the keyboard as both the input and the sound generator will mean you cannot render your final mix unless you set up an input bus for the audio from your keyboard and use the real-time render feature of ACID.

The preferred workflow is to use soft-synths in ACID, and use your keyboard as a peformance capture of MIDI. This gives the flexability of using many different sound generators and the ease of changing or even layering different voices against a recorded MIDI tracks.

You also record MIDI to a MIDI track, make sure you enable the correct MIDI input and output ports in ACID so that ACID knows to input and output MIDI to from and to your key board,

To record audio, you will need a 1/4" to 1/8" stereo cable. This appears to be a line level output, so make sure you connect it to the appropriate input on your computer, otherwise you will get distortion.


Peter