Recording with a yamaha s90 and midi

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rgraves

New member
Hi, I was wondering if someone could help.

I have a mini home recording studio, with a Yamaha s90 keyboard and using Cubase to record. I usually sequence a lot of my songs on "guitar pro 4" which is just a midi program. I have been recording directly from my computer midi sounds on the sound card for strings and drum sounds and it doesn't sound that great.

But the Yamaha s90 has great sounds in comparison and I would rather use the sounds from the keyboard somehow.

How does someone make that work. I assume it's possible to use the midi cable I have and run it from the computer to the keyboard and have it run as a slave and then output the keyboard to my board and record the sounds. But I tried that before and the output sound was not correct, all the fast notes were cut off and the type of instrument kept changing, it was a chaotic mess.

I probably just don't know how to set up the midi settings on the keyboard or the midi program...

Second question is, rather than messing around with that, or just in general, how does one get better midi sounds than what my Soundblaster produces, which isn't too bad, but far from great sounding like some people's midi recordings i've heard. Is there a patch or program that includes nicer sounds or something?

OK, any help would be appreciated!
 
you could go with a virtual instrument plug in using the keyboard as trigger.
does require software that will support DX/VST plug-ins.
 
Using the sounds in your S90 is easy.

First, hook up both the midi in of your computer interface to the midi out of the S90 and the midi out of your computer to the midi in of the keyboard.

Then --- and here's the secret --- you need to find and turn off the local control which will break the connection between the keyboard and the internal sound source. It's usually on the 'system' page, but Yamaha may call it 'global' or 'utility'. Once the keyboard is connected and the local control is off you should be able to use any sofware package capable of recording midi to sequence the S90 sounds.
 
OK, sweet, I got it working (pretty much like before), I had to use the utility function like you said.

OK, so now I've found my true problem. When I try to play a midi file from my computer with the s90 connected via USB, it really only plays 1 voice at a time. And it also always chooses some weird voice that has nothing to do with the voice I'm playing.

For example, if I want to play a 4 track midi with guitar, bass, drums and piano, if I try to play all of them at the same time it's chaos. (nothing plays right at all) If I solo the guitar, it will play it correctly, although it will choose the egyptian flute as the voice, then I have to change it manually and then it's fine. And if I try to use for example guitar and drums at the same time, the drum will play as a musical instrument with notes instead of beats (unless I solo it)

But what if I want to record a 4 voice violin, cello, double bass and flute at the same time?? I can't seem to manage to get it to play seperate voices...do people usually have to record one voice line at a time??

Thanks again!
 
It sounds to me like you've got your S90 in 'single voice', or worse, so-called 'omni' mode.

The mode you need to be in to get separation in your arrangements is whatever Yamaha is now calling 'multi mode' --- or maybe they're still calling it that...

You'll need to set up a multi patch that has different midi channels for different instruments. For example if you want to play the egyptian flute voice, you'll need to set that on midi channel one, then name and save the patch. Then, if you want a guitar sound you will need to set that to midi channel two and then save the patch.

Here's a good basic rundown of the process of midi sequencing, just in case you need more explanation.
 
rgraves said:
nobody has any help to offer on this?
Click to expand...
And please be patient. We don't get paid for this HR stuff --- everybody donates whatever time they can spare for the pleasure and the privledge of sharing whatever knowledge we've been lucky enough to accumulate over the years...
 
haha, ok, i'll be patient, actually I wasn't sure if it was understood that I didn't solve my problem, and I saw other posts had their questions answered several days ago and mine were not...hehe

Anyways, I actually whipped out the book and with the advice you helped me with I was able to find exactly what you said. You have to go in there and set each channel before you connect the USB connection, which I thought "omni" mode took care of all that.

But after designating every channel and instrument (even though it's already set in my sequencing program) it now works perfectly. I didn't realize it was so much work to use the sounds on the s90. But it sounds pretty awesome compared to using General Midi.

It's rather annoying that I have to create a unique "template" for any variation in instruments or number of tracks everytime though, I had hoped the USB connection somehow could communicate that. Are there other keyboards or such that are better suited for that? Like the Korg Triton or something like that?

Also, is there any reason to get an outboard sequencer such as the Yamaha QY100 or QY700 if someone already has a computer sequencer?

Anyway, main problem solved, thanks !
 
There is a lil' ol' thing in the midi spec called a program change command. There are 127 of them available, and putting the appropriate one in front of every sequencer track will make the sound change to the desired one without further human intervention.

Since there are many more than 127 sounds in your S90, you will run into a need for the bank select command --- this is usually expressed as a combination of CC 6 and CC 38, but your sequencer manual will explain how to easily translate those into regular english without going thru too much fuss. And once you've done it a few times it will become second nature.
 
I don't know if I can help, but I also have a Yamaha (S03, not as nice as the 90.) Being new to this stuff, I've kept it pretty simple. The SO3 has 3 "Modes" - and as noted previously by SSScientist - you need to turn your local off. I just press the Midi button and go to the second page on the readout screen - and switch to "off." Then, I change the Mode to "Multi." Otherwise, you will not hear all your instruments if you are in just "Voice." In my manual I finally found it since I was having the same problem. Also, I use the Yamaha CBX driver - as both input and output - which is available for download on Yamaha website. Since I am running Band in a Box, it gives me the option to choose my Synthesizer/Sound Card - I use Yamaha XG generic - so I can get all the XG instruments. One more thing...since my Yamaha has a "To Host" output/input, I am using a 8pin mini din to 9 pin serial cable (which was shown in the Yamaha manual) - for my connection to the computer. I have had no problems at all with this and I am able to easily select/change and hear (via headphone off the Yamaha) everything and I don't have to pre-program the Yamaha. As I said, I'm pretty new to this, but maybe this can help you. :)
 
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