DAW capability question in recording midi from an arranger keyboard.

S

Slegnav

New member
all, i have a casio wk7600 keyboard. it has an accompaniment option that adds bass etc., to your playing. I can record and then save the song to a midi file via sd card and import into a DAW and it breaks it into the logical different tracks which i get, but can i record into a DAW realtime and still get the separate tracks like i can when saving it to a midi 0 file (which is only option). if i plug the usb cable from the keyboard into the computer it records everything into one track. i have researched and cannot seem to get the answer to breaking this into separate tracks while real time recording. I use gargeband, cubase and reaper on occasion and cannot find the answer. any help on this would be appreciated as i cannot figure out if this is even an option?

thanks...
 
A quick look at the kbd shows it can split the keyboard so you might be able to have bass on the left channel and main melody on the right (coming from the line out jacks and into an Audio Interface) but that is a selective as I think you can get.

However, there are those here FAR more MIDI cute than I and I think they will say you can assign a MIDI instrument to its own track in Cubase?

Dave.
 
When you add a MIDI track to a project, many (most?) DAWs automatically default the track to listen for MIDI data on all available MIDI channels and on all available MIDI devices.

What you need to do is add a separate MIDI track for each MIDI channel that you want to record, then set each track's source to the specific MIDI channel on the specific MIDI device that you want that track to record.

Some DAWs may let you set those things when you're adding a certain number of MIDI tracks to the project.

Also, even if you record all 16 MIDI channels to a single MIDI track, the DAW should preserve the channel numbers inside the MIDI events, so it's actually okay to record all 16 MIDI channels of a given MIDI device in a single MIDI track-- this is the equivalent of a Format 0 Standard MIDI File, in which the data for all of the MIDI channels are contained within a single "MTrk" chunk.

But it sure is a lot easier to work on each individual MIDI channel when it's recorded to a MIDI track of its own.

Note that your DAW may have a function that lets you take a MIDI track containing multiple MIDI channels and split it out into separate tracks, one channel per track-- e.g., I know that Cubase has a function like that.

EDIT: Also, note that you might possibly need to change some function settings on your keyboard to specify which types of MIDI data you want it to transmit. I'm not referring to specific types of MIDI events-- although some keyboards may have function settings for controlling that. Rather, what I really mean is that you might need to tell the keyboard which MIDI channels and/or "parts" you want it to transmit.

For example, my Yamahas have separate settings for "Keyboard Out," "Style Out," and "Song Out," with the default being to transmit the keyboard parts but not the style parts or the song parts-- so if I want to record the auto-accompaniment then I need to be sure that "Style Out" is turned on.

You should consult your keyboard's manual to see what functions it has for controlling which parts to transmit, and set them appropriately.
 
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I frequently get work arranging piano pieces into band playable stuff and in cubase I simply duplicate the two handed piano part and then nibble it away track by track. In the piano roll editor it's easy to select the right hand and delete it just making sure you don't delete important bits in the crossover but it's easy to see that. With the multi keyboards what I've often found is that while some do send the splits on different midi channels some, like a Roland I used to use, and a korg just didn't like receiving it back and adding the preset features. The Korg has little arpegiator tricks linked to tempo and it didn't pick up the tempo in the midi track.
 
Okay, I just had a look at the User's Guide for the WK-7600, and there is an "Accompaniment MIDI Out" function (see page E-133), so I assume you'll need to turn that on if you want to record the auto accompaniment.

It looks like you can also turn each of the keyboard's 32 parts on or off with a "Part On/Off" function (see page E-43), so you might also need to turn on the specific parts you want to record.

The 32 parts are described on page E-36; they're divided into parts A01 through A16 for the keyboard, song sequencer system track, metronome, and auto accompaniment, and parts B01 through B16 for the 16 channels of the song sequencer, MIDI file playback, or received MIDI data. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the keyboard can transmit all 32 parts using two MIDI ports (as some keyboards can do); I think it's still limited to transmitting and receiving 16 channels on one MIDI In port and one MIDI Out port.

Also, you might need to look at the other settings for each part, such as volume and pan (see page E-43).

The pages which look like they might possibly be relevant are E-36, E-43, E-133, E-143, E-145, and E-161.

As far as the DAW, what you might want to do is set up a project with 16 MIDI tracks, and assign each one to a specific MIDI channel of the WK-7600 (i.e., track 1 = channel 1, etc.), and then save the project as a template before you actually record anything, so you can start with the template whenever you want to record the keyboard rather than having to set up all the tracks each time. Don't worry about any tracks that won't be needed for a specific project, because you can always delete any tracks that you end up not recording to.

By the way, the Cubase function that I mentioned, for separating each MIDI channel to its own track, is called "Dissolve Part." You shouldn't need to worry about that if you create and save a template for yourself, but you might want to use it after importing a MIDI file into Cubase.

One other issue you might run into has to do with capturing all the settings for the various channels. Normally a keyboard will transmit settings as they're changed-- e.g., if you select a particular tone then the keyboard will transmit the Bank Select and Program Change values which correspond to that tone. If you set up the keyboard's tones and other parameters before you start to record in the DAW, those settings won't get captured because they've already been transmitted.

Some keyboards have a function that will send the data for all of the settings at once, sort of like a "bulk dump," so you can record them. On my Yamahas this function is called "Initial Send," but I didn't check to see if the WK-7600 has a similar function.

If not, one thing you could try is to get everything set up on the keyboard and then save the settings to a Registration Memory. When you're ready to start recording in your DAW, you can start recording, then recall the Registration, and hopefully the keyboard will transmit the MIDI data for all of the saved settings at that time so you can capture them. Otherwise you might end up with a lot of Note On/Off events but no Bank Select, Program Change, and other Control Change events (i.e., Reverb Depth, Chorus Depth, Channel Volume, Pan, etc.), such that when you play back the recorded data from the DAW to the keyboard it sounds like everything was recorded using the GM1 Grand Piano tone!

The worst case scenario would be that you need to manually insert Bank Select, Program Change, and other Control Change events at the beginning of each track/channel in the DAW.
 
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