Guitarist adding midi...advice welcome

Dani Pace

New member
I'm a guitar player who dabbles with keyboard and I would like advice on adding a midi keyboard into my (meager) recording system. I am familar with recording on pc but totaly new to midi so any advice will be helpful and appreciated. OK, here goes, I've got pc, soundcard, recording software and mixer....so far no problem, I want to add a midi keyboard, I have keyboard and midi connector cable. What do I do now? I'm not new to pc recording but I am new to anything midi so feel free to treat me like a newbie. I guess I need step by step guidance on getting this part of my recording experience up and running. I'm old and slow and still learning so thanks in advance for any help, tips or advice.
 
Just get a Gr-20 :) Much better. It has a lot of sounds on it and some them are quite usable and you can play any softsynths with your guitar. You will need to have a low latency in your computer though.
 
I guess I didn't get this part clear, I do not want to be able to combine effects fron the midi to the guitar. I just want to hook up the keyboard and be able to use it with my pc. At least that is all for now, later on when I become more familiar with it I will probably want to try combining effects. For now I just want to be sure that I'm hooking it up properly so i don't fry something. Once I get past that part I'm certain I'll have more detailed questions.
Sorry I'm just an old school guitar player who so far has kept things as simple as possible, I get bogged down with the tech stuff.
 
Hook a cable from the midi out on the keyboard to the midi in on your soundcard. Start your software sequencer of choice. Look under midi preferences and choose the appropriate midi in. Go to the track pane of your sequencer and choose track one. Make it's input source "midi". Make it's channel "omni". Now hit record on your software and strike a few notes on your keyboard. This performance should show up in your track pane after you've recorded. Double clicking this performance usually brings up a "piano roll" which is a screen resembling the dots and dashes you might see on an old player piano reel.
If you think of midi in these extact terms, you won't be confuesd for long. Midi is simply date that is recorded or played back just like the holes punched in that player piano roll.
In order to hear the playback of your new recording, you must route it to a sound device capable of understand or reading the midi information, and then converting it to sound. Your computer's soundcard probably has a small midi capacity to produce sounds for games. You can also attach a cable from the midi out on your computer, back to the midi in on your keyboard. Now when you play back your recording, the sound will be emitted from your keyboard outputs, or speakers if they are built in. That's the short version on PC midi.
 
Back
Top