basic questions seek basic answers

Eddie N

Eddie N

10 Inch Member
ok...finally i think im catching on a lil bit... ive surfed the site... used the search ... and slowly but surely my home recording iq is rising... ive already posted questions on the BBS , and i must admit that the answers that i received were very thorough ... in fact... they were too thorough .. although i did learn something that will score me an extra 1000 bucks during double jeopardy , it was a lil bit too technical for me ... so once again .. i asked you gurus for help... and i ask that you please refrain from getting too technical and using words that are more than 3 sylables if you can possibly help it.. :o)

ok... ive decided to purchase the yamaha djx keyboard... it has line out/in ...midi in/out .... its going to be plugged into the joystick port of my soundcard.... i have a 300 mmx computer with 60 mb's of ram and a 4 gig hard drive with about 3 gigs of free space.... now...with that in mind...hope fully my questions can be answered....

1 ) the soundcard that i have is what came with my computer ... now...its my understanding that the way midi works is , when you depress a key , it " triggers " your soundcard to make a certain note ... and if you have a cheap soundcard , its going to make a note that sounds like the old atari did...does that mean that if i dont purchase an expensive soundcard the sound that comes out of my keyboard speakers isnt going to be the same exact sound that is recorded into my sequencer ? im going to be using alot of drums and bass... and alot of the other effects that the keyboard has and i want it to sound real.. not like frogger..( although that was a great game ).if this is going to be a problem should i bypass midi all together and go digital ? and if so...what hardware do i need ?

2 ) this one relates to the first.... i want to record vocals and mix it down with my midi.... ... will the basic windows 98 sound recorder do the job well ? i know about the 60 second limitation.... will recording in sections be that much of a problem ? the keyboard has a mic jack .. is there any way i can use that ? and at some point i am going to want to do it right ... so.. if it isnt gonna split my wallet open , should i just do it right from the start and spend the money on good mics and the hardware that ill need ?

3 ) can a midi sequencer work with any other sound files besides midi ? can i mix with wav too ? and if i cant... what s/w do you recomend to mix about 12 tracks and then export it in wav format to burn onto a cd... ? i have the cakewalk demo ... but i think purchasing the full version for 150 bucks might be a lil overkill for what im doing.... but...i plan on eventually knowing what im doing ... so ... should i lay out the cash ?

p.s. dragon...i used the search...and although i found most of the information useful , alot of the answers to the questions that pertained to me were way too technical for this newbie ... and im sure that when i catch on a lil bit more , the search will be a far more powerful tool... i dont mean to be a pest .... but i want to be sure i know what im getting into before i run and plunk out all this money...

PLEASE EVERYONE OFFER YOUR OPINIONS
 
Hi Eddie

I'm no expert, but your computer records the midi information, not the actual sounds. The information it records is the notes, how long you play them for, how fast you play them, etc.

You select the sounds, and the sequence you have recorded then plays that sound, so you can change the sound it plays at will. (Sort of like running a play in Football - the play is the midi information, the sounds are the players, so you can have Joe Montana to Jerry Rice in the end zone, or Brett Favre to Antonio Freeman in the end zone, or your local high school Qback to his wide receiver in the end zone, but the play is the same.) Using the same midi information, you can change that cool gut-wrenching synth line to a cheesy accordion line to a so-so horn line just by changing the sound you select. :-)

So the quality of the sounds depends on the sound source you use - you're right that your typical soundcard isn't going to give you the same quality as a mega-synth.

I am a 'newbie' at this too, but I think the following is true:
To record the vocals to the Hard Drive of your computer you need a microphone and an Analog to Digital converter. Computers record digital information only; your voice (and live anything [guitars, drums, basses, voices etc] are analog), so they don't make any sense to a computer.

Digital information is a binary code (which is a fancy way of saying a whole bunch of numbers), and computers can only record them, not the actual sounds. Then to get the sounds back out, you need to run the digital info through a Digital to Analog converter.

Re your other post, again I'm not an expert, but one way to find your soundcard is:

1) Click on the 'Start' button in the bottom left-hand corner of your main screen;
2) Move the mouse up to 'Settings'
3) Look at the menu that appears to the right;
4) Move the mouse to 'Control Panel'
5) Click on any choices that look promising (SoundBlaster and Yamaha are very common)

Take your best guess :-)

I know that this doesn't answer all your questions, but hopefully it's a start.

Good luck,

foo
 
First, an aside to foo man...

I officially dub you "Newbie No More"!! That was a great explanation!!! Heck dude, you ever want to write some stuff here, drop me a line!

OK, now back to the 3 questions (the part that foo hasn't taken care of), and Eddie N, you deserve some good answers because you've been using your noodle here...and sorry you got snagged by drstawl there on recording vocals with MIDI...he's a good guy and meant well but misunderstood you totally!

1. Don't worry, you're all set with MIDI and that keyboard. The sequencer, as the amazing mr. foo has noted with his incomprehensible football analogy (don't get me wrong, it was a good analogy I'm sure, but I don't know anything about football. In fact, now I recall that this Favre guy was at Internet World and I didn't hang around for his autograph because I never heard of him) only records notes, durations, and velocity. You get to pick what output and input device you use. So once you record your keyboard performance into the sequencer, you can play it back on the soundcard, and if you don't like the sound you get from that, you can play it back on the keyboard! Think of the soundcard as a MIDI interface and a convenient MIDI playback device, but it's not your only option once you have all the cables in place.

2. The Windows sound recorder is a piece of junk. Its only really useful features are that it's free and built in. The 60-second limitation is not the problem, it's that it doesn't do anything but record single tracks and play them back. No MIDI, no mixing, no nothing. But it will let you hear exactly what your sound card is capable of doing (assuming you follow all the instructions on the infamous page https://homerecording.com/one_minute_digital.html that is).

I've never heard of a mic jack on a keyboard, but I suspect it's for putting vocals through the keyboard speakers (shudder). Useless for any recording purposes, though.

I don't know how big your wallet is, but you should be able to afford at least one good vocal mic, even a slightly used Shure SM58...of course the problem is that once you add a good mic you'll need a preamp to get it into your sound card, but you might be able to get away with using an impedance-matching transformer into your sound card's mic jack and a mono 1/4" jack to 1/8" plug adapter cable (not an all-metal adapter, but a cable...you'll see why when you go to hook it up).

3. Go to the digital page at https://homerecording.com/digital.html and read about Power Tracks Pro. It does exactly what you want, MIDI and WAV files, and costs about $30.

I hope that was what you were looking for, guy. I did say "impedance" but that's still only 3 syllabibbles... :)
 
dear saviors...


yeeeeesssssss ... i think i get it... thanks foo !!! that football analogy really cleared things up for me... and dragon... as far as my quest to find out what sound card i had , there was no middle tab... hehe.. there were 4 tabs .. so i tinkered around and found " ES1869 Plug and Play Audio Drive " .. does that make sense to you ? but anyway...i understand what you mean by being able to play the midi sequence back through the keyboard... but .. when i export it in wave format ( or just record the midi as a wave ) and burn it onto a cd , is it gonna sound how it did when played through the keyboard ? or will it emulate pong ? correct me if im wrong... but what it sounds like in wave format is the final product.. a better sound card will only improve the quality of the sound not change the sound entirely... or maybe im just thinking waaayyy too much .. and i should just buy the keyboard , plug it in , fool around for a while and see what happens... im getting closer... but i still need HELP !! well...im off to use the search to find out what i can about the SM58 mic... thanks again...

eddie
 
You almost got it, Eddie. What you gotta do is, as you said, play around with it. But the trick is, when you play it through your keyboard, simply run the keyboard audio outs back into your sound card's audio line ins and record that audio as a WAV file or track. Then it will always sound just like your keyboard.

Easy in retrospect, I 'spect :)
 
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