I'm trying to record the piano sounds from my Yamaha P155 digital piano in to GarageBand as an audio track. I've hooked up a audio cable from the P155 to my Macbook but really don't know how to go any further in making the recording. What project do i need to launch or what settings do i need to ajust to make the recording.
So I'm guessing you plugged the headphone/speaker output of the keyboard into the mic input on your MacBook? Okay, that'll work. The next step is to launch a GarageBand new project - you can pretty much choose any project template since you'll end up deleting all the preexisting tracks once you start recording, so go ahead and choose the "Piano" template. Once the project opens up, go ahead and select the piano track and hit command + delete to delete the piano track. Now hit the plus sign in the bottom left corner of the window and select "Real Instrument" from the three options. Hopefully you will be able to hit the record button at this point and have your keyboard record perfectly, but if not here's what you can try:
Go into the GarageBand prefs and make sure your audio input device is set to "system setting".
Go into your system prefs and go into the sound category. Look at the list of input devices and choose the one that looks something like "Line-in".
With system prefs still open, play some notes on your keyboard and see if you get some good audio levels by looking at the meter below the input selection box. Make sure your levels aren't going all the way to the top of the meter. If the levels are maxing out, reduce the gain by turning down the volume on your keyboard or by turning down the input volume slider in system prefs.
Hopefully you'll be able to get off the ground fairly easily with recording in GarageBand. Good luck!
So I'm guessing you plugged the headphone/speaker output of the keyboard into the mic input on your MacBook? Okay, that'll work. The next step is to launch a GarageBand new project - you can pretty much choose any project template since you'll end up deleting all the preexisting tracks once you start recording, so go ahead and choose the "Piano" template. Once the project opens up, go ahead and select the piano track and hit command + delete to delete the piano track. Now hit the plus sign in the bottom left corner of the window and select "Real Instrument" from the three options. Hopefully you will be able to hit the record button at this point and have your keyboard record perfectly, but if not here's what you can try:
Go into the GarageBand prefs and make sure your audio input device is set to "system setting".
Go into your system prefs and go into the sound category. Look at the list of input devices and choose the one that looks something like "Line-in".
With system prefs still open, play some notes on your keyboard and see if you get some good audio levels by looking at the meter below the input selection box. Make sure your levels aren't going all the way to the top of the meter. If the levels are maxing out, reduce the gain by turning down the volume on your keyboard or by turning down the input volume slider in system prefs.
Hopefully you'll be able to get off the ground fairly easily with recording in GarageBand. Good luck!
FYI.......Guitar Center has just revived their free "Home Recording Workshop" series on Saturday mornings from 10am to 11am. I attended them last winter and they really did answer a lot of questions.
They're presented using a Mac and GarageBand so it would probably be very helpful to you to check them out.
