midi trouble

[UrbanSpice]

My keyboard seems to only want to play music when it feels like it. I thought my cables were bad and bought new ones. I installed everything and followed the directions like a good little girl, and then and hour later my keyboard suddenly stopped playing the music. And even five hours later it still will not play. Do I need a new keyboard? Do you think I might be doing something wrong? Any suggestions, tips, solutions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[rjt]

More info would help. What is the keyboard..... how are you listening to the music (via headphones, into a mixer, does it have built in speakers?) Making electronic music can be pretty complex (you route audio outs into a mixer, into the computer, into a DAW then back out, at the same time you are worried about midi in and out and syncing the audio) and everything has lots of "options" (insert, switches which can #$%** the whole thing up). So, when a problem arises, check one thing at a time. For example, if you are listening via a mixer and your sound dies..... does your keyboard make sounds with headphones? If it makes no sound when you play it..... does it make sound when the onboard demo tune is played (I was convinced I had done everything right, but could get no sound out of module.... until I played the demo tune and it blasted sound into the room.... made me go back to the drawing board and find the problem.)

So, more info and start with checking one thing at a time.

Take Care

 

[UrbanSpice]

Well the Keyboard is a CASIO WK-1500. I have it set up so the keyboard plays back the music from Finale or Cakewalk or whatever I feel like using. The keyboard itself works when I'm just playing on it but not when I'm trying to hear what I wrote from my computer. I checked the sound options in the control panel and the right drive (or whatever) is selected. I have two midi cables, one goes into the gameport, which I thought was broken and the other my USB port. The USB clicks to tell you that information is being sent to the keyboard and it always clicks, only my keyboard is making no sound. The volume is good, GM is selected, and the OUT is in IN and IN in OUT. And like I said before, everything was working fine for about an hour and then my keyboard just stopped playing. But this has been an ongoing problem, with both cables.

 

[Quasar]

Hi UrbanSpice,

It's hard to say, based on what you've said, but I don't think you want BOTH the game port and the USB hooks at the same time. This might be confusing your OS. If you're USB ready, just disconnect the other.

 

[rjt]

That's a good point. I would disconnect one set of cables and see what happens. If that doesn't fix it, the problem may be in the keyboard. Intermittent problems are the hardest to find.

Good luck.

 

[tedluk]

I wasn't able to find a manual for the WK1500 online. It's always helpful to make sure there aren't any internal settings that might effect the MIDI data flow.

When you're having problems like this the way to troubleshoot things is to isolate things and try to narrow down the problem. Do you have any other MIDI sound modules? If so, try using it to see if the tracks play back. Can you assign the MIDI tracks to a soft-synth? You didn't say what programs you were using, but most versions of Cakewalk have softsynths.

Double check that your MIDI tracks are assigned to the correct MIDI interface. Make sure your keyboard is receiving on the same MIDI channel that the software is sending on.

You said that it was working for a while and then stopped. Did you change ANYTHING? (Everyone always says that they didn't change anything, but lots of the time you find out later on that they did, in fact, alter something.) Are you saying that it was playing along and then suddenly stopped? That would indicate some kind of problem with the keyboard.

I hope these suggestions help. Let us know if you figure it out and what the problem is and how you fixed it.

Ted