Simple Recording from VPC to send for Mastering

M

mhrossi

New member
Hi, and thank you for being here. I am trying to figure out what kind of recording software we need to get so my husband Bill can record on his new Kawai controller board. I'm not much of a techie and he's even less than I am.

He got the controller board because of its close-to-grand-piano-keyboard ... Bill's a 'vintage' acoustic player and has an acoustic piano but recording on that is just out of our realm b/c it's too complicated for our life right now.

Bill used to record on his old Yamaha keyboard just to have the feedback, but now we want to get the very best quality we can so we can produce an album. It took 2 minutes of searching for software this morning to see it's not quite as simple as we'd hoped -- hahahaha :cursing:. Can somebody please help make it as simple as possible so I can understand it?? Thank you!
 
Unfortunately, the answers are not as simple as you are going to like.

Is your husband trying to record the AUDIO (sound) out of the keyboard or the MIDI (digital data) out of the keyboard?

An actual model of the Kawai would let us look up its tech specs.

He is going to need a DAW (recording software) - there is a learning curve with any DAW. Some are simpler than others. If he is just going to record his piano part (audio form computer), a single track recording, then a simple app like Audacity may work for him. If he needs to use a VSTi (virtual instrument), then other software will be needed.
 
A way in!

mjbphotos said:
Unfortunately, the answers are not as simple as you are going to like.

Is your husband trying to record the AUDIO (sound) out of the keyboard or the MIDI (digital data) out of the keyboard?

An actual model of the Kawai would let us look up its tech specs.

He is going to need a DAW (recording software) - there is a learning curve with any DAW. Some are simpler than others. If he is just going to record his piano part (audio form computer), a single track recording, then a simple app like Audacity may work for him. If he needs to use a VSTi (virtual instrument), then other software will be needed.
Click to expand...

Thank you! He wants to record the sound with his Kawai VPC1. I remember reading about Audacity a few years back when we started thinking about recording and will go back now and check it out. He wants to start as simply as possible and work his way into it -- it looks like you have given us a great entry point. If you have any more thoughts after viewing his specs we'd be all ears. We so appreciate your kindness!
 
Your VPC doesn't produce sounds so a bit of software is required. Here's a video of the VPC1 and you'll notice a nice software program at 2:47 in the video. There are thousands of software packages out there so I'm just going to point to this one because it's featured in the review's video.

Link to software : Ravenscroft 275

 
Looks like it has MIDI with USB connectivity so any DAW like GarageBand will have a selection keyboard virtual instruments to apply. Audacity would not be my choice. [MENTION=178786]rob aylestone[/MENTION] should have some input on this?
 
I expect that the VPC comes with a range of sounds that would need to be installed on the computer, and I expect these would be available as virtual instruments.

so . . . VPC ~ USB cable to PC.
Get a DAW such as Reaper,
Create a track and insert the VPC VST on the track
Set the track to record midi from the USB device
Then play
 
Modartt - Pianoteq 7

Go There ^ and download their trial version. It has limitations but produces very good piano sounds and the MIDI "engine" is about as easy to learn as it gets. Butty but! As others have said, this is not a simple process and there are 'non-intuitive' factors that will cause the swear box to gain weight.

Can I ask, how is he going to HEAR the sounds from the laptop?

Dave.
 
In this case, as he’s happy with the keyboard sound if he wants to simply use its internal sound and edit the wrong notes out then record the midi, edit it and send it back to the keyboard with virtually any of the usual daws. The next stage would be to add extra sounds and eventually maybe mics but then we have more complex choices and more complex interconnections, and of course speakers and possibly audio cables too. Using the usb connection makes the daw easy. Much depends on how he likes to work. Music with dots on a stave would point one way, or if that’s not useful, other ways. Me personally would jump straight to Cubase elements to get going but reaper would work too, just differently.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top