A bewildered Hello!

[sion71]

Hi all,

Why bewildered? Put simply, I have no idea about what MIDI or electronic music (or at least creating/doing stuff with it!). I am a veritable novice with only Grade 3 piano in my limited arsenal. I started learning to play piano at 41 (two years ago) and I am pleased with progress. However, I think I am fairly typical in that I want to run before I can walk - but there are no shortcuts to learning an instrument.

What do I want to know? Essentially I bought a Yamaha P35 Digital Piano 18 months ago and I have to admit, I like playing it and it's only now that I wish it did more - principally being able to record things I have 'mastered' (or at least wobbled through all the way to the end!). 

I would like to know from the people here who know vastly more than I do, what are the simplest ways to record what I play from my piano. I bought a generic midi-usb cable from ebay (I know, that's probably a very BAD thing to do) and want somehow to see if by plugging it in to a laptop via the usb, I am able to record something from it. Is this possible?

Then, and only after I know what I am doing, maybe be able to play around with the source music with a little electronic jiggery pokery make a different sound. And am I am able to eventually play my piano with different voices via MIDI in (I have no idea what that does). That probably shows the extent of where my knowledge lies with what will probably be impossible aspirations with the equipment I possess. 

So, list of items:

Yamaha P35
Old laptop running Win7 starter
Audacity (my level of expense knows no bounds)

There in a nutshell is me. I hope I don't offend people by my sheer ignorance

Thanks in advance!

Sion.

[JohnG]

Hi Sion (Mr Bewildered),

No problem.
It may come as a shock to know that I wasn't born understanding MIDI.
Although many people have remarked that, similar to a stick of Blackpool rock, if you sliced through me you'd find I had zeroes and ones written right through.

Essentially MIDI is a set of codes sent from an electronic keyboard that say "Note On" and "Note Off", and other things which we won't bother with for now, can be sent too.
Those messages go through the MIDI interface into the computer and there you need a program, known either as a Sequencer or more recently a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), to record them, together with precise timings, into a file which might be called e.g. mysong.mid.

Included within each message is a number which represents which note you pressed, e.g. middle C is #60, and with most keyboards it will also include how hard you pressed the note known as "Note velocity" (this is a number between 1 (pppp) and 127 (ffff)).

So what you're missing is the program that will record your playing.
There are loads on the market, but you could do worse than trying a free one called Anvil Studio.
It has lots of help information.

Essentially you define the tempo, the beat e.g. 4/4, before you start, switch on the metronome (if you like), it helps, hit start and after a count in begin playing. When you're done you hit stop and ask the program to save the file (important ).

Thereafter, the file can be added to, altered, mistakes in notes or timing corrected so instead of sounding bad you can sound like Artur Rubenstein, or whoever your piano hero is.

Any help so far?
Kind regards,
John.

Oh! Welcome to MIDI Tutorials, and thank you for posting.
You'll see you've already earned some stars!

[zygor]

Hi Sion,
I noticed from the Yamaha P35 specs that there is no audio out, but you do have a headphone jack. My Casio synth is set up that way too, so my first AUDIO recordings were accomplished with a "Y" jack sending the stereo sound out of the headphone jack to my (Korg D-1600) recorder's channel inputs. Depending on your computer's audio card and software, you should be able to do something similar. Here's a beginner's pamphlet:

Google: "An Introduction to Recording Your Own CD ... - Roland"

(from Roland, with advertising of course) that lays out some basics of the recording process, software & hardware considerations and a glossary. And MIDI is an absolute gas once you've fixed your first fingering flub in a piano-roll view! John G is the "professor" here on that topic! Enjoy.
-Vinny S.

[JohnG]

Yup! Quite so, Vinny.

I'm so wrapped up in MIDI that I often forget the obvious audio recording.
But maybe Sion has tried that as he mentions Audacity?
Dunno, maybe he's struggling with that too.

Come back and talk to us Sion.
All that you mention in your post is possible once you have the piano technique.
You could be a big band bandleader in a little while, who knows!
Playing double bass, saxophone, trumpet, guitar, drums, all from the piano.

Kind regards,
JohnG.

Hee, hee. Professor? I don't think so!
Just love the three octave teeth in the Avatar.

[sion71]

Thanks guys, you have made what initially appears such a massive mountain of knowledge to climb seem a little less of an Everest! Thanks Vinny for your input (concerning inputs! - sorry could't resist) and how to get over the lack of audio out from my P35. In response to Professor JohnG, I used Audacity for a while in work as a web developer and only scratched the surface by trimming audio to a certain length and using the fade option on the endings. Other than that, my first foray into Audacity was using my laptop Mic to record my music - as you can imagine this was sooooo poor as to make it useless. At least I know how to use Audacity to remove any gaps that are too long or edit out sections of music that don't work. But I did download Anvil Studio last night, just need to try it out!

Naturally I want my ability as a musician to increase and then utilise the technological aspects to enhance it rather than the other way around

Thanks once again - I know I will be asking more questions as I uncover more areas of confusion!

Thanks,
Siôn.

[JohnG]

Hi Siôn,

Good to see we haven't scared you off ... yet!

Now you've got hold of Anvil, one of the easiest ways to begin, at least IMO, is to load a previously created MIDI file, there's loads on the Internet. Or drop me a line telling me something you'd like to look at and I'll email it to you. Then after loading it into Anvil try to understand the interface and what is displayed, and the various ways information can be displayed, e.g. notation, Piano Roll View (usually abbreviated to 'PRV') and the detailed view. Try to understand the playback and the record functions. When you've had a go at that come back and throw questions at the forum. We'll see what can be done to help.

If you haven't already started, try reading the 'MIDI basics' and then the 'General MIDI' tutorials here.
They maybe won't make a lot of sense initially, but don't let that concern you.
You'll learn a bit, and frequent revisits and re-reads will help consolidate the information.

Above all, if you're confused, don't be afraid to ask.

Kind regards,
JohnG.

Hey, the title professor has resonances with me.
My wife holds a doctorate in languages.
Her father was Emeritus Professor Herr Doctor, Dr., Dr., Dr., Karl Horst Schmidt.
One doctorate was his own, the other three are honorary for his contributions to Celtology.
He has a small entry in Wikipedia.
Sadly we lost him in October 2012, his wife 15 months earlier.
I'm no professor!

[sion71]

I am sure for the purposes of this here Midi Forum, an honorary professorship can be bestowed even if you will never self title it Seriously though, thanks for the information. I had a brief go last night and pretty much came to the conclusion that my tiny notebook isn't quite up to the job in its current form and would benefit from a memory upgrade. Hopefully that will speed the little thing up (or maybe just put in some more coal in the back!).

Siôn.