About recording from digital piano to pc

[gyzzzmo]

Hi,
for some time im trying to record something from my yamaha clavinova (clp-950) to the pc. But as you probably already figured, i dont get decent sound.
I tried analoge, directly from piano to pc, but it starts getting noisy pretty fast. People told me that its because of the soundcard and only professional soundcards can handle it.
Theres also a MIDI output on my piano, and i have some device wich translates the MIDI into USB2. What kind of software (and wich can you recommand) do i need to turn that MIDI signal into actual music from my PC speakers?

Thanks,

Gyzzzmo

[ksnmohan]

Hi gyzzzmo!

I use a simple but excellent software POWERTRACKS Professional which has a 48 Tracks Sequencer. Costs around $ 40. As a music composer for movies and documentary films, I am using this for the past 15 years. KRISTAL is supposed to be the best FREE 16 Track software. You can also go in for more elaborate ones like CAKEWALK.

MIDI out of your Clavinova can record DIGITALLY the 0's and 1's of the Acoustic signals you play on the instrument - as you know, there will be no WAVE form of music recorded on the PC's hard disc. When playing back from the PC, these are converted back to Acoustic through the MIDI "IN" of the keyboard and the DA Interface built in the Clavinova.

So all you have to check is if the cable connector you have with the USB for the PC end has also 2 Nos of 5-pin round MIDI jacks - "MIDI IN" & "MIDI OUT" - for the Clavinova end. If not, you have to get one. M-AUDIO (MIDIMAN) has some reliable interfaces starting $ 50 for recording/replaying 8 Tracks at a time. They have interfaces for 16, 32, 64 and 128 Tracks (which I have) as well.

Prof Narayanan
Madras/India

[leslieb547]

Hi, I have a Yamaha CLP970, which has a floppy disc drive, so one can save to disc and then put disc in computer to play. I don't particularly like the result - too MIDI - but it can be useful for checking certain techniques, etc.. I have a Zoom H4 recorder and have tried recording with that but the results are hopeless using the Yamaha as the Zoom picks up all the very noisy key actions. Luckily I also have access to a big Bechstein in a concert hall and do all my recording there with the Zoom and get very good results considering the modest cost of the Zoom. The Yamaha is my home instrument on which I practice daily and, apart from the noisy keys I have been very happy with it for 5 years now. I did try recording MIDI from the Yamaha to the computer using a USB midisport interface made by midiman. This did work but, not being very 'techie' I think too much sound editing in the computer would have been required and was beyond me. However, this interface will take your piano output direct to your computer and should be quite cheap to buy (re-reading your post it sounds like you already have something similar) although you will, I think, need a suitable programme to edit, I use Audacity. I realise I havn't exactly answered your question but hope the foregoing helps.

[ksnmohan]

Hi leslieb,

Recording as MIDI (as against WAVE) and playing it back on the CLP970 will give back  exactly the same tone quality of the instrument you had played - no distortions or external noises as you experience in an Acoustic recording with microphones.

You need not be any "techie" for handling MIDI - but since MIDI gives you the additional advantage of making any corrections (for example if you have played a triad, the MIDI will show you how different the starting point of each of the 3 notes were - to the extent of 0.001 second of each note! - and how uniformly you had applied pressure on the 3 Keys. These can be easily corrected, just as the volume of a low sounding note (can happen by mistake) restored to its correct level. These are all very easily learnt.

I minimize all extraneous sounds as well as microphone/cable distortions of WAVE sound recording and go by pure digital recording. Only after the final MIX, is the DIGITAL converted into Analogue at the LISTENING STAGE (since you can't hear MIDI!) through the DA Converters of each Instrument.

And a MIDI file of a normally 4 to 5 MB of Acoustic (WAVE/MP3) recording is just a few KB in MIDI - so plenty of music can be stored on a Floppy (dead and gone!) or CD Rom (also dying) or a Pen drive.

After working 15 years with MIDI (was one of the first in the whole of India to start MIDI), I swear by it.

Prof Narayanan
Madras/India

[the romantic]

Hi,

How did you connect to the PC?  i.e. which port from the CLP and which on the PC & what type of cable?