Recognizing USB midi piano

Audacity 2.2.2, Windows 10.
I have a Yamaha electronic piano with midi input/outputs cabled to usb input on my Acer Aspire desktop computer. I have tried to get the software to recognize the piano according to the instructions in the Audacity help section.
I have MIME selected in the first slot
Second offers choice of Microsoft Sound Mapper-input, Microphone (HD Pro Webcam C920), or Microphone (USB Audio codec)
Third slot is set to stereo recording.
I couldn’t find anything in the instructions about adding anything to the drop-down choices, and I can’t get it to Work. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Audacity won’t record music from a MIDI connection. MIDI is machine control. It’s a series of instructions about which key to press and for how long.

Both of my Yamaha keyboards got recorded by plugging the headphone connection into the Stereo Line-In of my Macs…

… or the Line-In of a Behringer UCA-202 on Windows.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/organfinale.mp3

Koz

If you have a MIDI controller or sequencer, that would work. I had CakeWalk. I used to download MIDI songs and play them from my older Yamaha—with the wrong instrument. Like playing a piano sonata on a sackbut.

That’s the cool thing about MIDI. You can control everything. Transpose to a different key, slow down or speed up. Up to 16 instruments at the same time, although I think there are more now.

Koz

Thanks for your responses. I got a 1/4" x 3.5mm adapter, and a 3.5mm audio cable. Everything works fine. All that is left is for me to develop musical talent.

This raises another question: As long as there is anything plugged into the output on the piano, it’s speakers are muted. I only seem to be able to hear anything during playback. Ideally, I’d like to hear what I’m doing before recording, but can I at least hear the inpt during recording? I’m not good enough to play without hearing what I’m doing. Thanks again.

All that is left is for me to develop musical talent.

Or maybe not. Make sure if the keyboard in playing stereo that you are recording two different audio tracks in Audacity. The socket on the side of Windows machines can be a little magic. Some connections substitute your keyboard for a headset microphone…which is mono, not stereo.

Pull down that organ clip and play it in Audacity. Note the two bouncing sound meters are different because it’s stereo sound. When you play something with natural ambience added to it, make sure you’re getting both tracks.

Also make sure the blue waves make it all the way up to 100% when you get loud. Another trick of that connection is to poop out at a lower volume when you’re not expecting it.

That Behringer stereo adapter is there for a reason.

Koz

it’s speakers are muted.

The Behringer UCA-202 stereo adapter has a headphone socket. Go back and look at the picture. You’ll need that anyway if you plan on overdubbing or doing sound-on-sound. You can’t easily do that with just the computer.

I don’t do it that way. I have a Killer Sound System and have never used the speakers in the Yamaha. I split the sound between the Killer Sound System and the computer or adapter so I can record and still hear it.

Koz

So, it looks like I need to get RCA cables, and the stereo adapter. I’m a bit disappointed. I bought what I did based on the “how to” in Audacity manual. They didn’t mention that I wouldn’t be able to hear input. Thanks for your help.

In all fairness, I probably mixed up perfectly good info and arrived at the wrong conclusion. It wouldn’t be the first time. Anyway, I tried plugging the audio cable into the audio jack on my tuner, and piano and tuner play very well together. I’m hoping that I can cord from the headphone jack on the tuner to a splitter going to the mic in on the computer and to headphones.

The standard mic inputs on computers are often not very good quality (even on expensive PCs), but “may” be good enough.
If the mic input is good enough, then a simple “headphone splitter” plugged into the headphone output of your keyboard should be enough to enable you to plug from the keyboard to the computer mic input, and still have a socket for your headphones.

We like the Behringer UCA 202 USB devices because they are inexpensive, give surprisingly good sound quality (recording and playback), and we hear of very few faulty units. The UCA 202 has a headphone socket. The downside of the UCA 202 is that it does not have an input level control, so you have to adjust the play volume of the keyboard to adjust the recording level (not usually much of a problem).

Thanks,Steve. My current project doesn’t require the kind of standards I would look for if I was digitizing my LPs. - that comes later- All I’m trying to do now is put together some short sequences of a few bars to put behind a number of videos with no audio that are a minute or two long. Of course by the time it’s all done, this will have become an expensive obsession, but for now I want to keep it as simple and inexpensive as possible.

Hi, folks. I haven’t worked on the project for a few days, but I’m still determined to pull this off. My rig works, but I want to try the Behringer thing as soon as I have a couple bucks. For one, the sound quality is likely to be better than what I achieved, and it likely won’t look like the PBX I knew so well in the stone age. Thanks again for your help.