How Do I Record With My Midi Keyboard Directly To My Computer?

Question relating to...

Acid Loops

Asked by: sharmen

I want to start creating my own songs with my midi keyboard by creating loops, but how do I record directly into the computer using Acid Music 6. 0? When I press record with my midi, it records through my dinky microphone and gives me such a low tone and background noise is recorded. Any advice? thanks

Answer

Submitted by: ideogenetic

Well, MIDI is short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. I don't know how much you know about it. All MIDI does is record events. These events are note-on, note-off, velocity, etc. There are no tones (with the pitch and amplitude of a musical note) created by MIDI. You have to use a virtual synthesizer to create the actual audio musical tones. The virtual synthesizer will read the MIDI data events (note-on for example at the velocity associated with this note-on) and then play the corresponding note from the synth's built-in bank of tones (called samples) until it sees a note-off event .

Insert a virtual synth in Acid and route the MIDI data recorded in a MIDI track (or strip, whatever they call it- I use Sonar) to the virtual synth. Then route the synth's output to your audio out.

Now, if you're trying to record the actual audio output of your keyboard, then you need to plug the audio line outs from your keyboard into the line in of your computer, then tell Acid where to receive the audio from (the computer inputs) when recording a track.

Try to connect your keyboard to your computer with both MIDI connectors for MIDI events and RCA or 1/4 cable connectors for audio. Then you can take advantage of both the MIDI and audio functionality of your keyboard.

If you don't have MIDI ports on your computer- buy a new sound card