Acoustica User Forums

Having a major stumble on this one. I hope I can explain it well enough as this has given me so many fits.

I have a Yamaha MX88 keyboard and I can record midi voices from the keyboard into Mixcraft 9. So, I set my keyboard to play a drum voice on one track in Mixcraft...works fine. I switch the voice on the keyboard to sax and record it to a second track in Mixcraft. But what I hear is now sax for both tracks when played back. Also, the first track plays as a sax when I am recording the second! Maddening! I have no idea how to set things up so that different voices are set and kept specific to each track. Thanks for any help.

Tony

I think each instrument needs to be set to a seperate midi channel however I've already made myself look stupid here today so I may be wrong. LOL

I think I already tried that, but Ill give it another shot. I had trouble with this also in Cubase (one year of nothing but frustration for me...a problem every time I opened the damn thing). But now I've returned to Mixcraft and hoping I can tackle this issue!

I am not sure how much you know....Midi transmit data is usually just Note ON, Note OFF and velocity (key strike data). Your keyboard can probably transmit the data you are generating (by playing) on one midi channel (for example 1 or 2 or 3 .....or 16) to Mixcraft. Each Mixcraft track can transmit back to a keyboard as well. Whatever patch you have assigned to that channel(s) on your keyboard is the sound you will get. You can set a midi device to receive on any channel as well (omni).

Some keyboards can transmit several channels at the same time in a "multi" or Combi mode

So you have to take a few minutes, think about what you really wanna do, understand what your keyboard is capable of and then adjust your keyboard and mixcraft midi settings. Generally I just transmit on channel 1 from a "soundless" controller and record on track 1 (set to receive on 1) and then move the data it to another track and select a software instrument for playback or mixdown to audio with mixcraft.

General midi is a special mode that associates specified patches to each channel. Drums are on ch 10, each note is a given drum. General midi files will sound ok on any device that supports that mode.

The other way is record actual audio from you KB into a mixcraft audio via the L/R jacks. Hope this helps....

Hello,

By default, when Mixcraft records MIDI from an external instrument it listens on all channels. Whatever channel or channels the MIDI input was transmitted on will be recorded on the piano roll. When played back to an external instrument, it will play back on that same channel or channels. If your Keyboard is set to channel 1 for example and that is the sax, then that will be played back.

If you right click on the track, point to Lanes > MIDI Channel and set the number to whatever you want, you can set the playback to a specific channel. Do that for each track. And upon playback if you have set an output to an external instrument, the relative MIDI, channel and instrument will play

I like to run a sniffer/monitor like 'midi-ox' to see what is really going on the bus. I had to write my own midi driver for an old synth for windows because it was mostly sys-ex back in the old wild-west days of midi. Standardization is better these days.
http://www.midiox.com/

Wow....thank you for all your help. Though a few puzzle pieces are cleared up, I am still pretty lost.
Things are working and making sense when I use the Midi sounds that come with Mixcraft (i.e. different
instruments with different tracks)...using my Yamaha keyboard. However, I am not understanding
whats happening and not happening as i wish to record sounds that are indigenous to my Yamaha keyboard.

Another problem which probably has to do with my crappy set up, when I play my Yamaha keyboard to play
sax, I will also hear piano playing.

Argghh. I don;t want to give up. I just need to make it over these humps. Working with Mixcraft is a relief
because it sets aside so many problems I had wading through Cubase which gave me "musician PTSD".
Meanwhile I am trying to go through the Mixcraft manual piece by piece. I have learned a lot but there
are holes in my understanding.

Would it be okay if I attached some diagrams of my set up. Im probably missing some very simple things.

I don;t know why this is not more intuitive to me though, as I said, Mixcraft is such a breathe of fresh air.


Tony

Hi,

MIDI doesn't contain any audio - whatever is receiving the MIDI makes the sound. If you want to capture the sound of your keyboard, you should make an audio connection to your computer, and record it on an audio track. This means connecting the audio out or phone jack or whatever to a USB audio interface, or a Line In port on your computer (a lot of computers don't have Line In these days).

Or, see if you can find a virtual instrument that sounds like your keyboard.

Greg

You have two outputs on your keyboard in the back. Look into your MX 88 manual. These outputs will let you take the audio sound from your keyboard and, as Greg mentioned, you need to input into an audio in source to your computer. Then you can set an audio track in Mixcraft and arm it for the audio device you plugged into and you will then be able to record your selected keyboard sound. Mixcraft has some pretty nice sounding VST instruments which your keyboard can control via midi. There are a couple of videos on YouTube about connecting keyboards to DAWs also.