Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Need A SIMPLE and EASY Recorder/Sequencer.

I started playing about a week ago when I got a Yamaha PSR-E403. I'm new to the piano but played guitar for several years in my teens (I'm 31 now). Even though I'm totally new to the piano, I've already came up with some pretty sweet (although short) pieces that I'd like to record.

My keyboard has 5 available tracks to record on, but no way to export the audio. And even if it did export, I would assume that it would just be MIDI information anyway and not an actual recording.

I've fooled around with FL Studio, Ableton, and Reason and found them all to be too expensive and full of options I don't really need or will ever use. Plus I don't fully understand how to use most of the options that these programs include. Don't get me wrong though, it's not like I'm retarded or anything, I'm sure I could learn how to fully use these programs if I spent some time with them, but I don't see the point of learing all the in's and out's of them just to do what I'm trying to do.

So what exactly am I trying to do? Well, let me explain. My keyboard has USB MIDI but from what understand (I'm still new to MIDI), this is for sending and receiving MIDI data only and it's not meant to send the actual audo signal to the computer. However, my keyboard does have a headphone output that I assume I could run to the line in of my sound card which would send the acutal audio signal to the PC and not simply the MIDI data.

I'm looking for a recording program that will allow me to record the audio output of my keyboard and possibly include a sequencer so that I could for example, record a synth backgrund one one track and then play a grand piano type lead over it. If it included a simple drum machine that would be nice too in case I wanted to add a drum track to it. Also maybe a dumbed down mixer so I can adjust the levels if need be. And of course a way to export it all as either MP3 or WAV.

Now, I know I could probably do all this with FL Studio or any of the other programs I mentioned but again, they seem too convoluted and bloated for my needs and I'm just looking for something simple, easy, and straight forward with no frills or bloat. I also suppose that I could do all this by simply using my keyboard as a MIDI controller inside these programs, but I think the grand piano voice on this keyboard doesn't sound too shabby and would like to get a direct recording of that instead of just using MIDI data and and external sample as the voice.

All the programs I tried seemed geared toward techno and hip-hop type music anyway. I'm just trying to lay down some simple new age type stuff with two or three tracks and maybe a drum beat.

I hope all thise makes sense.

Thanks for any help on this. (BTW, I'm using a Vista based PC).

UPDATE - I installed Anvil Studio, and after using it a few minutes, it looks like it might be able to do what I want to do. Plus it seems a LOT less daunting than the others I've tried. I'm still open to suggestions though.

Yeah, Anvil looks pretty good and its free too! Nice one.

For an extremely simple MIDI recording application, check out my Red Dot Forever:
http://www.originalsolopiano.com/red-dot-forever-free-midi-recording.html

That looks nice too You program that?

Unfortunately, your model does not appear to have line out jacks (just checked Yamaha's specs for the PSR-E403). The headphone output is a MUCH higher level signal - and would way overdrive the "line in" inputs on your computer sound card.

I've heard there are adapters that go between "headphone out" an "line in", but have never seen one myself. Perhaps someone else has?

I guess it will go just fine and will not overdrive anything. I have always recorded on the path headphone out -> line in in my soundcard and it went ok. The horrible overdrive would happen with mic-in, but line-in in the soundcard is _not_ amplified, hence the headphone-out should work just fine. It worked for me though.


M.

Let me qualify - there is not much of a standard for the signal level of headphone out. After just trying this on my Roland FP-7 to a stand alone CD recorder, I was surprised to find that it didn't overdrive the CD recorders line in (learn something new everyday). You will still need some kind of cable that goes from the stereo headphone out, then splits into two seperate cables for the L/R line inputs to keep your stereo intact. Also, it's not always well documented whether the headphone out signal has been pre-equalized for better headphone sound - whereas line out tends to be a purer sound - or set to the users equalizer settings.

It's unfortunate that some DPs omit "line out" jacks altogether, which makes things a little more complicated.