Ableton Forum

Hi

Having a hard time figuring out how to get the midi data i recorded from my yamaha electric piano to play when the piano is not attached.

*Do I always have to have the keyboard attached in order to get audible playback on the recorded data?* (the recorded data will only play through the keyboard speakers, not through audio interface headphones).

Please note i need the playback to be the same, as if played by my yamaha electric piano. I cant substitute another virtual instrument, and I need the midi data, not just an audio recording, because I want to use the same data for virtual instruments in a separate track.

help please!

ryan

MIDI is not audio.

MIDI is just a set of instructions that tell a device that understands MIDI - a synth, sampler, effect, mixer, lighting rig, whatever - what to do. It contains no audio information or sound at all.

To hear audio from your MIDI data you need to send that data to a synth/sampler. There is absolutely no alternative to that. I suggest the best work-around for your situation might be to create a new track with a virtual instrument that’s close in sound to the Yamaha and set the MIDI input of that track to the MIDI track that sends to the Yamaha. That way it will play the same notes as the Yamaha. The same procedure can be used to send a single MIDI track to as many instruments as you want.

And alternative is to duplicate the original MIDI track and put a virtual instrument on the duplicate, but if you do it by routing one MIDI track to multiple other tracks as I suggest above you’ll only need to edit and keep track of one lot of MIDI.

Rather than hearing the Yamaha through its own speakers I suggest it will make mixing fare easier if you connect it to your audio interface - just connect the Yamaha’s audio out(s) to inputs on the interface then you can either create an audio track in Live set to receive audio from the inputs the Yamaha is connected to and monitor through that (set the track monitor to “in”). You’ll obviously need to do that if you want to record the output from the Yamaha anyway.

Or monitor it by using the audio interface to connect the inputs directly to the interface output - how that’s done depends on the interface.