Quick question about basic midi

I'm working on a piano composition which is unplayable (not by choice, i've been asked to write it by my teacher in an effort to dissociate my compositional technique from my piano technique). Sort of conlon nancarrow style thing and it's sounding quite good so i'd like to record it, of course i don't have access to a player piano and it seems rather pointless when i have a handy solution at my fingertips already but the question is, will it work?

I remember trying this ages ago but it didn't work and i quickly gave up but what i want to do is to use sibelius software on my laptop to play my roland digital piano which i can then record back into cubase as it plays. Pretty easy to do?

How should i go about it in the simplest possible terms? Set sibelius to midi thru? Turn off the piano keyboard (i don't have the manual which is why i'm asking this in the first place, i guess it'll be a case of trial and error because the midi settings aren't really marked on the piano and you have to press different combinations of keys to make things work but nomatter). Does sibelius count as a sequencer per se? I would have said yes but thinking about it i'm not so sure?

Thanks

I don't really know that software but if it can send via MIDI Out into your synth then you can send the audio back into another program to record it.

You may also want to try various Piano VSTs, such as Akoustik Piano and 4front Piano.

Good luck!

you need a usb to MIDI converter for a start. if you have one of those, you need to plug the MIDI out plug into the MIDI in socket on your Roland piano. then you need to open up Sibelius and look in the MIDI options and set it to send MIDI to your Roland piano. so you set Sibelius up as the master and enable send MIDI out or something that sounds like that. choose to send MIDI on multiple channels. then you need to go into the options on your Roland keyboard and set it to receive MIDI on whatever channel (if you've set Sibelius to send on multiple channels it won't matter which one you choose to receive on). You need to set the Roland to sync to an external clock source too. then, once you have some notes drawn into Sibelius, they should play on the Roland when you hit Play in Sibelius.

OR...

If Sibelius is worth its cost it would have the simple option to export your score as a MIDI file. You can then open it in Quicktime, or possibly any other media player, and listen to the general MIDI soundfont playback. It's not the best sounding piano, but then again neither were Conlon's player pianos.

One last option:

Download Soundflower from the Cycling 74 website for free and use it to route the audio playback of Sibelius into Audacity (also free) and record it.

These options are assuming that you do not have a decent DAW.

that's a point yeah, i think you can export scores as a MIDI file in Sibelius...do that.

thanks guys

nah midi sounds are exactly what i want to avoid. Yes you can export them from sibelius but the very sound of it makes my flesh crawl. Plus when you send scores off for various competitions or courses they usually specify that a midi rendering is not sufficient as a recording. I do have a usb-midi converter but it seems to have gone walkabout, i also have a focusrite saffire le firewire interface so i'll use that. Incidentally, does a firewire interface connected to a 4 pin firewire port usually have problems. Theoretically the 6 pin port just provides bus power but i find the connection very unreliable, the slightest movement can sometimes stop it working altogether, i'm buying a macbook soon so this shouldn't be an issue for too long but just out of curiosity has anyone experienced this before with firewire?

no, firewire should be pretty solid...

export as midi file into daw.

send midi data to digital piano. job done.

  jim said:

thanks guys

 

nah midi sounds are exactly what i want to avoid. Yes you can export them from sibelius but the very sound of it makes my flesh crawl. Plus when you send scores off for various competitions or courses they usually specify that a midi rendering is not sufficient as a recording. I do have a usb-midi converter but it seems to have gone walkabout, i also have a focusrite saffire le firewire interface so i'll use that. Incidentally, does a firewire interface connected to a 4 pin firewire port usually have problems. Theoretically the 6 pin port just provides bus power but i find the connection very unreliable, the slightest movement can sometimes stop it working altogether, i'm buying a macbook soon so this shouldn't be an issue for too long but just out of curiosity has anyone experienced this before with firewire?

You can export it as a MIDI file and play it back with Quicktime and it will sound shit as Quicktime uses some stupid built-in software synths. You can also open that same MIDI file in Cubase though (import MIDI file option somewhere, long time since I used Cubase). Drop it in a MIDI track, send it to MIDI OUT on your Firewire interface and into MIDI IN on your piano (make sure MIDI out and in are on the same channel, let them send and receive on all channels is easiest). Audio out (line out or phones) on your piano goes back into Cubase (into an audio input on your firewire interface). Make an audio track that receives audio on the corresponding input. Hit record, voila!

Yes this is pretty much a summary of what everyone else above me said, but I had the idea that you weren't really getting it.

And, firewire should be stable.