How To Record Digital Piano/Keyboard in Audacity, Garageband or Reaper

hi I'm Jane and welcome back now today I'm going to be taking a look at how to record the sound of your digital piano or music keyboard on your computer now a while back I posted a whole series of videos on how to record your keyboard and how to make a MIDI connection to and they were hugely popular I've had loads of feedback and lots of you said how helpful you found all that content but I've also had lots of questions I know that some of you are still confused about which of the right cables to use what to do if you don't have any line out on your keyboard what's the best kind of interface still some confusion about the difference between recording the sound or the audio and MIDI so this is a brand new updated guide on how to record the actual sound of your keyboard or digital piano in any recording software we'll have a quick look at audacity GarageBand and Reaper to show you that once you've got the hardware right you'll be able to use any audio production software or door to make the recording I'm also going to have a quick look at using a portable digital recorder as an alternative to an audio interface quite a few things to cover so let's do this right so what I'm going to do quickly is look at the essential kit you're going to need and also a few common confusions so let's remind ourselves what the aim is we want to record the sound of our keyboard or digital piano on our laptop computer or iPads back in the day computers used to have line inputs on them and so it was possible to take a line out from a keyboard or something and record it directly on your computer it wasn't the greatest quality but you could do it nowadays most laptops just don't have the right kind of port to do this so you can't connect your keyboard right up to your computer you're going to need some sorts of equipment the keyboard I'm going to show you how to do this with you can connect it to your computer using a USB lead and/or bluetooth but the thing is both those kinds of connections are only MIDI connections so you can't record the sound of your keyboard this way now I have got elsewhere a video that explains in detail that it's between MIDI and audio if you're not sure but basically usually when you've got a USB lead or bluetooth from your computer it is not there to help you record the sound of your keyboard it's to make the MIDI connection so here is the basic you're going to need you're going to need a keyboard that makes a sound you're going to need some kind of interface that acts as the middleman between your keyboard and your computer you're going to need the right cable to connect your keyboard up to the interface and we'll have a look in detail at cables in a bit and you're also going to need some kind of recording software the other equipment you're going to need because you are now going to be listening to your keyboard through your interface is a set of headphones and/or studio monitors so that you can hear the sound of your keyboard coming out of the interface what sort of interface do you need well interfaces come in all sorts of shapes and sizes you need one that will work with your computer or iPad or phone so buy the appropriate one but make sure it has line inputs if you want to record the sound of your keyboard we've got one here that takes RCA inputs but they're still line inputs this Focusrite has dual inputs that will take a quarter inch jack or XLR inputs so that has got the ability to take line inputs and so does the Douro similar sort of thing with combo inputs and we're going to have a quick look at the alternative to an interface which is the portable digital recorder you could if you're miles away from your computer record your keyboard directly into a digital recorder and then transfer the file afterwards and this one actually doubles up as an interface as well so it's like got two ways you could use it now then this is the source of multiple confusions which cable are you going to need obviously cables come in all shapes and sizes and so I often get people saying well I've got this kind of keyboard and that kind of interface what cable do I need well this isn't the same answer every time it depends basically a cable has two ends so you need to look at the outputs of your keyboard and the inputs of your interface and get the appropriate cable that will connect the two things together now I'm going to look at a keyboard that doesn't actually have any line outputs as such it's only got a headphone output and this is one of the most common questions I get well and you've got headphone output what do i do I'll show you and if you want more detail about audio cables and connectors the difference between MIDI and audio and also what is an audio interface in more detail you can find I've got other videos and I'll put links to them below so let's have a look at how it's done step-by-step here we have my keyboard all set up and also the audio interface ready to record so let's flip the keyboard round and have a look at what's on the back of it so if we look up close you can see we've got an app or walks in so we could connect some sort of external player into this to play along with along the speakers but that's going to be no good for recording because it's an input the only output we've got other than this USB output which as I've said is to connect to make a MIDI connection we've got the phone's stroke output phone stroke outputs and eyes the only place that sound is going to be coming out of this keyboard and that is what we need to connect up to the interface so let's have a look at the cable I'm going to use okay now this is a Y cable and this is where I was saying you've got to look at the two different ends of the cable and the two things you're trying to connect so this is a 3.5 millimeter output so and it's TRS it's stereo so I'm going to need one end of my cable to look like that and then here's my audio interface and it has two quarter inch inputs sets a line input here and I've got the faders turned right down on this interface when I start to do this so I just play again so there's my keyboard ready to make a sound now if I connect the output there like that what will happen now it's obviously you can't hear anything because this silence is the speaker's come - what'd you do about that in a minute but here we have my two output so this is a stereo output being split into left and right and so I will pull over for two cables into the interface like that so that's all I need to do look where the sound is coming out of my keyboard look at the inputs on my interface make sure they switch to line make sure I've got the right connectors connect it up as I said earlier the exact cables that you will need will depend on the outputs of your keyboard so if you have quarter-inch jacks you'll want quarter inch jack cables if you've got balanced XLR outputs us here then you'll want XLR TRS assuming that your interface has balanced inputs check the manuals for your interface and your keyboard look on the back and buy the cables that will connect your outputs to your inputs accordingly so that's the bit right it's all connected up let's move on to the next stage so what I've got here is I have got the interface with the audio inputs going into the line inputs I have played with the faders on both the keyboard and on the interface to make sure that I'm happy with the levels and I have connected headphones to the headphone output and I've also got the outputs of the connected to my studio monitors and so now I've got the direct monitor set up so that I can hear it I've set it onto stereo and I have got the knob here pointed right over to the input so I can hear everything that's coming directly out of the interface so the input is going into the interface and I'm going to hear it directly without it going routed through my computer so if I now play something on the piano you can hear that because it's coming out of the speaker's directly through this so that is how you hear the sound of your keyboard once you have got it connected up now I have got the monitors on but what I could do is turn the monitors right down and just listen to my headphones so if I do that again you can hear that the sound coming out the headphones and I can choose to hit through both just the monitors just the headphones and that's how I hear the sound of the keyboard so now I'm going to go and have a look on my computer how we're going to go about recording the actual sound in various bits of software we've done the heart bit right so the first recording I'm going to make I'm going to use audacity which is arguably the easiest recording software to use and so the way I've got it set up is I have already checked the levels of my piano now you have to check the levels in two places you can well you can adjust them in two places you've got the volume on your keyboard or piano and you've also got the faders on the inputs on the interface and so there's two places where you can adjust the levels and it's important to play around with these to get a really good signal to noise ratio so that you can get as much signal as possible with minimum noise and the highest level you can get without clipping or digital distortion you're aiming for a maximum of minus 6 DB to be to give yourself plenty of headroom but get a good quality signal so if I just click here to start monitoring and just play a few notes you can see I've got a good level it sounds okay right so I have got the software set up so that I'm using my audio interfaces the input now normally you would set your audio interface as your output as well like that the only reason I'm not and I'm using this multi output device is so that you can hear what I'm doing in my screen recording software and I've got it already set up to record a stereo file so literally to record in audacity all I need to do is hit this record button it'll start recording I'm going to cheat and play one of the demo tracks on my keyboard because it'll sound better than if I try and play something but you'll get the drift of it streaming the audio into the software so here goes so you heard a little click at the beginning that's just where I'm pressing the play button on the keyboard and it's transmitting a little click so let's get rid of that I'll just select that bit to there and delete it and now let's play back so there you go a simple recording of your keyboard with good quality signal in order 30 next up let's have a look at GarageBand now when you start an empty project in GarageBand or a new project you get asked what kind of track type that you want to create or if later on you're adding tracks you can choose what kind of track you make you can create drum tracks and software instrument tracks but the kind of track we want to make is an audio track and the one we want to pick is this one although it's got a picture of a microphone it says record using a microphone or line input so that's what we're doing so we'll take that now just before we carry on let's have a look here it's going to record on inputs 1 & 2 those are the inputs on my audio interface because it's already said my instrument is connected with the scarlett 2i4 now if this was wrong or you wanted to change it you just click this arrow here and you can adjust the devices here now obviously again you would use your audio interface as the output so let's create that first track so it's already now all I need to do is arm this track for recording so what I need to do is right click on this track and configure the track header because it's not showing me the record enable so let's do that okay and now let's go back onto this track and I will arm it for recording ok so we're all ready to record and again the levels were already all set oh I've got the metronome on I don't want that gonna get rid of that okay let's go [Music] so for some reason when you're monitoring it kind of like just has one waveform but actually it is recording in stereo there's our stereo file so let's just wind it back a bit again I'd like to get rid of this bit just broaden bring that in like that that's all you need to do and then you can move the file along okay so let's start playing let's take off the armed for recording [Music] okay so that is recording your keyboard in GarageBand so finally let's have a look in Reaper open up the Preferences and make sure that you're on the audio device and check that you've got your audio interface selected double-click to create a track and then just make sure that you select the stereo inputs arm it for recording and as soon as you hit the record button it will start recording press the play on the keyboard and start playing a bit of static was actually the screen recording software not the recording I've got in Reaper so you saved the file if you created and tick the arm for recording trim the file just like in GarageBand move it let's play it and that is recording in Reaper as you can see the principle is pretty much the same in all the recording software now I'm going to have a quick look at how we could record the sound of our keyboard using a portable digital recorder instead of an audio interface now as I said before the beauty of this is that means you couldn't separate the recording process from turning on your computer so you could take this portable digital recorder anywhere any way you took your keyboard make digital recordings and then transfer them into your recording software so let's go through the process of what you do now first of all I should point out that I've got a headphone splitter here so I am splitting the output from the keyboard to my headphones on one side and to the audio cable on the other now the reason I'm doing that is so that I can just hear the keyboard when I'm playing ok so that's that done now all I need to do now is connect the other end of the cable into the ports one and two on the recorder which I've already done as you can see they're exactly the same sort of inputs as I had on the audio interface so you could connect XLR leads to this but these quarter-inch jacks will fit in like that so I've got left and right there and so all I need to do now is press the record button here to arm it for recording and see what the levels are like as you can see they are far too high because I'm getting it's going right up to peaking there so I'll turn this down and from playing earlier I think it about sixty is about right for this because remember there's quite a high volume coming out of there and so that look that is peaking it around - 6 dB ok so now all I need to do I'm armed for recording is start the recording process and press play and as you can see it's actually picking up the signal like that and creating an audio file on there and you can just about hear the sound coming out of the headphones ok so when I'm done stop that stop that and I've got my file in there and as I say I can using the USB output on here I can use this as an audio interface or I can use it as an external drive and simply transfer that file into any recording software so very quickly now I'm just going to show you how easy it is to get the files off the zoom I've connected it up and chosen to see it as a external storage device so it's showing up here in my finder and when I look in there this is the folders on the recorder this is where all the files get stored and if I look at the files that I've created today there's the file that I have most recently recorded so I've already transferred it across and renamed it now I'm going to go to audacity and I'm going to go file import audio and here is that very file and if I just start not playing that is the recording I just made on the zoom recorder and I've just simply transferred it in very simple finally to record on your iPad you can either use an audio interface specifically designed for iPad or smartphone that has got line inputs or you can use an ordinary USB interface with a power to camera adapter like this then you can record in any recording app on your iPad well I hope you found that useful if you still have any questions or comments than his usual post them below and don't forget to subscribe if you want to get more of my home recording tips and tricks well thank you for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Music Repo

Views: 267,894

Keywords: Music Repo, MusicRepoTV, how to record keyboard/digital piano, home studio recording setup, audio production, digital piano, home recording studio, digital piano (musical instrument), keyboard musical instrument, digital audio workstation tutorial, digital audio workstation (daw), digital audio workstation audacity, audio recording basics, digital audio workstation, audio recording, audio interface, reaper tutorial, music production, computer recording studio, DAW

Id: vJD6RL_2yAc

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019