Newbie needs help with Midi Software selection

[Dennis Newell]

I have a new Casio LK-165 but know nothing about MIDI or music. I can hack out some guitar chords and songs and I'm now doing the same on my keyboard. The LK means lighted keyboard which most of you probably know and it has 100 or so builtin songs. To learn a song you just follow the lighted key - if you want, she will even say which finger to use and she hums the note softly as a hint for which key to press before it lights up. And no, I am not kidding. She learns how fast you are learning and will speed up the key lights at the best rate for your level. I really love this instrument.

But I digress a little. Some of the builtin songs are cool but I would like to load some of my guitar songs via the USB MIDI and then learn them with the lighted keys. I have Guitar Pro 6 for making sond tabs but it does't know about MIDI. Once we can do this then my wife can learn the melodies and I can accompany with guitar chords - or vice versa. Then we will then become a big-time band as I assume all of you are.

So the big questions are:
1. Is this even the righ forum section. Maybe it's a sequencer question, whatever that is.
2.Can this be done? I want to get the song in some form (maybe guitar tags or standard music forms) on my PC or MACTOP and then import it into the Casio, I assume using MIDI?
2. What is the best software to get? Free would be nice but I'm willing send in some cash if necessary
3. If I'm able to get the song loaded, will it use the same features (lighted key, etc)

Thanks for any help - except don't thrash my keyboard; it's not going anywhere.

 

[happyrat1]

In a word...

No...

What you're asking is pretty much impossible. You are trying to convert audio data into digital note values.

Audio is audio. It is an analog waveform.

MIDI is digital note values and control signals which tell a computer in your keyboard which notes to play.

The way software is developing these days as well as CPU and DSP power, it may be doable someday, but for now, you are asking a machine to listen to a song, pick out all the instruments and chords and parts and orchestrate it into notation. When that day arrives musicians will become obsolete

Your best bet is to search the web for pre-written/sequenced MIDI files of the songs you know and love and load those in directly. Not sure if the teaching features will work with those but I can't really see why not.

Hope this helps... Sorry to burst your bubble

Gary

 

[The Y_man]

1. Is this even the righ forum section. Maybe it's a sequencer question, whatever that is.
where.

A sequencer is (these days) just software that you can record/create MIDI files on (for playing back thru your keyboard etc).

I use a free one called Anvil Studio
http://www.anvilstudio.com/

The Y-man

 

[The Y_man]

Looks like Guitar Pro has a MIDI export function?

http://www.guitar-pro.com/en/index.php?pg=product#/partage


Without knowing the product all that well, I'd guess you'd do the following.

Whatever song you have on Guitar pro should be able to be dumped as a MIDI file as per above.

Load the MIDI file into a sequencer program

Modify the channels on the LH and RH parts and match these to the navigate channels as per page E-33 of your Casio manual

Playback using the sequencer with keyboard connected on USB.




The Y-man

 

[happyrat1]

Actually there is a software out there that actually claims to be able to transcribe a WAV music recording to MIDI data.

http://www.recognisoft.com/

I've never used it and have no idea how good it is, but if it's anything like Voice Recognition or Optical Character Recognition, it's gonna take a lot of tweaking and a steep learning curve to get it to work.

Anyway, they do have a free trial demo download version so it won't cost you anything to take a look and see if it works.

Personally I'm not holding my breath

Gary

 

[happyrat1]

Incidentally, just putting this out there for ya. I'm not into guitar myself, but there's a amazingly funky Digital Guitar out there these days that talks directly to MIDI.

http://www.misadigital.com/kitara.html

With a street price just under $800 it's no more costly than a base model Gibson Les Paul and it can truly do some amazing things in the hands of a skilled performer.

Gary

 

[Becky]

That's amazing!!