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Casio PX-700 & Garageband


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Hi all,

 

I'm not sure if anybody can help.  I've had a quick look to try and find a similar post, but cannot find anything that exactly relates to my query.

 

I have a Privia PX-700, it has a 5 pin MIDI in and out.  I want to play Sax using the keyboard so I bought a MIDI to USB cable and connected a USB cable to a Macbook (old one) and  hooked the MIDI's up correctly.  I can play the Sax through Garageband using the Privia keyboard as a controler and I can hear the sound through the very tinny sounding Mac speakers.  This isn't really what I want. 

 

I would love to be able to hear the sound through the speakers of the Privia keyboard.  

 

The black "in" MIDI cable doesn't really seam to do anything when connected, i.e when I take it out and just leave the red in cable, you can play the sax via the keyboard and it plays through the mac. To clarify, the lead I bought is all joined together, so theres a box part with lights on that flashes blue when MIDI is played and a red light that says there's power. Both the MIDI cables go into this and the other end has the USB cable I'm plugging into my MAC.

 

I bought a separate lead which was just a 5 pin MIDI plug and stereo jack and connected that to the headphone jack of the Macbook and the other end into the MIDI in of the keyboard in an attempt to get the sound to come out of the Privia speakers whilst I played the Keyboard using Sax instrument through Garageband.  Nothing happened.  Turning off local control didn't help either and neither did going through the 16 MIDI channels of the Privia (which I think are for output rather than input anyway)

 

Is there anyway to play the sound I am playing via the keyboard and Garageband but to get it to come out of the speakers of the Privia? I suspect not, but I am wondering why the MIDI in doesn't seem to work in this respect.

 

If anyway can help or make any other suggestions I would be very grateful.

 

Thanks for reading this

 

Richard

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I just had a quick look at the PX-700 manual. While other Privia models have Audio In jacks so you can listen to CD players, MP3 players, etc. via internal speakers, I don't see that feature on this model. If it did, you'd route the headphone out on the Mac to the Audio In on the keyboard, not the MIDI.

 

Your only options are to connect the Headphone out on the Mac to some sort of speaker system, or to get an interface for your Mac that connects via USB or perhaps Firewire depending on the Mac model and converts the audio that way, but you'll still need the speaker system. The advantage of the the interface is that it can also give you some audio ins for your Mac if you want to record other instruments with a microphone such as voice or guitar.

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P.S. I moved this topic to an area that is more appropriate and maybe more people will see it.

 

Also, MIDI doesn't carry actual audio, just musical performance data. If you could hear MIDI, it wouldn't sound musical. It needs an instrument on the other end to play the notes that are being told to play.

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If correctly I understand your question and what you're trying to do, then I can tell you the issue is GarageBand. GarageBand does not support MIDI out. Apple reserves that for Logic Pro.

 

If you're up to learning something new, you may want to look into trying another DAW that can do it. Right now I'm doing this with Reaper in a 60 day free trial, and I may try Ableton as well. Once I've given them a whirl, I'll decide if I'm going to stick with one of them, or upgrade to Logic. I'm pretty fond of the GarageBand interface and features, so I suspect I'd like Logic. But it's $200 versus Reapers $60 discounted license, and the difference can buy some additional powerful applications and plug-ins.

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rsaintjohn

 

You misunderstood the original poster's original post.  He is not interested in MIDI OUT from Garage Band.  He is interested in the AUDIO OUT from Garage Band and wants to route it through a better audio system than his MAC Book's internal speakers.  He does not need to invest money in expensive DAW software for that.  He just needs the proper adapter cables to connect his MAC Book into a better audio system.  He just will not be able to route it through his PX-700's audio system like he wanted to do, as the PX-700 has no Audio In connection.

 

 

 

mantisfly

 

Your simplest, and least expensive, solution would be an inexpensive boom-box that has an AUDIO IN Jack and some decent size speakers.  Then you would need a fairly long audio cable with 1/8 inch stereo plugs on each end to connect from the MAC Book's PHONES OUT to the boom box's AUDIO IN.  If you do this, you would need to keep the MAC Book's PHONES OUT level fairly low so as not to overdrive the boom box's  AUDIO IN and cause distortion.  As Joe mentioned above, a Firewire interface to connect the MAC Book into an amplifier/speaker system would be the ultimate, but obviously more expensive.

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