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Need help setting up MIDI for eMedia piano lesson


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I just bought a WK-7600 to try to get back into piano and organ after about 30 years away.  (My wife frowned at even that price tag, but it'll do for a start.)  I am very PC and USB literate, but have never messed with MIDI.  I followed the first time connection instructions in the manual, and the PC installed the CASIO USB-MIDI driver (after taking quite a while to find it in the MS Driver database).  EMedia has a device setup at the start, which detected the CASIO MIDI device, but no matter what I did, when I hit a note on the keyboard, the green light saying  that it detected the note wouldn't light up. I went through all the usual PC USB driver debugging, even trying multiple cables.  I got the light to blink a couple times once, but it still wouldn't work for the lesson, and when I went back to setup, it wouldn't blink anymore.

 

I downloaded the Casio Data Manager, and it links to the keyboard and shows the current settings, so that made me think that the USB port on the keyboard is OK, at least data-wise.

 

Finally, after reading about it here, I downloaded MIDI-OX and ran it. Unless I am missing something there, too, when I set up the CASIO MIDI device as input, I saw no MIDI traffic logged, and saw nothing blinking any of the MIDI ports, even when I changed the MIDI options to turn AccompOut on, or changed the keyboard port to something other than 01.  I'm just using the power-on setup on the keyboard, including the default stereo grand piano, although I've tried different instruments, layer, split, etc., to see if any setting would send something, but no luck so far.

 

Is there something else that I need to do to output MIDI, or am I missing something on the PC side? 

 

Thanks

 

Ron

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Ron

 

I have a CTK-6000, a CTK-7000, and a WK-7500, all of which are pretty much the same as your WK-7600, just a model run older.  When I first connected each of them to my computers, the drivers loaded immediately, and I had full connectivity, in every case.  Whether I go into the keyboards' MIDI setup menu and choose LocalCtrl ON/OFF or AccompOut ON/OFF just depends on how I am going to use the keyboard, but has nothing to do with the basic connectivity, and the KeyboardCh defaults to 01, which should satisfy just about any software program.  What I am saying is that you should be able to just connect the keyboard to the computer, let the driver load, and be on your way.  In my case, that worked for a Vista 64 bit desktop and two Win-7 64 bit laptops, and even an old 32 bit Win-XP (SP2) Compaq laptop.  The fact that the Data Manager software appears to work indicates that you have basic connectivity, but that is a file transfer (file manager) protocol - not a MIDI protocol, but it should indicate that the keyboard USB port, the computer USB port, and the cable are OK.  What concerns me is that the keyboard's MIDI circuits do not seem to be functioning.  Most computer software MIDI programs require that you go into some type of MIDI setup menu and "select" the connected device, or it will not recognize MIDI data from that device.  That would most likely include EMedia, and would definitely include MIDI-OX.  When MIDI-OX comes up, look in the upper left corner and left click on "Options", then "MIDI Devices".  In the pop-up menu, you should see "CASIO USB-MIDI" in both the Inputs and Outputs panels.  Select BOTH of those and close that window.  Now see if MIDI-OX sees MIDI data from the keyboard.  If it does, check for a similar setup in EMedia.  If MIDI-OX still does not see any MIDI data from the keyboard, do you have another computer or laptop you can try connecting it to?  If the keyboard's MIDI circuits appear to be defective, you need to return it ASAP for a replacement.

 

If you are connecting the keyboard to a fairly recent computer with USB-3.0 ports, make sure you are connecting to one of the USB-2.0 ports.  Most USB-MIDI systems will not work with USB-3.0.  Also, if you are running Windows-10, try running EMedia and MIDI-OX in one of the "Compatibility" modes (Vista, Win-7).  Some Win-10 systems are a bit finicky about USB-MIDI.

 

Best of luck !

 

Regards,

 

Ted

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Well, now I feel like one of my clients at work, who swear that something hasn't worked for days, when it works the first time when I'm watching over their shoulder.

 

The only thing that I did differently was that I clicked on CASIO-MIDI in Midi-OX as both input and output.  Yesterday, I swear that the device only showed up in the Input section.  That didn't bother me since I was only concerned with the incoming stream.  Maybe I need to read up more on using MIDI.  Once I clicked on it for output, the stream showed up just fine.  I closed that and opened eMedia, and it worked fine, too, with no changes to what I had set up last night.

 

I'm beginning to wonder whether it was one of your previous things to watch for.  Maybe I messed around for too long and the laptop turned off the USB port.  I was running on battery, and it was getting a bit low, so I could believe that, even though I shut down and restarted using a different USB port last night, to avoid that.

 

Hopefully everything will just stay as-is, and the MIDI chip isn't intermittent. Thanks a lot for your posts, not just to my question, but to all the others on the forum.  I've learned a bunch that I would probably have never had time to find out otherwise.

 

Casio South America apparently sponsors several YouTube tutorials on how to use WK-7500 and 7600 features that make me wish my Spanish were better.  As a business analyst for years, it seems crazy to me for a company to put out a set of products and then have nothing more than a fairly pitiful manual to teach customers - especially new customers - how to use them.

 

Thanks again,

 

Ron

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