I have an older Yamaha PSR-410 keyboard and I wondered if it would be possible to get this ancient keyboard to work with Garage Band?
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| Me Playing A Tune on a Keyboard |
The rear of the keyboard has the old 5-pin serial MIDI IN and OUT ports so there was hope. Would these old serial ports still work? Were they fast enough to interface with a high speed MacBook Pro?
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| MIDI IN and OUT Ports |
I did some research on Amazon and found this cable,
EMU Midi 1x1 Cable From Amazon. Thanks to the Amazon comment and rating system I learned that this cable would work in a MacBook Pro without any additional drivers or software? Could it really be that easy I asked myself. Could this project really only cost $29.99?
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| Midi Cable |
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The cable arrived from Amazon and he moment of truth was at hand. I plugged it into the USB port and voila, Garage Band immediately recognized the external MIDI input and when I pressed a key on the keyboard it played a note using the active instrument in Garage Band.
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| USB Midi Cable Plugged into MacBook Pro |
No more using the cheesy onscreen keyboard in Garage Band for me. I can now record an instrument using a MIDI keyboard. Mac truly makes this all too easy. Also, the MIDI interface is blazing fast. There is no noticeable lag between a keyboard key press and sound events.
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| Garage Band - Showing a MIDI Keyboard Recording |
Michael,
ReplyDeleteYou have inspired me to try to do the same thing with my keyboard. I have a Casio and have wondered if it would work with Garage Band. First I have to make sure I have the correct cords to connect the keyboard to the laptop. I will definitely try and cannot wait to start making music and printing out the sheet music of my compositions. Thank you for sharing.