# Garageband + MIDI + Digital Piano: How to?



## gmark2000 (Jun 4, 2003)

We bought a digital piano for my daughter to learn on. It's a Casio Celviano AP80R.










It has built-in MIDI (16 multi-timbre receive, GM Level 1 standard) and a USB port.

Where do I go from here to hook up to Garageband on my Macbook?? The information is a bit lacking in the documentation.

I know nothing about how this all is supposed to work.

Thanks!


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

There is a lot of info here. Just digest it as you can.

If you plug the piano's USB into your Mac's USB port Mac OS X should just "see" it. Then, launch Garageband. Try this first. You should be good to go.

If, however, the software on that piano ONLY uses the USB port for DATA transfers as a way to move it's internal sequencer data back and forth, then you'd need a MIDI interface allowing your Mac to accept data to/from the keyboard's MIDI DIN plugs. A cheap interface like this one would do, probably requiring a driver install which should be included on a disk with the interface. But, my gut tells me you'll be fine going USB as suggested, earlier.

Keep in mind that Garageband does NOT allow access to sounds contained within EXTERNAL sound modules such as your digital keyboard. Garageband ONLY works with software-based sounds generated by your Mac within Garageband, itself. This may be a blessing in disguise because I suspect that the sampled waveforms consisting of the total compliment of sounds on that keyboard -- 248 instruments plus 10 drum kits -- are probably squeezed into either 32, 64 or MAYBE 128 megabytes of ROM. Meanwhile, the acoustic piano in Garageband alone, for example, consists of more than 128MB all by itself and is actually pretty damned nice! What this means is that Garageband's instruments will most probably sound better than your keyboard's. What this also means is that, when using Garageband, that keyboard will act solely as a controller for Garageband.

If you do want to use the sounds of your keyboard with Garageband there is a free Garageband plugin that purports to allow this. I've not tried it so I don't know how well it works. If you go this route, then things get a little (more!) complicated because you would need a mixing board to route and merge the audio audio outputs of both your Mac and the keyboard (the company linked above makes decent, inexpensive mixers).

After writing a song with this more complex setup and it's time to render your final mix you would have to record the audio of the external keyboard's parts into Garageband. This requires plugging the audio output of the board to the audio input of your Mac, "solo" only the Garageband tracks triggering your external keyboard, arming a new audio track in Garageband and recording the external sounds to that track. THEN you can unsolo the other internal tracks and use Garageband's "Share" command to render the final mix to a location on your hard drive, to iTunes, or which ever sharing option you prefer...

But trust me, it's a lot easier to just use Garageband's internal sounds!

Depending on the type of music you're going to compose, keep in mind that Garageband does not allow for tempo changes beyond its initial setting 

Also, if you want to record vocals, guitars or other external, non-midi audio sources, then you'd need an audio interface. The linked one is inexpensive and can take "XLR" microphone jacks and instrument 1/4" instrument jacks like guitar cables. That device does not have "phantom power", however, which is required by some types of microphones. However, for demoing and general song writing, a microphone such as a Shure SM-58 or equivalent would do fine and does not require phantom power.

*So*, having said all THAT, Plan One is to simply hook a USB cable between the keyboard and the Mac and see what happens.

Hope this helps!


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## mac_geek (May 14, 2005)

gmark2000 said:


> We bought a digital piano for my daughter to learn on. It's a Casio Celviano AP80R.
> 
> It has built-in MIDI (16 multi-timbre receive, GM Level 1 standard) and a USB port.
> 
> ...


gmark,

Congrats on your new purchase... a digital piano is a great addition to a home (although ours is more a nice piece of furniture that a musical instrument... oh well, but ONE DAY, I swear I'll pick it up again!)

Anyway - I went through this myself in the last week with my Yamaha Clavinova.

I looked at the user manual online, which is available here:

http://support.casio.com/pdf/008/AP80R_e.pdf

...if you look at page E-27, it says that you can connect to a computer via USB. It's the same type of cable that you would use to connect to a printer.

The manual states that you need to install a driver.

I couldn't find one easily on the Casio website, and I'm not sure if they include on a CD for you, but if not, the following seems to work with the AP-80R:

casiousbmididriver - Google Code

See some comments in the Apple discussion forums here:

Apple - Support - Discussions - keyboard not recording on GB ...

...good luck, and let me know how it works out!


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## gmark2000 (Jun 4, 2003)

Thanks for all the info. I was a bit busy this weekend and will try to find some time to get this working.

I'm not a musician myself, but I figured I want to tinker with connecting the devices to try Garageband.


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