How do you connect a midi keyboard to a preamp/audio interface?
Nina Medina Asked: How do you connect a midi keyboard to a preamp/audio interface?
I recently purchased a used m-audio mobilepre audio interface for home recording. I watched some videos and saw that there is a 1/4" jack input for connecting a keyboard or guitar, but I'm not sure how to make a connection from that to the midi port on my keyboard. All of the diagrams I looked at for making the connection seem really confusing. Should I just connect the keyboard directly to the computer via a usb/midi cable or would doing so take away from the sound quality?
Answers:
First of all, I'm assuming you're talking about a portable keyboard that makes its own sounds through its own speakers. Unless the keyboard has a built-in audio interface, the usb doesn't send any audio out. If you want to send the audio you play from the keyboard, the sound you hear coming out of the keyboard's speakers, run a cable from the keyboard headphone/output jack to the audio interface. This will be the same as plugging a guitar or microphone and will send an audio signal.
That interface only handles audio and doesn't have any midi connections, which would look something like this – http://computermusicguide.com/wp-content . However, you can still connect the keyboard's usb/midi to the computer too, but it doesn't send any audio.
MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and it doesn't send any audio, but rather information via a data signal. When you connect your keyboard through a usb/midi cable to your pc, your pc should only recognize it as a midi device/controller. When you hit a key it will send a midi signal to your computer that tells it what note was played and for how long. Using this within a program on the pc (like Ableton that comes with that interface), you can play and record virtual instruments using the keyboard as a midi controller.
This explains MIDI in more detail – http://tweakheadz.com/how_to_get_started
And this is the guide it comes from that's full of info on recording – http://tweakheadz.com/guide.htm