03-21-2018, 09:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-21-2018, 09:29 PM by Michael Willis.)
(03-21-2018, 07:37 PM)Lee B. James Wrote: But I can't do that with a keyboard hooked up to the computer.
Actually you probably can, most midi keyboards respond to midi CC events (including all sorts of stuff like pitch bending, modulation, panning, sustain pedal, attack, etc.). You can automate midi CC events with any decent DAW.
(03-21-2018, 07:37 PM)Lee B. James Wrote: 7. Also, I presume I would be limited by the polyphony of my keyboard? (Again, not a big deal I guess, as I doubt I'd be using many instruments at once.)
Yes, although I'm going to guess that your keyboard has plenty of polyphony, and even if you do hit the limit, you could set it up such that you are able to record the audio of one midi track at a time.
I'll also suggest that you are possibly too attached to the sound of the Yamaha keyboard; you might try composing without it for a while and see how well you can cope with that. I still remember when my first midi keyboard stopped working after about a decade of use, I really missed some of its sounds for quite a while, but after a while I got over it, and eventually I found that I was much happier not relying on the sounds of a specific synthesizer.
If you really must sample the keyboard, I can suggest temporarily attaching it to your computer. In a DAW, sequence all of the notes that you want to capture, including variations like different velocities if it indeed makes different sounds for such. If different velocities only result in corresponding volume levels, you can probably get away with a single velocity layer. Wire up the audio line out from the keyboard back into your computer through an interface or sound card. Set up an audio track in your DAW to record the audio, and play through the midi track while recording the audio track. Then you'll have a single audio file with all of the samples, which you can slice up and transform into some kind collection of SFZs or something.