Need help with music project: electronic keyboard, cassette tape, help help help

Factual Questions
1

Look, all I wanna do is, I want to end up with a tape cassette of various Christmas carols out of this hymnal that I’ve got, so I can give the tape to La Principessa so she can learn the carols. I thought about just playing the carols on the piano with the tape recorder running, but it’s a cheesy little tape player (suitable for a sixth-grader), one of those $10.00 K-Mart specials, and the tone quality is ghastly. So I thought it would be neat to get one of those electronic keyboards, the kind where you can put in different sounds and it records them over top of each other (“laying down tracks”?), so I could play the left hand first, and then add the right hand, and maybe add some strings and horns, and just make it sound really nice.

And then put it all on a cassette.

However, I’ve been sitting here browsing various MIDI, Casio, electronic keyboard websites, etc. and I’m totally swamped in data, going down for the third time. You need a keyboard with something called a “sequencer”? And how do you connect the keyboard to the tape recorder to make the tape? Do you need a special cable? Do you have to have speakers, or is that just if you’re playing in a rock band?

MIDI is something to do with the computer, right? Software? I don’t wanna have to mess around with installing software. I just wanna play it on the keyboard and have it go onto a tape. That’s all. Does it have to involve the computer?

We do not own a CD-RW, and I don’t plan on buying one just for this, so that’s out.

Does it make a difference what kind of tape recorder it is? I do have a Sony boombox out in the kitchen, and it’s got a Record button, but I’m not sure it has a microphone, and I know the K-mart special has a microphone, because we were using it in Girl Scouts (don’t ask).

I can’t go down to Circuit City and ask them, because harsh experience teaches that people who go down to Circuit City and stand around looking clueless end up buying twice as much equipment as they really need ("…and you’ll need a couple of these Moebius frannistans, too…")

So please, won’t some kind-hearted electronic music person give me a shopping list, or a words-of-one-syllable “do this” instruction guide, or something? I was hoping to spend, say, less than $200 all together on this. And $100 would be even better.

2

Hi DDG.

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and is wonderful. Any music-related device with MIDI in/out connections can swap digital information with any other. It IS a universal standard, and it does work. So, for example, a computer program such as Cakewalk allows you to ‘write’ a line of music on the computer and then send that digital info to a MIDI keyboard so you can hear it played on that keyboard.

Basically, you want to create a nice home-made karaoke tape consisting of backing tracks to various carols.

Option 1) You sit down and play at a keybaord. You are near a tape recorder’s microphone aimed at the keyboard’s speakers or wherever the sound comes out. Pros: cheap and quick. Cons: sound quality will be depend on how good the output from the keyboard is, and how good the tape recorder is. You will probably get noise and hiss you son’t want.

Option 2) You sit down and play at a keyboard which has on-board options to record one track, re-start, add another track without erasing the first, and so on, and then playback the whole thing. This facility will be called either an ‘onaord sequencer’ or ‘integral multi-track’. Otherwise as for option 1. Pros: you can build up a fuller-sounding track and eliminate any fluffs or errors. Cons: the expense of buying a keyboard with this functionality. Also, there will be some limitations on how much overdubbing (building up of tracks) you can do - such as the keyboard’s on-board memory. Tape noise and hiss will still be a problem.

Option 3) As above but you use a digital recorder which can tae the keyboard’s output directly, in digital form, without a microphone. You just hook up a cable - keyboard OUT to tape IN, set keyboard to play and tape deckto record, and there oyu go. Pros: eliminates the audio fry up you get from the microphone method. Cons: you need the kayboard to have MIDI out and the tape deck to have MIDI in, which can be pricey.

Option 4) As above but with a multi-track tape recorder. These recorders come with upto 4 or 8 track capability, and allow you to overdub parts on top of one another. Input can be acoustic (through a mic) or digital (via MIDI). Pros: you can input anything - record your singing voice as well as keyboard parts, guitar parts… whatever. And this kind of kit is quite cheap these days, especailly second-hand, because it’s out of date. Cons: It’s out of date!

Option 5) You get some sequencer/music composition software for your computer. QBase and Cakewalk ae two popular such packages. These turn your computer into a virtual recording studio and composition tool. You can create the music either by programming or by playing it in from a keyboard. You can output to the keyboard, using whatever ‘voices’ the keyboard has available, and record the output on your tape deck. Pros: you get the advantage of the computer’s memory resources and capacity, so you can build up very elaborate compositions with virtually unlimited tracks. The ‘voices’ available to you depend on your output device e.g. whatever keyboard or synthesiser the computer talks to via MIDI. Pros: great fun and ‘unlimited’ creative scope. Cons: price and getting it all to work.

Seems to me that your optimum route is to investigate purchasing a keyboard with an on-board sequencer and MIDI out, and a tape deck with MIDI in or other digital input. You can do the cost/benefit analysis, depending on how often you want to do this kind of thing.

3

When I was messing with music about 10-ish years ago, it was on a Yamaha keyboard with sequencer. It used computer disks to record each “track” and when it was done, we plugged it into a stereo system using standard RCA lines from the “out” jacks on the piano to the “in” jacks on the stereo. As long as you have an “in” port on a boombox, etc, it should work. I wouldn’t think you’d need a computer to do anything out of the ordinary, it’s just that people seem to get off these days on MP3’s and CD’s.

Find a place that deals in keyboards, and ask them. If you get the right keyboard and right recorder, you shouldn’t need anything in between them but wire.

Keep in mind that I’m not up to date on current pianos, but it was easily done in the 80’s without high tech stuff, so I would assume it still can be done without too much effort. Also, back then the piano that we used was on the high dollar side, not a $70 job, but I would think you could pick a new one up for not too much cash.

Don’t know if this will help much or at all.

4

Okay, cheap and simple.

Here’s a site I found that has Christmas songs in MIDI format.

http://www.catholic.net/RCC/music/midi/christmas/

There are about 93,000 others if you don’t like that one. Do a Google search for “christmas midi.”

Place your boombox recorder close to your computer speakers and press record and play. Click on the song link of your choice. Your computer will start playing the MIDI file. Your boombox records it and you’re done.

The sound quality you end up with will depend on your sound card and your computer speakers. Turn your computer volume up to a decent level to reduce the background noise. Also use a high quality cassette. It makes a difference.

5

I think you can, as ianzin suggested, get the keyboard with sequencer (all of which, I think, come with a midi out), and connect it using standard RCA jacks to a recorder - even the boombox you mentioned should have standard RCA in-puts. This will give you a cleaner tape than the microphone would, without the expense of a recorder with digital in-puts.

6

P.S.

You should not have to install any additional software to play MIDI files on your computer. Windows Media Player, Realplayer, etc. all do that.

7

That should have been ‘on-board sequencer.’ Sorry about that and all the other typos. I was previewing and refining and then hit Submit a bit early by mistake.

8

Ah, many thanks, Ianzin. :slight_smile: The magic Google word seems to be “karaoke”, as in “make your own karaoke”. The project proceeds apace…

[sub]now why didn’t I think of that…[/sub]

9

If you really wanna get into it, here is a great place to start. You could do it the way I record things. I run one of my midi keyboards(usually my General music real piano pro) midi out to one of the 10 midi inputs I have on my system, usually one of the ones on my Mark of the Unicorn Midi Time Piece II, record the sequence into Cakewalk Sonar, go through and correct any playing errors, then play, then record the next track etc. When I finally have the sequences down, I play them back into my Maudio delta 1010 recording interface(basically a 10 input sound card that records at twice the resolution of cd audio, and at 24 bit), then edit the audio signals, apply effects as needed. Then play all the tracks out at once through to delta card to my Allen & Heath mixer, apply eq and and ajust levels, and mix it down to two tracks to record back into my Delta. Finally I apply reverb and room simulation etc. to the final mix, as well as any Eq and compression, and repeat for each song. Once finished with all the songs, Adjust levels, compression, and eq so that they all sound similar and burn to cd.

The hardware and software might set you back 4 grand or so, but hey, the sound quality is worth it.

10

Um, four grand is a wee bit steep just so La Principessa can learn all the words to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, but thanks for thinking of me. :smiley: