Korg Technical Question

[Ael]

Hey, I own a Korg X5D Music Synthesizer (it's an okay piece of crap, it will do till I save up for a better keyboard).

Anyways, there are tons of preset combi sounds which are just fantastic (the best sounds on this keyboard), and my sound program, Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 won't record the combi sounds...only the sounds on multil, which are the single sounds...now, what programs do you guys use with your keyboards cause I would like to be able to record tracks using the combinations bank of my keyboard and not hte general midi...any help? Thanks.

[Enigma™]

If you're trying to record the midi and it's not recording all the tracks, it's probably because you're not recording the track itself on Omni - meaning multi-track recording. The thing is with midi is that it's very specific. You should try this:
make or open a multi-midi track *tracks 1-16* and arm them ALL. Play just a scale or something simple so you can see what's being recorded when. It could be that because the way midi is set up a Horn sound and a Harp sound on your RH is being sent on Track 3 and 4, and the Bass and Pizz strings on your LH are being sent on track 1 and 2.
If it's audio that it isn't recording, it could be something very similar. Does your synth have multiple outs?
The kurzweil has what's called signal routing, where you can send some parts of a sound to a specific out. Like, I could have my A output going to my mixer, and my B output going to my PodXT distortion, and THEN the mixer. When I call up my piano sound, the output it going out the A output, and when I call up my AlexArgent! lead or my Guitar Lead! it goes to the B output for the distortion pedal to use.
This COULD be the case, but I'm not sure how your keyboard assigns sounds. I'm assuming that you're referring to the midi aspect of your setup though, and that would be my best explination.
If you need more assistance, let me know -
Dchampagne@ns.sympatico.ca
I'll see what I can do for you to get it working :)

[Ael]

First of all, I'm using Cakewalk Home Studio 2002, if any of you know what that is...it's cool software...when it works ;)

With the Korg X5D, there are 16 midi channels on the keyboard itself. 1-9, and 11-16 are set to the General Midi Bank (in this case, Bank G), and Channel 10 is set aside for all the drum banks. When you record in Cakewalk, you need to select what bank (in MULTI) mode on the keyboard, and choose the instrument you want to record.

The question I have is, that there are TONS of amazing COMBI sounds on the keyboard. Problem is, Cakewalk only seems to record the sounds from the keyboard when it's on MULTI mode and as far as I've read, there's no way you can select the "COMBI bank" as a bank to choose instruments from and record.

I'm assuming, that those of you with keyboards record songs with your COMBI sound bank (or ones you've made) and have found a way that when you go into your program and select your COMBI bank and the sound, that your program records it, and plays it back for you, without getting cranky.

I hope this gives you more info...I just want to access the cool synth sounds on the COMBI patch and record songs with them, but, Cakewalk won't let me do it...and I can't find a free Version of ProTools for Windows XP and...I'm lost...any recommendations on programs I can find online that will be easy to set up and allow me to record on the COMBI mode on my keyboard?

[Enigma™]

I guess the more important question is:
Are you trying to record midi tracks or Audio??

[Ael]

Midi tracks using the COMB sounds....I guess I"m suppossed to record audio ? (like wav audio???)

[Enigma™]

Yeah, the thing about MIDI is that it will record the data, but only one track at a time. A combi submits MIDI data on several channels at once.
What you need is a setup where you are recording actual WAVE data instead of MIDI data. The thing about that is if your keyboard is turned off, you don't hear the MIDI data the way it's supposed to and if you send that to someone else, it doesn't sound right - Recording wave is how you make what you're trying to accomplish work.
You need to make an audio track instead of a MIDI track. You'll have to set up your recording and such as well, where you have the output of your keyboard *non midi* going into a line in on your computers sound card.
Then you have to tell you computer's software that you want to record from the line in, not the MIC in *which is the default recording channel*
Then you arm your Audio track in Cakewalk and record!!
What version are you running?? I Have a default file I could host for you if you'd like that is my default setup configuration. There are some plugins and stuff that I have that you may not, but the standard config is there :)

Let me know!

[Enigma™]

NM - Our versions aren't compatible... Let me see what I can get going for you if you don't find your way soon :)

[Ael]

dude, you rock, thank you much, i'm gonna try that right now actually.

[Ael]

agh it didn't work :(

[Ael]

Can anyone help me on this pretty please ? I'd really like to be able to record with COMBI sounds...btw what other programs could I use that would allow me to record with COMBI ?