I am using Yamaha P45 digital piano. I have read at a few places that recording piano is possible without an audio interface, we can directly connect it to laptop and record in audacity. So I bought an aux cable and an audio splitter. I tried doing the same but I failed to record it. What could be the problem? Do you need some special settings in audacity software?
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You really shouldn’t need anything fancy. Audacity will be able to pick up your input first time around. A YouTube tutorial should show you how it’s done.– cmpCommented Jun 18, 2020 at 6:50
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What failed exactly in Audacity? Normally you can choose with sound card to use, and record straigh with Audacity…– TomCommented Jun 18, 2020 at 8:11
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@Tom_C I got it fixed. Now I am able to record in audacity. The problem was with my laptop 3.5mm jack. Both microphone in and headphones out jack in merged in my laptop. So I tried using my sister's laptop which has separate jacks. So I used the microphone in jack, and audacity did the rest of the magic! The audio quality of my recording is great! (way better than I expected). I guess using a splitter (with one female in and one female out) in my laptop would do the job too.– NayanCommented Jun 18, 2020 at 9:43
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@Nayan Good job! I personally find these combined jack a bit annoying… If you want to be able to record "over" another record, so with small latency, it may be worth buying an external sound card. But if the way you're doing it is working, great! Maybe a spliter mic/heaphones would work on your laptop!– TomCommented Jun 18, 2020 at 15:53
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1 Answer
You may consider the following two-step approach:
Record the MIDI messages from the digital piano.
Render the MIDI to an audio track.
Step 1 means that instead of recording the sound that has already been rendered by the MIDI synth on the piano itself, you record the MIDI messages. I'm not familiar with that particular piano, so I don't know if a regular USB cable is enough for connecting the piano to the computer (probably yes), or do you need a MIDI-to-USB cable (needed with older keyboards).
In any case, the result is a MIDI file, or the equivalent of a MIDI file depending on the software you use.
Step 2 involves rendering the MIDI file (or equivalent) into an audio file. And that can be done using software or hardware synthesizers.
In any case having the MIDI file of your playing allows you to try using many different sampled piano sounds, and potentially achieve extremely high quality sound results, which you would not get (in terms of quality and flexibility of use) if you just record the sound itself out of your piano.
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The OP is speaking about an AUX cable. Does not that imply that he is trying to record audio? Normally Audacity should be able to record from the laptop audio card (with great latency but still).– TomCommented Jun 18, 2020 at 8:10
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@Tom The OP is asking how to record a digital piano on a laptop. I suggested one way to do that. Let him weigh the pros and cons. I also think that my answer might be useful to other people who want to do something similar.– MMazzonCommented Jun 18, 2020 at 8:17
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