Hearing virtual instruments through my MIDI piano

The easiest way to get around this is to switch the "Local" setting on your Roland Keyboard to OFF.

"Local" control separates the pianos keyboard from the Roland's internal tone generator, you will need to turn Local back on to play the piano normally.

Fifty Mission Cap wrote:

Thanks, Pancenter - That helps a bit...now the piano makes no sound at all and I hear the virtual instrument through the headphones or MBP speakers. Maybe what I want isn't possible. I just figured that since the piano had MIDI in and MIDI out that it would be possible to run the signal from the Logic Pro track through the sound generator or speakers in the piano so that the virtual sound would come out of the larger, better sounding piano speakers. Maybe the MIDI in on the piano is just so that a MIDI track can control the instruments which are already programmed in the piano and not additional ones?

First you need to understand the difference between MIDI and Audio. MIDI is Not Audio.

MIDI is performance data, say you play a note on your piano, what MIDI sends to the computer is what note you played, how hard (velocity) you played it, how long you held it...etc..etc. That's the basics of MIDI, it's like a "player piano" roll, it's not sound. That's why a MIDI track once recorded can be assigned to play any instrument you choose.

You can take a MIDI track of a Bach Fugue and assign it to a drum kit and hear the wildest drum solo you can imagine.

If your piano had an AUDIO input you could plug the line that goes to your Mac speakers into the audio input and possibly hear the virtual instrument sounds... but to be honest, in Logic you have a professional program, what you need are a pair of decent powered speakers. Monitor Speakers.

To add.. Virtual instruments are triggered by MIDI Data, but their output (out of Logic) is audio.

And...

Besides a decent set of monitor speakers a semi-pro audio interface is the next step up, that way you can plug the monitors into the audio interface outputs, then plug your piano's audio outs into the audio interface inputs and have both your piano and Logic's virtual instruments through the monitor speakers, (as well as any recorded audio using a microphone or imported audio files.)

The sound generator in the piano is basically a ROM (ReadOnlyMemory) player. There are samples of a real piano which are manipulated by a synthesizer's envelope generator/filters. Basically the sound generator in the piano is a hardware version of the EXS24II. The way to get them mixed together is through either an external mixer that the piano and computer are hooked into or an audio card that has several inputs, two of which could be used for plugging the audio output of the Keyboard into, speakers would plug into the outputs of the sound card and Logic's audio (including synths) would also be routed to the sound card.

You might be able to do this with the Mac's built in audio interface except you would need an adapter to the smaller jack size.

For the heck of it, try this! With local OFF on the Roland, create an EXTERNAL MIDI Track and see if you can play the Roland's sound generater through MIDI. You are reconnecting the Roland's keyboard to it's sound generator external, rather than internally.