how do you go about buying a midi cable to hook up my keyboard to my laptop? how do i know which one to get?!?!

So there are generally two ways to hook up a midi keyboard to a laptop. A MIDI cable, or a USB cable. At this point, I feel like USB is a much better option.

If you’re gonna use a MIDI input on your keyboard, you need some sort of MIDI interface or converter cable to use it with your laptop, which you can get for pretty cheap. For example: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Uno/

If your keyboard has a USB jack on it, I’d use that. What’s so awesome is:
1) all you need is a USB cable, and
2) the USB cable can power your keyboard, so you don’t need a power cable coming out.

On my 2 tier keyboard set up that I used on the Jenny and Ingrid tours I was on only had 1 power cable, which was for the laptop. The audio interface I used was also powered via USB, so all the cabling I had for the setup was 3 USB cable, a USB hub, and two 1/4” cables coming out of my audio interface.

I’d call Andrew Malloy at Sweetwater and tell him I sent you. He helps me, Chris, Jenny, Saul etc. with our purchases and he will not steer you wrong. Call him at 800.222.4700 extention 1317

Ask me anything

Posted on Dec 22, 2010 at 12:37pm with 3 notes | #formspring.me

  1. danromer posted this