How to connect two MIDI keyboards to Studio One

[Adam Artman]

Hello all friends.
can I use 2 midi keyboards in studio one?

[Drew Stephenson]

Yep, just be sure to configure your DAW so it knows which one is which and remember to select the right one when you're recording.

[Rich Hanson]

In Studio One you would need to configure two External Devices (there's a link to that in the Setup box on the start page).

In the External Devices page, click the Add button and select New Keyboard. Give it a name and select the relevant MIDI input. Do that for both keyboards and you're good to go. They will appear as inputs on Instrument track with the names you have given them.

It's slightly more involved than most other DAWs, but I quite like the flexibility. It can flummox newcomers to Studio One though!

[Eddy Deegan]

Studio One treats external MIDI devices as one of three things: Keyboards, Instruments, or Control Surfaces. One physical device may fall into multiple categories however, so you can configure Studio One to have multiple logical external devices mapped to one piece of hardware.

In Studio One speak Keyboards are for controlling other things (such as instruments or plugins) and are MIDI sources. Instruments are for making sound and are MIDI destinations.

If you want to use the sounds in your MIDI keyboards as well as use the keyboards as controllers for other devices (including softsynths) then my preferred way to set it up is to define them both as a Keyboard and an Instrument.

1) Go to the Studio One->Options menu and select External Devices. At the bottom of that screen click the Add... button and it'll bring up the 'Add Device' window:

2) In that window select 'New Keyboard' and give it a name in the "Device Name" box (personally I don't bother selecting the Manufacturer). Then use the drop-down "Receive From" menu to select which MIDI input its connected to and and select the MIDI channel(s) you want to receive from the keyboard. Leave the 'Send To' box blank. Then click 'OK' to confirm everything.



3) You should now see the Keyboard appear in the External Devices list, with a little keyboard icon next to it, like my Hydrasynth here:



Note that the 'Send To' is shown as 'Unselected'. This is because we've only configured an input at this point.

4) Now repeat the process but instead of selecting 'New Keyboard' in the External Devices window, select 'New Instrument':



5) Use the drop-down "Send To" menu to select which MIDI output its connected to and and select the MIDI channel(s) you want to be able to send to the instrument. Leave the 'Receive From' box blank. Then click 'OK' to confirm everything.

6) You should now see the Instrument appear in the External Devices list, with a little 'mixer' icon next to it, like my Hydrasynth here:



The benefit of separating out MIDI inputs (from Keyboard) and MIDI outputs (to instruments) even if both are on the same physical external device is that you can now easily route any MIDI controller to any sound source in the header of an Instrument Track.

So when I create a new Instrument track I can quickly select which device I want to send the MIDI to (whether that MIDI comes from playing recorded data on the track, or from the MIDI input selected for that track):



Any softsynths loaded and assigned to a track will also appear in that list.

Lots more info can be found in the Studio One manual starting at Page 19 of the latest version at the time of writing.

[sonics]

Yep, just be sure to configure your DAW so it knows which one is which and remember to select the right one when you're recording.

You can also choose Studio One to receive input from all devices. This might also be useful; it is for me.

[Adam Artman]

Thank you so much dudes.but it doesn't work.
i did everything you told me.only one of them works not both.
i don't know why?

[sonics]

Are you selecting the correct input in the track controls? You should see all the devices which have been configured in Studio One understands, plus the option for "All inputs".

[BJG145]

You haven't provided nearly enough info for someone to diagnose the problem.

- What are they?
- How are they connected?
- Are these just for MIDI input, or do they have their own sounds that you want to play/control from the DAW?
- Do they work individually?
- What MIDI channel do they output on?

[Adam Artman]

How can I upload pictures here to show you more information about my problem?

[Eddy Deegan]

How can I upload pictures here to show you more information about my problem?

The SOS forum does not host images for you but you can upload your image(s) somewhere (I use https://imgur.com myself) and then you can link to them in a post using the 'img' tags supported by the forum. Here's an example, just replace <link> with the URL of your image.

Code: Select all

Here is a picture: [img]<link>[/img]

[BJG145]

...yes, Imgur is best. It's very quick and you don't have to register or anything. You can add multiple pictures to the same Imgur post.

Once you've uploaded your images, click on the three dots and choose: "Get share links". Then click "Copy link" for the entry labelled "BBCode" and paste that into a post on SOS. You'll need to repeat this for each image you upload.

[Adam Artman]

Dude thank you so much.
can you see my images?
in image 1 i added first midi and in image 2 i added second midi but only one of them works when i play them.

1



2


3

[Eddy Deegan]

You linked to the pages that the images are on, not the images themselves. I've updated your post so the images can be seen

[Eddy Deegan]

If you make the track header taller by dragging down the bottom edge, like this:



Does it show 'All Inputs'? If not, then only the keyboard shown will be used for MIDI input.

Also you need to have the little blue 'Monitor' (the speaker icon to the right of the 'record' icon in the track header) enabled for the MIDI input on that channel to work.

[Adam Artman]

why i can't see images on forums?
it give me Error: this image failed to load.

[Sam Spoons]

Do you mean your own images or other peoples (like Eddy's above)?

FWIW I can see all of them in this thread now but yours were showing the 'failed to load' message before Eddy fixed them.

[Adam Artman]

No.every image on this website shows this Error

[Hugh Robjohns]

All images are working fine for me, both on smartphone and desktop, so it's not a website problem. Check your browser settings or try a different browser.

[zenguitar]

I can also see all of the images with no problem.

As so many can see all images, and you are the only one with a problem, it would suggest that there is no problem with the SOS site or the image hosting sites.

It would appear most likely that the image content is being blocked by your local internet provider.

Andy

[Adam Artman]

Hello guys.
thank you so much for your guides.I could connect two midi keyboard to studio one at the end.
thank you a lot