Record & Notate With Your Yamaha Keyboard - Finale PrintMusic & Finale SongWriter 2010

Many of Yamaha's keyboards have impressive recording and arranging features that allow you to compose and record your own songs. MIDI recording has been a feature of Yamaha keyboards for years, and, as we covered earlier this week, in the new PSR-S910 and the Tyros3, we now have keyboards that can even handle audio recording without any extra hardware or software.

But if you don't have an Arranger Workstation level keyboard, or you want to be able to do something, like print sheet music, the even your instrument, as great as it is, can't do, Yamaha MusicSoft has the perfect computer software for you.

Meet the 2010 editions of Finale PrintMusic and Finale SongWriter. Both programs give you the ability to record, notate, edit and print your own songs. If you've ever wanted a printed copy of songs you've recorded on your keyboard, or other MIDI songs, or if you want to make a CD of the compositions, Finale's software can help you do just that.

Keep reading for more details>>

To get Finale up and running with your keyboard, first follow one of these videos to create a MIDI connection between your computer and your keyboard.

• Connect Your Keyboard - Mac OSX
• Connect Your Keyboard - Windows XP
• Connect Your Keyboard - Windows Vista

Once you have your keyboard connected and Finale PrintMusic or SongWriter installed, follow these directions to choose your keyboard as a MIDI Input:

• Start up Finale
• If it's the first time you're running Finale, a MIDI Setup screen should appear automatically. If not, you can get to this screen through the "MIDI" menu, by choosing "Device Setup" and then "MIDI/Internal Speaker Setup"
• On this screen, choose your keyboard as the input device for software channels 1-16. This will let Finale record what you play on your keyboard.
• If you want to hear playback through your keyboard rather than through your computer, you can also set that up here. Just choose "MIDI System" under "Playback To", then choose your keyboard for the channels that you want your keyboard to play back.

Now you can start recording! Just press record and Finale will capture your playing and notate it instantly. Everything you play on your instrument will, by default, be recorded through channel one. So, if you want to record to a different instrument, go to "Instrument Setup" then "Instrument List" under the "MIDI" menu, then change the channel for the instrument you want to record to "1".

Or if you don't want to record from the keyboard, you can also enter notes directly through Finale's easy to use interface or load a song you've already recorded on your keyboard.

After recording, you can edit the song in any number of ways. You can change keys, time signatures, or clefs as well as add lyrics, chord symbols, dynamic markings and more. You can even change from standard notation to percussion notation or tablature.

Then, when you have everything done, you can export it to a MIDI file or MP3, or print out a hard copy of the sheet music.

With Finale PrintMusic's SmartScore Lite, you can also scan sheet music directly into the program. You can even tell SmartScore what type of sheet music you're scanning so that all the parts come out assigned to the right instruments and staves. (Note: this feature is not available in Finale SongWriter.)

Finale PrintMusic 2010 and Finale SongWriter 2010 are both available now on Yamaha MusicSoft.

- Doug