Connecting Yamaha DGX-660 to laptop for note input doesn't work
I just got a digital piano for the sole purpose of writing music easier with the note input feature in MuseScore. It is a Yamaha DGX-660. Does not have MIDI in out ports. Only USB ports, which I discovered after purchasing a USB midi 1 by 1 cable and finding that it won't work. I sent my husband to the piano store to get a cable, and they insisted the digital piano has Bluetooth and doesn't need a cable. I have been to Yamaha's download page and cannot find a download for a MIDI driver for Windows10. I tried the one for Windows 8 and it didn't work. I have tried hooking up a USB/USB cord that came with an external hard drive we purchased for storing data from our home pc. I'm not getting any sign that the computer recognizes it is hooked to a device. I've looked in Settings under Bluetooth and Audio/Sound and don't see anything.
Can anyone point me in the right direction? I can't get my piano connected to my computer to get my original compositions down on paper, which was the sole purpose of buying this digital piano! Thanks in advance.
Comments
Have you start MuseScore after the keyboard is switched on?
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/note-input#midi-keyboard
If your computer isn't recognizing the keyboard at all, that's not really something MuseScore can help with. I would say I've never used a Bluetooth MIDI connection and have my doubts about how well it might work, but USB should work. You don't need any fancy cable for that - a plain ordinary USB cable like you'd use to connect a USB printer or other device should be fine. It needn't say the word "MIDI" on it anywhere. So I'd start by trying that.
However, that said, I would caution you that MIDI is not some black magic that will allow you to just play music on the digital piano and have some sort of artificial intelligence figure out how to turn it into actual readable sheet music. The MIDI input features in MuseScore aren't nearly that sophisticated - it's more about playing individual passages one note at a time, whether in real-time or step-time. If you are already comfortable with how to notate music, you can get your compositions down on paper without MIDI just as easily - just use any of other note input methods in MuseScore. But if you were wanting to just playing the piano normally and have it notated, MIDI input won't do that. Instead, you could try recording your performance in a standard MIDI file (using built-in features of your keyboard, or a separate sequencer app) and then importing that into MuseScore - this is going to be much more powerful than real-time input. But still, the results will seldom resemble readable sheet music without a lot of hand-editing on your part.
Just trying to help set expectations here to avoid further disappointment.
There is no bluetooth with the DGX660. USB carries the midi info to a Mac no ifs ands or buts. I'm sure that Windows 10 must have some available midi driver for the 10 kajillion midi devices out there. Refer to the DGX660 manual to make sure you have the proper settings in place on the keyboard itself for midi sending and receiving, usually All channels in Omni mode. Been working for me four years now!
You will need a network adapter for Bluetooth and another one for WiFi. Sadly the DGX-660 can't be connected to a MIDI network because there are no MIDI connectors (Din5). But the rear USB port (type B) can be connected to a Computer to send/ receive MIDI messages. Before connect them I set option "PC Mode" to "PC2" (easier to found it navigating left on the Function Menu). Musescore input mode is single note, you can not record a live performance. Better try a MIDI sequencer as Rosegarden. Later you can import the MIDI file to musescore. BTW I'm looking forward for a DGX-660 Instrument map for Musescore. Do you know someone? Best Regards.