Beginner to Beginner: Attaching a Yamaha keyboard to a Macbook (midi)
Yikes. I finally got my Yamaha keyboard (PSR-270) attached to my MacBook so I can play and have Finale transcribe notes. I felt like I was back in WindowsLand.
First, you obviously need the cables. You can get some pretty cheap that go from the back of your keyboard to a USB input on your computer.
But, it turns out you also need a Yamaha driver. Yes, even for a Mac. You can get one here. To install it, just double click on the installation package.
Then you have to run Audio Midi Setup, a file you’ll find in your Utilities folder inside of Applications. (Or just use Quicksilver. Don’t tell me you’re not using Quicksilver! :) Even though it’s got big, attractive icons, it’s a pile of gobbledygook. You should see your keyboard in iconic form and should be able to drag the out arrow to the in arrow of the appropriate awaiting icon, drawing a visible line between the two, but, frankly, I don’t understand the whole thing.
I just know that it eventually worked.
I agree it’s weird that MIDI devices need drivers. I believe that Edirol wrote their own drivers to get lower latency than the standard device class drivers, but that those are optional. This is from memory only though.
There should probably also be a reasonable default route if you have only attached one MIDI device.