Please help, two keyboards, logic

[FroColin]

Okay.... So I googled this. Really I did, came up with half a billion forums (I'm rounding haha) and I still can't get it to work. Okay so I have two keyboards. A crappy M-Audio Keystation 49e and a Keysation 88es. I plug them both into my computer via USB and I can play both of them. Cool, except I want them to play different instruments. And I can't seem to get it to bloody work. I went to the project settings or whatever and did the whole Auto demix etc. I pressed Advanced Functions and pressed E1 on one of my keyboards to assign it to channel 2 and... It doesn't work. I have a couple tracks told to record different instruments on different channels and the only channel that plays anything is one. Does USB midi not do channels? I don't understand. Help would be really appreciated

 

[jackerin]

AFAIK you can only have one MIDI interface active at once. Since each keyboard has the MIDI interface built-in (as it's straight to USB) you can't use both at the same time. If on the other hand you had a keyboard with MIDI in then you could hook an M-Audio up to that on another channel and it should work as you want.

 

[FroColin]

So if I get a midi cord and run one of the keyboards through my audio interface that has a midi in and put the keyboard on channel two that would work?

 

[jackerin]

No, if you're connecting one through a separate MIDI interface and the other through USB, that is still in effect two MIDI interfaces. They are just built-in to the boards so you don't see the electronics as a separate unit. Now if you have a MIDI merger you can take the two boards and hook them up to that, then to your separate MIDI interface and it should work, if they are set to be on different channels. (Don't forget that you will still need power supplies to the boards when they are not powered through USB.)

 

[FroColin]

Oh I see. That makes total sense. Sorry about the stupidity, thanks a bunch. Don't know why I didn't figure that out my self.