How to i get my keyboard music to my computer

Should i use a mic to record the music from my keyboard to my computer?

If your keyboard has a headphone jack just connect this to the Line-in of your computer. If you don't only want the pure, dry keyboard sound but the whole "room sound", then yes, use a mic. It depends a bit on what you are using it for.

not sure what a room sound is but i want to have the bass and such aswell

With "room sound" I mean the natural resonance/reverb of the room you are playing in. You can always add reverb as an effect digitally, but this is never going to be as good as natural reverb, especially of a good room. I.e. recording with a good mic in a good room gives you a very natural sound on which you don't need to put many effects, whereas if you get the sound directly from the keyboard to the computer with a cable, you might have to work on it a bit to get it to sound natural. On the other hand, if you record it with a mic like this, the result is less "clean", i.e. you might have more external noises, both from the room you are recording in and from the microphone.

As for the bass: If you also have other instruments, such as a bass, you again have the same decision. The easiest and quickest possibility is to just record all instruments together with two mics (stereo), which doesn't allow you to mix the instruments however. Otherwise you'd use a microphone per instrument plus one or more room mics and then mix the instruments together as you see fit, plus add some sound from the room mic to get the "room sound" I mentioned and to better "melt" the instruments together.

If some of these instruments are electronic (keyboard, electric guitar/bass, synthesizer, etc.) you can also record these instruments with a direct line-in. This means you don't need to balance the instruments acoustically and you don't need to worry about mics, mic placement, room acoustics, etc. but on the other hand you have to work on the mix much more in your computer, get the reverb right and get et the instruments to blend together well, without sounding sterile. This is certainly the cheaper option, since you don't need expensive microphones or even a studio with good acoustics, but it means lots of work in your DAW to make it sound as natural as a piece recorded with microphones (if you -want- it to sound "natural" in the first place).

But please note that I'm in no way a tone engineer or anything like that. I don't have much practical experience with recording. An experienced tone engineer can always pull out a lot more of a recording situation than somebody without such a background.

P.S. Or were you just referring to the bass of the keyboard? (In that case it doesn't change anything. You should get everything your keyboard sends to the speakers by just using the headphone jack (or line-out if it has one) and connecting it to your computer. Just not the "room sound" I mentioned.)

ah ok goodie so which method would you use?

ah ok goodie so which method would you use?

Perhaps you should enlighten us as to what you're trying to accomplish.

Do you want a quality demo recording? Are you just trying to archive ideas?

What's your project?

Also, what's your budget?

Hm i am Archiving ideas Not realy sure what i want to do yet im 15 year old right now soon 16 all i know i want to work with movies.music all that sorta stuff Game and such so trying out new stuff so what i want to try accomplish basicly is i want to try make some Incidental Music

the budget is kinda good and not i got a schoolarship sorta thing i get about 300$ each month i got some hardware i got a Imac with 4gb ram and some other stuff planing on buying a keyboard? and software and then i gotta learn to play the keyboard gonna check around on my school