In addition to playing my Celtic harp more these days, I'm also playing more keyboard again. Because we live in a rented apartment right now, I've mostly been playing with my headphones on.

I own a Yamaha PortableGrand DGX-660, which is one of Yamaha's older keyboards at this point. I used to play the piano a lot many years ago, taught piano, studied for my ARCT (Teacher's Certificate). Here's a photo of our family upright piano:

Small upright piano with sheet music displayed and framed photos on top.

I used to do some recitals:

Yellow program for a “Spring Recital” of piano and voice on April 30, 1989, featuring Mary Pitt, Frederick Pitt, and Debra Ohi, with accompanist John Karr. The recital was held at Wellington County Museum in Elora, Ontario.

And yes, they misspelled my name. Ah well.

I stopped studying for my ARCT for personal reasons; I'll post more about that in the future. We also used to have a used baby grand piano, but had to give it away when we moved into a much smaller house. I missed it so much, however, that we ended up getting a digital keyboard instead.

Person with big smile and arms outstretched at digital keyboard on a dining room table. Also on the table are a pile of children's picture books called Ruby Rose Big Bravos.

Above: an old photo of me playing with my new keyboard with a pile of contributor copies that just came in: Ruby Rose, Big Bravos, written by Rob Sanders and illustrated by me.

While I would love to own a Yamaha hybrid piano someday, I can't justify the price now that I'm not making an income teaching piano anymore. I do still love noodling on non-digital pianos sometimes, though! Like the piano at Highlights Foundation when I was on faculty one year. Thanks to for the photo below:

Person playing a grand piano with another person standing beside her. Room is large with a big window beyond the piano that looks out on a forest scene. A set of wooden stairs leads up to a book loft.

One of many reasons I'm starting to explore my digital keyboard again: I'd like to start composing again. I'm not talking about full length complicated pieces but just simple arrangements as well as short soundtracks I can use in my art process videos. That way I can save money and use my own music instead of licensing through a third-party.

The first step, though, is figuring out how to get music from the keyboard to my laptop. Thanks to those who responded to my question on Bluesky!

Debbie Ridpath Ohi's avatar
1w

I'm starting to play my keyboard again (I used to play a lot). QUESTION for digital piano gurus: If I wanted to record the actual stereo output from my Yamaha DGX-660 (not just MIDI) to laptop, am I correct that I need something called a "USB audio interface"? Researching online. Thx for any advice!

Roland DGX-660 digital piano keyboard with keys on the left side, control panel in center featuring a small blue display screen, control wheel, various buttons and sliders, USB port, and specifications text visible on the dark gray top panel.

Experienced types out there confirmed that I do, indeed, need an audio interface.

After doing some more research, I'm leaning toward the Focusrite Scarlett but can't justify the price right now. My temporary workaround? Using a USB stick to at least experiment with recording snippets and figuring out best practices for getting them onto my computer, seeing what I can do with those recordings.

Wish me luck!

p.s. I was originally going to embed a short clip from an old video I took of me attempting to play "River Flows In You" (Yiruma) but YouTube wouldn't let me. Let's see if I can embed the video I uploaded to Bluesky instead:

Debbie Ridpath Ohi's avatar
1d

Here's an old video I had been planning to embed in the post via an unlisted YouTube video, but it turns out the piece I'm playing "River Flows In You" by Yiruma and even my clumsy play-through causes copyright issues. :-)

Video excerpt of someone playing a digital keyboard. Text beside the video reads "Apologies for the banging; I think Jeff was fixing something in a nearby room at the time."

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