Hi. I'm Mario Ajero, and in this video
I want to show you how to connect your
piano to your iPad using Bluetooth
wireless MIDI technology.
In order to do this this, you need a Bluetooth wireless
MIDI interface. I'm going to first demonstrate
using the Yamaha MD-BT01 wireless
Bluetooth MIDI adapter and what I like
about this particular adapter it has
five pins just like you see on standard
MIDI cables and it will work with any
piano that has that there. It also has
these arrows that will tell you
in which MIDI in and out port that
you'll plug the particular receptacles to.
So here on my Yamaha Disklavier, I
have MIDI in and out ports. Now let's
take one of the end that has arrow
pointing towards it and plug it into the
MIDI in and then I'll take the one that
has the arrow pointing out in plug that
into the MIDI out port. Excuse me. Like so here
there's a nice little red LED that will
show that it's feeding power into
the Bluetooth MIDI interface.
The next step in the process is to pair your iPad
with your Bluetooth midi device now it's
not how you traditionally do it in with
other devices such as like bluetooth
headphones or Bluetooth foot pedals
normally when you do that you go into
settings here and then you go into
bluetooth. Make sure of course the
bluetooth is on and of course when you
connect your other devices normally
can pair them over here but you won't see
the Yamaha bluetooth midi device show up
on there what you need is an application
that supports Bluetooth midi
technology and one of my favorite apps
is SuperScore right down here and if we
go into that i'm going to go into the
gear
the settings and you'll notice under MIDI
setup here and then I'm going to show
add a bluetooth midi device so you see
where it says tap the + button and then
there will see a list of Bluetooth many
devices that i've previously connected
to my iPad and there you see the MD-BT01
is actually highlighted and it shows
that it's not connected
I just tap on that one time and it will
say that it's connected now so in the
MIDI setup all i have to do is select
the MD-BT01 bluetooth for my midi input
device and I could also select it as my
MD-BT01 bluetooth for my midi
output device. Going down here, I
have a little short Tchaikovsky piece
"Morning Prayer" and if i go ahead and
click Play, this is what happens.
And one of the neat things I love about
this wireless technology on the iPad is
now you can just download performances
off of the internet here of course they
have to be a midi file format here and
one website that you might be interested
is the Yamaha Disklavier Education
Network at YamahaDen.com. There's a
signature MIDI collection that contains
a lot of classical music that's been
captured in the MIDI format here so
i'm going to go ahead and click on that
signature MIDI collection. It's going
to take me to all these different lists
of composers here. Let's say I want to
listen to some Chopin. I can just tap on
Chopin here. And let's say I want to
listen to his Etudes and let's listen to
the Etude in Major, Opus 10, No. 3
There's a performance by Mei-Ting Sun from the 2002 International Piano
e-Competition. I'm just going to download
the standard midi file i'm just going to
tap on this standard midi file link here
It's going to ask me here what application
that I'd like to open it in. Now you
can't open it up in SuperScore but you
can open it in other MIDI applications
and i have another application called
Home Concert Xtreme that I'd like to
use to play all my midi files on my
piano here so i'm going to go ahead and
click on open Home Concert. And it is going to
open up Home Concert Xtreme and here we
have the midi file for Mei-Ting Sun's
performance of the Chopin Etude. Now the
notation will look really messed up here
because it's a capture of his raw
performance here but what I love is the
on-screen keyboard which will display
all the keys that he's played and even
captures all his pedaling that goes
through so check it out here when I tap
on play
What's great is this
wireless connection between the iPad and your piano works both ways here
so not only can you send MIDI data from
the iPad to the piano but also anything
that i play on the piano gets
recreated on the iPad as well
here so this is great for students here
that like to play along with MIDI files
like this one by Christopher Norton here.
Now not all pianos have midi in and
out ports on them. For example the piano
behind me is a Yamaha Portable Grand DGX
digital piano and it has no midi in and
out ports but it has a direct USB to
host port which you can connect to other
devices if you want to connect through
it through midi here so the MD-BT01 that I showed earlier won't work
with this particular model
fortunately there are other wireless
MIDI adapters and this is another one by
Yamaha and this is the UD-BT01 and it
works just as well with pianos that
don't have the MIDI in and out ports but
just have a USB to host and i'll show
you how to make that happen.
Now in addition to the wireless midi
adapter, for this particular setup you're also going to need one of
these USB power adapters. Unfortunately
it didn't come with one here so you'll
have to have one on your own but most
owners of iPads already have one handy
because it usually comes with their
mobile devices and the reason why they do that is because for the USB
direct to host port, it doesn't provide
enough power in order to support the
MIDI data transfer between the device
and the digital piano so you'll need to
have external power connected to it and
then on the other end, you'll also have to have a USB cable USB a to b cable
these are just like your standard
printer cables the ones that have a kind
of a square side and then also the more
rectangular receptacle. This particular
cable is readily available. You'll find
it on most standard printers or scanners
that connect to your computer through
USB. And you just plug in this end into
the other end of the wireless
MIDI adapter like so and then you're ready to go
On your piano find the USB to host port
and then take the squarish end of your USB
a to b cable and plug that into the
piano just like that
take the other end of the USB cable that
has both the wireless midi adapter and
your power adapter and plug that into a
power source like so.
You should see those red and green lights
flashing to show that it's supplying power
now to the wireless midi adapter.
It's not as eloquent a solution as the other
wireless MIDI adapters because you have
to plug it into power but seeing as
you're probably going to be needing
power to plug in your digital piano
you're probably going to be close enough
to a source to make this particular
way happen and you at least I won't
have to connect your iPad directly to the piano.
So if i want to pair my iPad
now to the wireless MIDI adapter
connected to the DGX piano, I follow
the same process i open up an
application like SuperScore i go into
the MIDI settings and then I go in to
add a bluetooth device and now instead
of the MD-BT01 now i'll find the UD-BT01
and I'll tap on that once and then it
will say that it's connected now
Want to make sure that both the midi input
device is selected as the UD-BT01 so it
will recognize your playing and then the
MIDI output device if
the ipad is sending out midi data to the
piano then it will also make that
connection as well. I've got that all set
up and I go on ahead and click done.
Now I have this piece Just Struttin' Along by Martha Mier
that I can have it
set to play along with me and actually
it's the sounds not coming from the ipad
iPad is sending the MIDI data from
the file on the iPad to the piano and
it's activating all the general MIDI sounds
on it here so hope you enjoys this one here
So I hope you found that video helpful as
far as connecting your iPad to your
piano using wireless bluetooth MIDI
technology if you have any questions you
can leave it in the comments on this
video or you can also reach out to me
through various social media platforms here
So that's all for now and keep on practicing. Bye!