Is it possible to play and record the voices on my piano through a midi track?

From what I can see in the manual it should be possible.  You need to install the USB midi driver compatible with your OS.  You will also need to set the keyboard to local off otherwise you will get note doubling.
 
See pages 113 on installing the driver, 144 for implementation.  Page 107 and Page 146 for local off.
 
Trust that helps. 

Yea Im using X3 studio and also got Melodyne editor. 
 
I have no idea where I put my Pianos manual, I'll look for a PDF version to check that.

jjgjr75
I was able to do this with guitar. You basically record it as audio and then convert to midi with melodyne. Do you have X3?

This will give him a midi track, but not give him the sounds from his synth once converted.  Going to have to get the audio out of the hardware with midi playback at some point!

To use a hardware keyboard synth, you need to set up two tracks in SONAR:
 
- A MIDI track with Input and Output both assigned to the ports presented by the keyboard (assuming USB MIDI connection) in Preferences > MIDI > Devices.
 
- An audio track with Input set to the the interface channel(s) receiving the keyboard audio, and Output to the Master bus and from there to your audio interface Main Outs.
 
Input echo needs to be enabled on both tracks so that live MIDI input will be echoed to the synth, and live audio output from the keyboard will be echoed to your interface output. And, as mentioned, you'll want to set Local Control Off on the keyboard so that it's only responding to MIDI echoed or played back from SONAR.
 
The MIDI track will echo automatically when it has focus if Always Echo Current MIDI Track is enabled in Preferences (the default) or you can force it on. The input echo on the audio track should be on all the time until you've recorded the audio from it.
 
Now you can record MIDI, hearing the keyboard synth while recording and on playback. Once you've captured and edited the performance you want, arm the audio track to record , and record the audio from the keyboard synth in real time as it's driven by your MIDI track. Once you've recorded the audio, you'll want to mute or archive the MIDI track, and disable input echo on the audio track so it's not adding any quiescent noise to the track.
 
The only open question then is whether your Creative X-Fi (?) interface can run a small enough ASIO buffer to give reasonable overall latency (MIDI round-trip delay plus keyboard response time plus audio round-trip latency) to be playable.
 
.
 
 

Thanks, I wont be able to try out your advice until tomorrow, but will try and figure it out then.

My creative card can be set as low as 1 ms Asio, but this made a lot of artifacts when recording onto an audio track. 40-50 ms works fine, maybe less will work with midi.

Edit - autocorrect does stupid things.

Just keep in mind that once you have recorded the external audio, if you change the tempo of the song, the pitch will change.
 
Like konradh I would just use the MIDI track from SI Elec Piano to trigger your DGX630. This is what I do quite often as I too prefer the sounds of my Roland Digital Piano to the SI.
 
But I tend to use the sounds of the SI during the development of my piece, until I'm reaching the final stages. Before recording the audio from my digital piano, I make all the modifications to the tempo and MIDI commands. This means that the audio I record doesn't require any more editing (other than effects).

Regarding latency:  If you are not able to get your latency to behave well at the 12ms or less as Brudlefly indicates above, trying to record your keyboard will be unpleasant at best.  It will be like playing a pipe organ in a large auditorium - hit the key and hear the sound much later.  It's very confusing for most people to try to get good timing like this.
 
Since you have a keyboard that can produce its own sound, you can avoid this by allowing your latency setting to be higher (pretty much insignificant what the number is this way) in Sonar, turning Local Control ON for the keyboard, turning input echo OFF in Sonar on the tracks for midi and audio.  This way, you will be playing the keyboard as normal and hearing the notes as triggered directly from the keyboard without first passing through Sonar, but the midi will be received by Sonar and recorded in the right spot.  When you play back (with the midi being sent back out to your keyboard, retriggering all the notes you played), since latency would be the same for all playback tracks, it will work just fine there.
 
Even though my sound card will allow me to go to a pretty low latency, I prefer to record my VDrums this way: a. because I get instantaneous response from the drums, which in the case of percussive things is REALLY important to me to get the groove right, and b. I can set Sonar's latency to be whatever I want without effect, which allows my system to run better in general, especially when further along in a project and there is a lot going on.
 
Also, I typically leave my drums as midi all the way until I get to mix-down phase, only then converting each drum from midi to audio to process with Sonar's fx.  Up until that point, I use the vdrums sound for monitoring, again keeping the audio processing power around for those things that need it.  Once in mix phase, I can bump up the latency anyway and then I have more headroom to process the drums and everything else at once without issue.
 
All that said, at some point, you will probably want to get away from the SoundBlaster type cards and get something more designed for the task.  You can even get a simple two channel card with midi over USB2 these days for pretty cheap if you find that you are getting more serious.  It will make a difference in many of the recording phases.
 
Hope this helps.

Thanks I got it all set up and working, it was very easy using the advice people gave in this thread:
 
http://i.imgur.com/GgmkpiI.png
 
Midi track 4 is outputting whichever voice is selected on the piano to Audio track 5. Its also making a much better signal than than recording via Audio does, I wish I had figured out how to do this 5 years ago.
 
I set my Asio latency to 10 ms, and it works flawlessly for midi recording. For Audio recording though it cant be set below 50 ms or audio recordings get filled with loud popping artifacts.
 
I also tried 1 ms for midi and that caused crackling artifacts, so will leave it at 10 for midi, and 50 for audio. 
 

Jay Tee 4303
 
You should be able to download the manual for your synth at the manufacturers support webpage. 
You will probably need it, the further you get into MIDI.
 

 
Yes I already got it and will start reading the midi section. I'll also try and find the printed manual that came with the piano, but manuals have a tendency to just vanish into thin air.

Jay Tee 4303
I set aside a shelf for manuals and have them going back decades. I also download and print missing ones, and put them in a 3 ring binder. Finally, PDFs go on a Kindle so I can step thru procedures without flipping back and forth.
 
He who dies with the most manuals, wins!
 
:-)

FWIW - For those who want to pursue Jay Tee's approach, I wrote an article that describes how to create a manual library using an iPad. It's great that so many companies have manuals online, and available for download.
 
Back to MIDI...

I suggest you go back and review my post #8. Your description of the issue is a little confusing, but I'm guessing you just need to enable Input Echo on the audio track receiving audio from your keyboard synth so that it will be echoed back out to your monitors. This would apply to real-time playing or playing back recorded MIDI, assuming you haven't yet recorded the audio output of the keyboard synth.

So you get the list of available audio inputs in the Input drop-down, but it reverts to None after you select one? Not sure what would cause that right offhand. Is it a USB interface? If so, maybe reboot your PC and make sure the interface is powered up first.

Derp I got it working, I hadnt selected the input through the microphone in.

Doumdoum
From Vab original question, I don't see any reasons to have an audio track, it should work with only MIDI tracks (for what he asked).

 
The question was: "Is it possible to play and record the voices on my piano... "
 
You can't record (or monitor through SONAR) the piano's "voice" without an audio track.
 

The question in the title of Vab's post wasn't the same than the post itself, I've answered to the POST, not to the title and I stand by my reply, for recording and editing using the hardware synth sounds only MIDI is necessary, no audio tracks are needed.

I understand that at some point you have to record the output of the synth into an audio track but it's before the mixing not before all editing is over.