So far I've only tried using the SI Electric Piano synth, but the voices on my DGX 630 are much better, but I only know how to record them through an audio track.
 
I would like to record them onto midi tracks so I can get access to editing them using the step sequencer and using other midi tools too.
 
I have it installed both through the microphone input for audio recording, and via USB as a midi controller.

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. 

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?

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.

I highly recommend that you use your keyboard as a midi controller to record MIDI onto the MIDI track, and then play it back through your keyboard's synth while recording the audio output into Sonar.
Also remember that once you convert to audio (by recording) you lose a lot of the great MIDI editing capabilities that are in Sonar.  I would do the actual recording later in production.  Of course, as long as you keep your MIDI track you can re-record as many times as you like!
 
Brian

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!

Stone House Studios
I highly recommend that you use your keyboard as a midi controller to record MIDI onto the MIDI track, and then play it back through your keyboard's synth while recording the audio output into Sonar.
 
Brian

 
Yes this is what I am trying to do, if I play the midi track back through the keyboards synth will it play the sound that the keyboard is set to?
 
I'm still recording a few short ideas onto audio tracks as I still havnt fully figured how to do this through midi, and already realized that the timings and dynamics are always inaccurate, hence I want to be able to get the piano's voices recorded onto midi tracks instead.

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.
 
.
 
 

Agree with Stonehorse and Burndlefly.
 
But if you have already created an SI Elec Piano track, you can direct that MIDI to an external synth.  Recording it to audio and using Melodyne to convert to MIDI would just be extra uneeded steps of going from MIDI to audio and back to MIDI.  Maybe I misunderstand.
 
I use external synths all the time.  I create a MIDI track and direct the OUT in the track inspector to the correct port and channel of my MIDI interface.  I plug the synths audio into the audio interface.  Then I create an audio track with the input coming from the correct input in the audio interface.
 
For multitimbral synths that are playing several sounds at once, my technique has a few more steps we can discuss if and when that is needed.
 
If you have trouble, we could do some screen shots to help.  My setup may be more complicated that what you need, though, since I am using a V-Studio 700 and the In/Out list is Sonar looks a bit confusing compared to a more straightforward interface.

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.