Hey - total newbie here (sorry…!) I hope I’m using this forum correctly so apologies in advance if I’m in the wrong Universe…
I’ve just downloaded and installed the new Dorico 3 SE with a view to making my first attempts at writing music (without pen and paper!) I’m using a MacBook Pro running MacOS Catalina 10.15.1. I have a Yamaha P-95 keyboard and, if I have understood correctly, I should be able to use this to input notes via MIDI. I have an old MIDI to USB cable which I have used to connect the MIDI IN / MIDI OUT on the Yamaha to a USB port on the Mac. A red light comes on on the little black box on the cable where the two MIDI cables become one (sorry - no idea about terminology), but I can’t see any evidence of a signal getting to the Mac. I understand that I should be able to see a little green flashing light in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, but no such luck. Basically, the setup isn’t behaving as it does in the lovely YouTube videos, and yet it all seemed so simple when watching! Obviously I’m missing an important piece of kit or I haven’t checked / unchecked the required options under preferences or something…either way, I’m clearly doing something very wrong.
Any advice would be gratefully received, and please don’t feel afraid to state the obvious here - you’re dealing with a real beginner and I promise I won’t take offence!
Many thanks in advance.
Welcome, frogsbird. If you go to the Playback page of Preferences and click the button ‘MIDI Input Devices’, do you see any entries in the list there?
Assuming it’s one of the cheapo MIDI-USB cables like the one I was using earlier this week, make sure that you’ve connected the Midi Out cable to the P-95’s Midi in, and the Midi In cable to the P-95’S Midi Out…
Wow, a P-95. That’s practically an antique 
Yamahas are a bit tricky to setup - I used to work with a Yamaha P-120 - and they can be finicky even after you’ve got everything working.
For starters I’m pretty sure that you will need a USB driver which you can download from Yamaha website and install on your machine.
Then there also may be issues with the Mac Audio Midi Setup. I was never able to figure out how that worked after multiple attempts - it was mostly trial and error.
This is not a Dorico issue per se. I recommend that you try to get things working with GarageBand first. If you cannot get any sound out of GarageBand it’s not going to work with Dorico. Likely there are other sources on the web that will be of more help. Good luck.
Well, what difference a bit of knowledge makes! Thank you pianoleo for pointing out my schoolboy error…once IN is plugged into OUT and vice versa, all of a sudden miracles happen!
Still lots to explore and discover, but at least we’re now cooking with gas, so to speak.
Thank you all for your patience and excellent advice…I’m sure I’ll be back
The MIDI “in to out” connections were perfectly intuitive back in the day when MIDI hardware all had separate sockets labelled “in”, “out,” and “thru”, and the cables were not labelled at all - they were just wires connecting the individual sockets. You plugged a cable from the “out” on one device to the “in” on another one, and the data went where you expected it to go.
Things got confusing when computers started using game ports (and later USB) which transmitted data in both directions, and the labels had to be put on the cable and not on the computer socket. Computer MIDI cables were usually labeled “in” and “out” corresponding to the MIDI connections at the computer end of the cable, so you plugged the “in” cable into the “out” on the external device.
And then a few manufactures decided this was too complicated, and swapped the labels over so you connected “in” to “in” ….
Take home message: if it doesn’t work one way round, try the other one 