How to record/play back midi in reaper

[Reist]

I guess the title sums it up. I've got my keyboard plugged in via midi to my interface, and I've figured out how to record it into reaper. However, when I play back the midi, I don't hear anything - and I don't know how to turn it into a waveform when I need to. I've never used midi until now, so this might be pretty basic stuff. Are there any midi pros who can help me out here?

[Lunkhead]

So it sounds like you have the MIDI OUT of your keyboard connected to the MIDI IN of your interface, and you're able to record the MIDI that your keyboard sends out when you play it. I don't know much about Reaper, but in Cubase, you need to choose an output for the MIDI track. The MIDI has to go out to something that actually makes noise, like your keyboard or a software synth/virtual instrument/etc. If you want the MIDI to go out to your keyboard you'd choose the MIDI OUT of your interface as the output for your MIDI track, then connect the MIDI OUT of your interface to the MIDI IN of your keyboard. Then when you play the track the MIDI will go to your keyboard, and your keyboard will emit audio to its audio outs. If you want that audio as waveforms in your project you'll need to record the audio outs of your keyboard to audio tracks while playing the song. I'm not sure if I'm making a whole lot of sense here.

Sending the MIDI track to a soft synth or virtual instrument is often easier because the audio is automatically part of your project and will change automatically when you change the MIDI. So for me, what I do is I plug the MIDI OUT of my keyboard to the MIDI IN of my interface, record MIDI from my keyboard, then assign the output of my MIDI tracks to virtual instruments/samplers/etc. in Reason. Reason sends its audio to Cubase, and when I export a mix the audio from Reason gets mixed in with my audio tracks in Cubase. I don't even use the actual sounds in my keyboard, I only use it as a way to input MIDI data.