14 billions years of subtle influence and here we are...

I've been playing on a new keyboard lately, and I'm not talkin' pc...
we bought a new Yamaha S08 from Guitar Center (memorial day sale I couldn't resist).
yeah it's a real synthesizer with 88 weighted keys, lotsa cool sounds and MIDI2 - which I hookup via USB.

so this new hobby presents a number of challenges I'm facing. beyond learning to play piano, how do I get it to work as a MIDI controller? meaning I play and the pc records. and if I play a song on fruity loops, how do I get it to play back on the synth (or is that possible?) basic stuff, but it doesn't just work snap! just like that -- there are some concepts and terms I don't get yet. the manual and software speaka da different lingo. lotsa potential there though, I can feel it.

the keyboard teacher says that it's an octave too low. hmm, the manual talks about a center note, but shifting an octave sounds extreme. could he be wrong? the high and low pitches seem like a real piano to me
...but what do I know? and the other voices aren't set to a standard range are they?

well one issue seems to have been solved rather nicely: the S08 was first made in 2002 or so... back before the standards for memory chips had settled (I think). yamaha chose smartmedia for memory (to store your work of course), which, as it turns out was not so smart. the limited storage (128MB?) doesn't fly with todays hi megapixel cameras and so, as a result of those market forces you can't just go to the local office depot, best buy or fry's today and pickup up smartmedia memory -- I tried and none of them carry it anymore. google to the rescue pointed me to memorysuppliers.com. who cares that they're located in chicago... they have what I want in stock and sell it online quite painlessly. sure I just picked the top paid google ad, but hey the price is right and they even give me a discount to tout them here. so there you go, snap! just like that! now will someone point me to an expert that can 'splain my MIDI questions? (yah, right. that should be ez :p -- I know how to solve these problems; I do it for a living dude!)