Disklavier

Not having seen the browser you have written I can not compare it to what I use but there is a way to access a library on your tablet or phone that uses only existing software and a small computer attached to the Disklavier. This is what I do for my LX pianos. I can play both MIDI and audio encoded files made with MID2PianoC. I reallylike to display all the metadata possible so Media Monkey is my preference for a multimedia player. It is a little work to get MM to work with MIDI files and to display metadata since there is little agreement as to how to encode it in MIDI files. I have written utilities for extracting meta data from MIDI file and for putting it into MP3 tags or into tag.txt files for use with Mid2PianoCD. I prefer to use MP3 files because of all the tools available for working with them including the meta data tags.

It is difficult to imagine that anyone has written a tool that comes even close to the library management capabilities of Media Monkey. I have over 30000 audio tracks for the stereo and the piano that I can instantly search, sort and modify in a huge variety of ways with a very powerful and intuitive program. Media Monkey is great for anyone from the most naive computer user to the power user. Basically, it is what Itunes would be if it were not a bloated piece of garbage.

this entry on one of my blogs has the basics of the system.it refers to the LX piano but it works equally well for the Disklavier or PianoDisc.
there are a few more entries on the blog with more information. anyone who wants to do this is welcome to contact me for more hints and or for the tools i have written for dealing with metadata.
http://spencersviews.blogspot.com/2010/05/interfacing-to-lx-reproducing-piano.html

DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THE NEWER DISKLAVIERS WILL PLAY MP3 FILES? A friend recently bought one and wants to know.

Of course you can use WAV files which are much bigger but there is plenty of room for a large collection on even a small old computer like the ones I use for my pianos.

On 3/4/2013 3:10 AM, David Atack wrote:

Hi J,

I own an disklavier with a DKC50R control unit - I guess that's a bit like yours. I'm very interested in the Raspberry Pi + USB midi controller idea which you have put together. I have some moderate computer skills, but I have never done any programming, so can you explain to me what's involved in setting up a player/libray system like you have done? Or maybe more to the point how much would it cost for you to set one up for me to load all my Disklavier stuff onto? I'm in the UK by the way.

I look forward to hearing from you.

David Atack

From: Pi Piano <raspberrypipiano@...>
To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, 1 March 2013, 4:31
Subject: [disklavier] Upgrading older disklaviers

Hi,

I'm an owner of an older disklavier with a DKC5R control unit. The floppy drive was finally starting to fail on my piano so I decided to see what I could do to keep my piano workable since the latest control units from Yamaha aren't fully compatible with my piano. I bought a raspberry pi (Raspberry Pi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) a USB midi controller and created a web-browser interface to allow me to upload and play midi files on my disklavier from a tablet or PC. I've moved my whole library onto the raspberry pi and now using my disklavier is more convenient than before. I'm sort of proud of what I was able to do and I'm wondering if anyone else needs a similar solution. If there's enough interest I can put together a small batch of the properly programmed mini computers. I'm not looking to do this to make money, but I'm not going to do this for free either. Let me know if you have the same problem. If there's enough interest I'll post some more details and put something together for distribution. If no one else needs this, I'll just continue enjoying controlling my disklavier from my tablet.

Regards,

J

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