Message
Piano-e-Competition files now ready
2004-02-08 by PianoBench@aol.com
The MIDI files for the Disklavier Screening Round of the 2004 International Piano-e-Competition are now available for download at:
http://www.piano-e-competition.com/index.htm
The home page of the competition has links to all 53 contestants who made it to this round, including the 24 who moved on to the next round.
In December 2003, these contestants auditioned on Disklavier Pro pianos in Hamamatsu, Los Angeles, New York, and Paris. They were recorded in the high resolution XP format. During the recording process, they were also recorded by digital video cameras. In mid January 2004, the screening jury watched the videos with coordinated Disklavier playback (DCFIII Pro) in a concert hall at Hamline U. in St. Paul, MN.
The individual pages for each contestant have:
--links to general-purpose, Type 0 SMFs for each piece
These files are what the Disklavier Pro calls "Enhanced SMFs." They contain normal MIDI data that is compatible with all MIDI devices. All data is contained on channel 1. It includes data recorded uniquely by the Pro: note-off velocity information and full 128-increment pedal resolution.
--a .zip file of the entire program saved as high resolution XP SMFs
These .zip files are compressed archives that you need to decompress. They are intended for playback on a Disklavier Pro. They include directory files that provide title information. XP information includes 1023 increments of note-on (hammer) velocity, 1023 increments of key velocity, 1023 increments of note-of (key) velocity, and 128 increments of soft pedal and sustain pedal.
--a .zip file of the entire program saved as Enhanced SMFs
These .zip files are compressed archives that you need to decompress. They are intended for playback on Mark IIXG and later Disklaviers other than the Pro. They include directory files that provide title information. The XP data has been stripped from the original recordings.
--a .zip file of the entire program saved as E-SEQ files
These .zip files are compressed archives that you need to decompress. They are intended for playback on Mark II and earlier Disklaviers. Channel 1 contains note and pedal on/off data. Channel 3 contains incremental pedal data. They include directory files that provide title information. These are conversions of the Enhanced files.
Entering title information and converting these song files to these various formats involved a number of steps, some of which were expeditiously executed by a custom software program kindly provided by user-group member, John Q. Walker. His program saved hours of work.
For those you are interested in the technical details of the preparation of these files, I have provided further information below.
Regards,
PianoBench
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The original XP MIDI files were recorded while the Disklavier was slaved to incoming MIDI Time Code so that they could be played back for a jury coordinated with digital video. Before releasing the files to the general public, it was important to:
(1) remove the MIDI Time Code message from each file
(2) remove superfluous pedaling at the beginning of each file (which often resulted from the performer moving the pedal up and down before playing
(3) move the performance data appropriately close to the beginning of each file to avoid an unnecessary pause at the beginning
(4) remove duplicate pedal data from channel 2 in order to reduce file size
(5) remove unnecessary silence at the end of each file
John Q. Walker's program was used to undertake all of these tasks on a batch basis.
Next, a Yamaha in-house software program was used to input song titles as sequencer-specific meta events and to create disk directory files which include disk title information.
Once all of the XP files were finalized for release, they were run through Dr. Walker's program again in order to remove XP data and therefore reduce the file size much further. This process resulted in the Enhanced Files.
Finally, the Enhanced files, along with their directory files, were copied to floppy disk and the disks were converted to E-SEQ by the Disklavier (using the Disk Convert function). In the process of converting the disks to E-SEQ, the following occurred:
(1) a new E-SEQ directory file was created
(2) the song files were converted from Type 0 SMF to E-SEQ
(3) all pedal data was moved to channel three and new on/off pedal data (appropriate to Mark II and earlier Disklaviers) was created and added to the note data on channel 1
You may be interested to know how Dr. Walker's program handled the issue of removing superfluous pedal data at the beginning of each file.
Often, the performer would sit at the piano and think about playing the piece before beginning. During this interval--which might be as long as half a minute--the Disklavier was recording. Sometimes, the performer moved the pedals up and down a number of times.
Dr. Walker's program eliminated all pedal data before the first note of each file--except for the last soft pedal and sustain pedal messages that occurred just before the first note. These messages are the crucial ones that set the pedals into their proper position for the beginning of each piece.
In order to make sure that the pedals moved to these positions smoothly without a noticeable bump, the program added several gradations of pedaling, starting from the fully off position. You will notice this very smooth pedal motion at the beginning if you play these files on a Disklavier that responds to incremental pedal data.
Disklaviers that do not respond to incremental pedal data are:
MX100A&B
MX 80, 82, 84, 85, 88
MX22
MX116
MX500