Disklavier

Oscar Peterson did record an album for the Marantz Pianocorder system.
This system (designed in the mid-1970s) falls short of the Disklavier's
capabilities, but the system was capable of at least 32 levels of
expression, and the resulting performances were carefully edited to
try and match an audio recording made simultaneously with the raw
note data.

Yamaha acquired the Pianocorder Oscar Peterson performances when they
bought out the Pianocorder division of Marantz in 1987.  Although Yamaha
has converted some of the Pianocorder material to ESEQ format for sale in
the Pianosoft library, much of it remains unreleased.

I have done my own MIDI conversions of the Pianocorder library using a
procedure that is possibly superior to the methods used by Yamaha, and
I provided MIDI conversions of the Oscar Peterson material to PG Music and
Yamaha Canada (at their request) in the spring of 1999.  Since then, I've
inquired several times as to the status of this material and my messages 
have mostly gone unanswered.  It may be possible that these conversions
appear on the PG Music CD-ROM, which I have not yet seen.


On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Mike McGregor wrote:

> Dear Mike Z
> 
> I have looked for a Pianosoft recordong of Oscar Peterson for about a
> year.  None in the catalog.
> 
> Also looked at QRS Music and PianoDisc catalogs - nada.
> 
> PGMusic (PGMusic.com)  offers an Oscar Peterson CD-ROM that has a lot of
> multimedia material about Oscar Peterson, and a set of his compositions
> in MIDI format.  You'll have to read about it yourself to fully
> understand it, but the short version is that they transcribed some
> Peterson recorded audio performances to MIDI and tried to make them sound
> just like the live performances.  The CD-ROM is pricey.  I don't know of
> anyone who has purchased it.  I plan to get it one of these days, but
> have other priorities for now.
> 
> Mike McGregor


--
Mark A. Fontana
Minneapolis, MN