Disklavier

Good afternoon, everyone.

On Dec 3, 2005, at 11:31 AM, sstapels wrote:

> I am hoping someone can steer me to a good resource.   I have a 8
> foot baby grand with disklavier including the old control wagon
> dkw10.  In addion I have the Dom-30 unit.
>
> [SNIP]

> However I am having a bit of trouble with the Dom-30 unit when I play
> midi trought the computer.  It seams that the Dom-30 unit is not
> selecting the proper voice like it does when I play the song via the
> dkw10 disk drive.
>
> I have the midi out from the computer into the midi in of the piano,
> and then have the out of the pinano going to the Dom-30 just like
> before the computer.

When you play from your computer, I suspect that you are trying to  
play Standard MIDI files that reference voices in the General MIDI  
(GM) sound set. Unfortunately, the DOM-30 predates GM. The DOM-30 has  
an older sound set call Disk Orchestra Collection (DOC).

During file playback, a MIDI file (or an E-SEQ file, Yamaha's pre- 
MIDI file format) sends messages (called patch changes or program  
changes) to the tone generator telling it which voice to use for each  
track. These messages contain a voice number from 1 to 128. Voice 8,  
for example, in the DOC sound set is not necessarily the same voice  
as voice 8 in GM.

In the early 1990s, the keyboard industry developed the set of voices  
called GM so that customers could count on the correct voices being  
used during playback regardless as to which keyboard or tone  
generator is used. Obviously, not every keyboard in the world has GM,  
but most consumer-level keyboards have GM and computers usually have  
a built-in GM sound set.

Your best bet is to retire the DOM-30 and add a DSR1 to your  
Disklavier. The DSR1 has DOC, GM, and XG (Yamaha's expansion of GM).  
In addition, it has support for high density disks and Type 0 and  
Type 1 Standard MIDI files. It has a remote control. The buttons on  
the front panel work almost exactly like those on the Mark IIXG and  
Mark III Disklaviers (except that the Mark III also has a CD feature).

Regards,
PianoBench