Disklavier

Carol:

I had my Disklavier Mk IV operating system upgraded. 
Since then a lot of midi I downloaded and that played
fine are now no longer playing on the piano in coustic
mode - but only "electronically".  Have you heard of
this happening before?  Is there a fix?

--- Carol Beigel <thecarolb@...> wrote:

> I am a piano technician who fell in love with
> electronic player pianos when they were first
> invented
> in the early 1980's.  My first one was a Pianocorder
> Vorsetzer that used 80 pinball machine solenoids and
> a
> Marantz propriety cassette deck.  You could roll
> this
> thing up to any piano, connect the pedal rods to the
> top of of the pedals, and have digitized player
> piano
> rolls on cassettes play your piano. Yamaha bought
> this
> company and the Pianocorder became no more.  I still
> have my Vorsetzer and the library of cassette tapes!
> 
> MIDI was invented in the early 80's, but every
> company
> had their own version.  Yamaha's version was called
> ESEQ and that was the software that ran the first
> Disklaviers, the Wagon Grand and the MX100A/B. The
> solenoid technology was better than the old pinball
> machines, and laser beams broken by shutters were
> used
> to measure hammer and key travel.
> 
> It wasn't until about 1986 that a standard was
> agreed
> upon, and General MIDI came about.  Yamaha came out
> with the MarkII that could play standard MIDI format
> 0
> files as well as their own ESEQ stuff.
> 
> Then flash memory was invented.  This made software
> upgradable by using a floppy disk instead of having
> to
> replace a chip on the motherboard.  The MarkIIXG not
> only could play standard MIDI files in format 0, but
> format 1 as well.  The XG MIDI sounds were the next
> generation of MIDI sounds as pioneered by Yamaha. 
> They
> also had incremental pedaling.
> 
> Then "pulsating" solenoids were invented and they
> appeared on the MarkIII.  Personally, I think one of
> the greatest musical inventions of the 20th century
> was
> the transposable audio that came with the MarkIII. 
> You
> could play a CD with your piano and adjust the pitch
> of
> someone singing!  The MarkIII could play MIDI 0 and
> 1,
> plus digital audio, plus it STILL played the ESEQ
> files
> that had been invented years earlier.  It's like
> having
> Microsoft Office still supporting my Commodore 64 I
> bought in 1985!  Also with the MarkIII came the
> piano
> action special "jacks" that enable silent playing
> without affecting the touch on your fingers.
> 
> With a DSR-1 control box and the DCD1  CD player
> (hardware upgrades), you can upgrade any Disklavier
> to
> most of the capabilities of the MarkIII.
> 
> Now we have the MarkIV that uses different solenoids
> that were previously only available in the PRO
> models,
> different operating system (Lynux), uses a PDA for a
> remote controller, but it STILL plays the old ESEQ
> floppy disks!  The recordings create twice as much
> data
> as the older systems, so it has a hard drive instead
> of
> a floppy disk.  It can also control the loudness and
> softness of the piano playing better than any
> previous
> models. Most of this is hardware, so you would have
> to
> gut your Disklavier electronics and start from
> scratch
> to upgrade to MarkIV electronics.  This is not going
> to
> happen.
> 
> We have come a long way from pinball machine
> solenoids,
> and only the Yamaha Disklavier will give you really
> good quality recordings.  The QRS Patine system, and
> the PianoDisc are now incorporating copy protection
> systems that are a total pain to deal with.  How
> would
> like to find out your old library of expensive music
> no
> longer plays on the current product??  At least
> Yamaha
> never did that to you!
> 
> Carol Beigel
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> Todd's family web site was completely updated
> 012/22/03.  It contains some fun disklavier content
> and links to midi sites among many other things, The
> url is:
> http://MuncyFamily.com 
> 
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