Disklavier

Just for completeness...

Your husband is right when he says that the changes are temporary (assigning different instruments for a MIDI playback), but there is a way to fix that as well (of course, I'm ignoring the obvious solution of doing this on a PC).

As I recall (and, again, it's been a while since I've done this) there is a way record a new version of the song by starting off with an existing one...and the newly recorded one will retain all of the changes that you have made.  This isn't a good description of how to do it...but it's in the manual pretty clearly.  That being said...the whole process is VERY cumbersome, and it gets old quickly.

-Kevin



----- Original Message ----
From: Joan Heitzeberg (Conahan) <jheitzeb1@...>
To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 2:20:37 AM
Subject: [disklavier] Mark IV Voice Update


My husband sent me this email where he has written up this explanation
of what he has determined about the voice option on the Mark IV. 

I am posting it here:

A. When physically striking the keys, there are two ways to change the
"voice" in the Quiet (or Headphone) mode :

#1. While playing a midi song the ability to select a different voice
applies only to the sound the piano makes when you physically strike
the keys. Selecting a different voice will NOT change the sound of a
midi recording being played; it only affects the sound when someone
strikes the keyboard. 

#2. And, as Gene mentioned there is the ability to change the "voice"
of the sound generated when keys are struck via the "Performance"
menu. This method has several more options. You can assign different
voices to the left hand and right hand parts (with a selectable "Split
Point" between left and right). And, furthermore, two voices can be
combined on the right hand. For example, the Right Hand keys can be
assigned to simultaneously play the "Warm Pad" and "Drawbar Organ"
voices while the left hand keys could play "Finger Bass" voice. 
However, while in the "Performance" mode, you cannot simultaneously
play a midi recording as you can in #1 above.

B. There is a way to change the "voice" of any midi track (#1 thru
#16) when a song is played back in Quiet Mode. This is done by
clicking on "Ensemble" then clicking on a tracks containing data
(shown in black not gray) then clicking on "voice" to select from the
532 voice possibilities. 
[Note: Typically one or two tracks of a midi recording are assigned to
be played acoustically (i.e. with hammers hitting the strings) and are
they assigned to the Left and Right hand piano parts.  To assign a
"voice" to these acoustic piano tracks you must first un-assign them
from the Left and/or Right hand parts via the menu screen that
displays "Piano Part Ch L" and "Piano Part Ch R".  For example "Piano
Part Ch L: 02"  indicates track 2 is assigned to the Left hand part
while "Piano Part Ch L: ##" indicates no assignment. I also noticed
these voice assignment are only temporary (i.e. when the song is
played again the default voice assignments are used).]

Thanks... Ed 

P.S. I'll take Gene up on his offer and call him in a day or two after
I've played around with this a little bit more. 
I'm also including the URL
(https://sourceforge .net/project/ showfiles. php?group_ id=209840) for
information on the free sofware application "DKVBroswer" . We have been
using the alpha version 0.4 for the past 6 months (wirelessly) .  And
we just updated to the Beta version 1.04 which works with the most
recent Yamaha Mark IV software version 3.0.  DKVBrowser has some
features which are superior to Yamaha's "Virtual PRC Interface"
including a more comprehensive search feature with much larger display
area. And as you proved, both DKVBrowser and "Virtual PRC Inerface"
can be used simultaneously on the same or multiple computers getting
the best of both worlds.