2017-10-17 by wam@...
George, thanks so much for your update. That is exciting news.
I do a lot of editing of midi files using a simple editor called midiswing – mostly to optimise playback for my Enspire and my Pianodisc grands – simply to adjust extremely loud or soft note velocities and occasionally correct pedalling.
I also use Qmidi to create playlists.
In anticipation of HD midi, I bought the Zenph XP RePerform editor years ago when it was first launched, but I found little use for it then as I was only using Pianodisc. Since the company folded, and I lost the original file, I have been able to get hold of it again from one of your kind members. It is very useful for XP files on the Enspire.
Opening a standard midi in Zerph RePerform will ask you immediately to choose on which Disklavier piano type you intend to use the file. They offer a choice of 5 Disklaviers. Otherwise an XP file will open immediately. Any file can be saved to suit Pro pianos and resaved as XP files – not (I imagine) that the nuancing of note-on note-off values and other nuances will be imparted to a file that never contained that information.
Standard midis do not always playback instantly in the Enspire – sometimes first playback sounds muffled, so I have to drop them into RePerform and resave them to suit MkIV or Pro Disklavier. Then they play perfectly.
I rarely encounter any difficulty editing and saving XP files in standard editors. Unless I perform severe cuts the Enspire piano seems to recognise the extra XP data even after the XP file has been modified in a standard editor. I can detect no audible loss of definition between playback of an XP file edited in a standard editor and returned to the piano from a standard midi file or when it is replayed as an XP file using RePerform.
I send my optimised standard files by email to friends who have an earlier Disklavier, and they have no trouble playing them via USB stick mounted into an 850 controller, but strangely, the same files will not play directly from my USB to their piano, although track names appear and are easily read.
It would be nice to think that an XP editor created by Yamaha, could be made available to musicians and Recording Engineers as well as amateurs, who record on Pro rated Disklaviers. Although XP files from Yamaha Den open easily in RePerform, those generated by my new Enspire piano are not immediately recognised (by RePerform) and have to be opened in standard editors. Mark Fontana advises that this may be a parsing problem and has notified Yamaha, but that was some months ago and I have heard no more.
IAN WILLIAMSON
---In disklavier@yahoogroups.com, <PianoBench@...> wrote :
Good afternoon, everyone.
Ian, I am one of those who maintains the DEN webpages.
Up till now, the primary reason that the Piano-e-Competition files have not been available from recent competitions is that there have been obstacles to processing them. In most cases, the original recordings are in XP mode, which means that they contain extra MIDI messages that provide the high resolution information that is used on playback by the Disklavier PRO.
When the files are processed, it is necessary to edit them in a number of ways. For starters, there are often many pieces that are contained within a single recording. For example, a single recording could contain an entire hour-long recital.
During the processing of the files, we break up these longer recordings into individual pieces. In doing so, we need to maintain the integrity of the XP data, ensure that each file contains the necessary header information (which appeared just once in the original file), and we get rid of extraneous pedaling that occurred between pieces.
Once the XP files are processed, we create derivative “normal” Standard MIDI Files and legacy E-SEQ files.
You would expect that the foregoing tasks would be straightforward, using a MIDI sequencer on Mac or PC. However, we have not found a commercial sequencer that will handle the XP data correctly. The XP data typically involves multiple messages that must appear in a particular order on a particular clock tick. Commercial sequencers tend to mess with the order of these XP events.
The files from 2002-2011 were processed by a company that no longer exists, using in-house tools that were not commercially available. Although there was an commercial XP editor that became available in 2011-2012 called RePerform, that editor is not up to this task for a variety of reasons.
The good news is that we have recently come up with a method of processing these files, and they will start to become available this fall on the DEN and Piano-e-Competition sites.
In the case of the files that briefly became available for the 2017 competition, I believe that someone made a momentarily mistake by releasing them. I do not believe that there was an intention to release these files commercially but not freely on the Piano-e-Competition and DEN websites.
Regards,
PianoBench
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from my last visits to both the yamahaden signature pages, and the Minnesota e-competition site, midi files are not available for the competitions of several recent years. The Minnesota site offers videos in lieu – the Den site offers only the early competition files . But Yamaha areare selling thru Musicsoft (or offering on promo thru sales) the 2017 files as standard midi or .psx files
Yamaha sponsors the event and, one presumes, originally set up all the recording facilities to capture hundreds of fine performances.
I have sent 2 e-emails to "Yamaha Support" to find out who maintains this page and to answer my question as to why, after so many years of posting the e-competition performances, Yamaha has stopped posting the e-competition on that page. Both replies came back from Musicsoft and cannot answer my questions.
The Den page gives owners of ALL Disklaviers, options for downloading midis in file formats to suit their particular pianos – and this is no longer happening.
Now that new postings on the Den page have discontinued I can no longer get XP files for my Enspire Piano and I have to make do with Standard midis purchased thru Musicsoft. Of course I'm grateful that due to a promotion, these were available at no cost.
Musicsoft sales division does not seem to be supporting Yamaha's latest Enspire Pianos. They have so few XP formatted titles available. As they are no longer available on Den pages, why then are the 2017 e-competion files not available to Musicsoft in XP format, when the recordings were all certainly made on XP Pro pianos?
IAN WILLIAMSON
On 12/10/2017, at 11:17 PM, 'George F. Litterst'
PianoBench@... [disklavier] wrote:
Good morning, everyone.
Alak, I think it possible that the files have been removed from the store, perhaps because they were not intended to be available on a commercial basis.
The files will eventually end up in the Signature MIDI Collection on the website of the Yamaha Disklavier Education Network (
www.yamahaden.com) and on the website of the Minnesota International Piano-e-Competition (
www.piano-e-competition.com). I expect that to be the case within a month and will keep you informed.
Regards,
PianoBench
Hi Guys,
and gave me a page not found 404 error. I also made sure I was logged into my Yamaha Musicsoft account before clicking the link.
Is this link only accessible to EU customers?
Thanks,
Alak.
That’s probably it. I don’t have a Yamaha account. I’ll get the files from someone else.
Kind regards
Geoff
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Promo codes can’t be applied unless you’re logged in to your account. That may be the problem.
epiano didn’t work for me.
Kind regards
Geoff