www.disklavier.org
2003-11-13 by James Fry
Hi everyone, I've finally started to do some work on creating a disklavier website as a contribution back to the community that has helped me learn so much about my instrument, and given me hours of enjoyment by providing archives of music to play - Terry's work is absolutely incredible (I've just got around to reading his site properly, and it has given me a desire to build my own roll scanner), and Carol's depth of knowledge always amazes me. I have uploaded the initial design and some content to www.disklavier.org and www.disklavier.co.uk. There is little content there at the moment as I've been working on the main design, and am about to start writing the database and backend to the website. For those with web authoring skills, I am using XHTML and CSS where possible (and hopefully in a way that degrades gracefully). This means that the site may not look quite as intended in older browsers, but should still be completely accessible (by older I mean Netscape 4.xx and IE 3). Some of the ideas I've got for the site (these are probably apparent from the initial design I've uploaded) are: 1. A comprehensive FAQ for the disklavier. There are lots of questions that come up quite a lot on this list, and I think it would be good to have database of these questions and the various responses given (I've started to database some of the things I've seen on the mailing list over the last year in preparation for this, preserving information on who asked the question and came up with the answer(s)). 2. A database of Disklavier models from all around the world, with feature lists, limitations, original sale area, original price, manufacture dates, etc. 3. Galleries - of various things, mainly of the different disklaviers that people own (and the various types), but also of the group members (if they wish), and of famous pianists playing disklaviers. I think it would also be useful to have an archive of pictures showing the mechanisms and electronics of the different models. 4. Care and maintenance information - both the piano side, and disklavier side, eg how do you clean a piano safely without scratching it? How do you replace the floppy disk drive? 5. Upgrade information, e.g. applying firmware updates, new peripherals such as the DCD1, or wireless MIDI transceivers. For example, I still don't know what I need in order to upgrade my very late MPX1Z MarkIIXG with DKC500RW to be PianoSmart capable. 6. File archives - utilities, midi files, eseq files, etc. Much like the files area on the disklavier Yahoo group site, but probably with better indexes. I'm sure we could come up a really good archive of original performances quite quickly. Maybe Terry would even allow us to add his roll scans into the archive, allowing location and access of the individual files of interest. The list could go on and on. What do you people think of the idea, and the site that I've started work on? Would any of the group be interested in contributing articles, or collating FAQ information? Cheers for now! James