Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

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buzzsmith
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Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by buzzsmith »

Just had to share!

About a year and a half ago I came into possession of a 1988 Yamaha C7 MIDI Grand.

The piano sounds and records wonderfully and I had no real need or desire to even experiment with the MIDI part.

(Which was fortunate, because the previous owner had lost the unique 2 pin Cannon power supply.)

Anyway, after chatting with an LA composer friend, he kinda sparked my interest into seeing if that function of the piano still worked.

I could see on the MIDI interface located on the underside of the piano that it required 12 VDC at 1 amp. I started Googling to find out whatever information I could about the piano and the unique Cannon plug.

Found a shop in the Netherlands (http://www.ep-service.nl/joomla/index.p ... e&Itemid=1) that had the connector and they shipped it to me.

I had already located a transformer with the correct specs in a box full of old-unused-can't-remember-what-this-was-for wall warts.

Before going through the trouble of wiring the connector to the transformer, I decided to see if the unit would even power up, so I stripped the output wires off of the transformer and used 2 mini alligator clip leads to connect the output of the transformer to the two pins on the underside MIDI unit. From research, I already knew that pin 2 (clearly marked) was the positive.

After attaching, and flipping the power button...nada. No display, not lights, nothing.

More Googling eventually revealed that I needed to remove the fallboard (key cover) to access more circuitry that might have a failed fuse or reveal a defective battery.

In doing so, I discovered that three interconnect cables were just dangling without their mates. I reconnected those and tried again. VOILA! It powered up. :D

Then this morning I dragged the closet MIDI device I could to it and interconnected them. Checked to make sure both were on the same channel and ... :woohoo: the 2nd unit played right along with the piano.

So, now I have the option of recording the piano acoustically and with a parallel MIDI track of the performance as soon as I run a long MIDI cable to the MIDI in on the MTP AV.

As I said...just sharing!

Buzzy

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DSC_2589 by Buzzy Smith, on Flickr
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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by MIDI Life Crisis »

Perfection is when you can edit in MIDI and have the actual piano playback. Can you do that? I wasn't sure. It should be possible iof the playback mechanism is in there. C7s ROCK! You're a lucky man. :dance:
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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by buzzsmith »

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Perfection is when you can edit in MIDI and have the actual piano playback. Can you do that? I wasn't sure. It should be possible if the playback mechanism is in there. C7s ROCK! You're a lucky man. :dance:
No, MLC, these models don't have the servos to actually play the piano from DP. It's just basically a controller. I'm pretty sure there is a retrofit available to do that but I bet it's $$$$.

I think the later Disklaviers have that ability. Shooshie would certainly know.

That would be most excellent, however!

Buzzy
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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by Shooshie »

That's great news, Buzzy! I wonder if it allows you to calibrate the MIDI Out in any way. If you play a scale very evenly at a low volume, does it send out a fairly consistent set of Velocities for those notes? For a very quiet scale, I'd expect that piano to send out velocities in the neighborhood of 19. Back then they had trouble with lower velocities on the Disklavier. I don't know if it was the same with the MIDI Piano.

MLC, the MIDI Piano is like having a MIDI controller in your piano keyboard, but it does not play back piano sounds. The MIDI Piano doesn't have solenoids under the keys like the Disklavier. Just sensor flags on the hammers, which measure the speed of the hammer at impact.

The Disklavier, on the other hand, could play back what it recorded, but it did not have a lot of control over the MIDI. Basically you would put it through its calibration routines, and that would keep the MIDI adjusted consistently, even as the piano (an organic creature without the consistency of digital instruments) changed with weather, age, and wear.

Disklaviers are wonderful instruments. I miss those days when I was making 5 of them sing together all the time. That was one of those one-of-a-kind experiences.

Happy MIDI Piano-ing, Buzzy!

Shooshie
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Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by buzzsmith »

Thanks, Shooshie. It appears to be near impossible to find a manual, but I do see 2 front panel controls labeled...

Level Scaling
Key Limit

I'm on my way to the "Shack" to pick up one more MIDI cable coupler so I should be recording data in the next hour or so into DP.

Then, I'll check and see what the velocity range(s) is/are and if they are modifiable from the front panel.

Buzzy
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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by buzzsmith »

Update:

Ran the MIDI cable from the piano to the MTP AV and got the MIDI Grand configured within Audio MIDI Setup and DP and ran a quick test.

It does appear that the minimum velocities transmitted by the piano are in the mid 30s to mid 40s no matter how softly I played.

And the highest velocities seem to be in the 90s range. I didn't go Rachmaninoff on it, so there may be some higher velocities possible.

I have an email into a rep with Yamaha (they've been very helpful) to check on the velocity range and see if SOMEWHERE there might be an owner's manual and a service manual.

Bottom line...

It is working just fine, but I would like a bit more dynamic range without editing.

Buzzy
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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by Buzzy »

buzzsmith wrote:Bottom line...

It is working just fine, but I would like a bit more dynamic range without editing.

Buzzy
My fellow Buzzy, be sure to try the MIDI plugin 'velocity' as an insert on the mixing board. I have had a lot of success expanding the dynamic range of MIDI drums from TD-8 drum pad performances. It is a powerful built in plug-in as long as you are willing to put the necessary experimentation time in.
This sounds very exciting. Best of luck. 8)
.Bzz...

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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by Shooshie »

buzzsmith wrote:It does appear that the minimum velocities transmitted by the piano are in the mid 30s to mid 40s no matter how softly I played.

And the highest velocities seem to be in the 90s range. I didn't go Rachmaninoff on it, so there may be some higher velocities possible.

That's about right. The Disklavier's working range was from about 30 to 99, but it was possible to record up to about 112, and sometimes you could get velocities in the teens, but they were not consistent, and they didn't play back consistently below about V=25. I thought maybe the MIDI piano would record a better range, since it wasn't attempting to play them back, but it could be that the difficulty was in capturing the lower velocities, what with the hammer moving so much slower. I can see that the accuracy would diminish with longer tracking times for a hammer passing two laser trip sensors with its flag.

I hope you can get a larger range, but you can always expand it with the Velocity MIDI Plugin.

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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by buzzsmith »

Just received an email from David at Yamaha...

"The velocities you’re seeing are normal. You should also see highs ranging no higher than the 90’s, with rare occasions above 100. This is due to the fact that you are controlling an actual physical entity in the piano action, as opposed to streams of electrical current, so the numbers get limited to a more central range."

Buzzy

(I also ordered the owner's and service manuals.)
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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by Shooshie »

buzzsmith wrote:Just received an email from David at Yamaha...

"The velocities you’re seeing are normal. You should also see highs ranging no higher than the 90’s, with rare occasions above 100. This is due to the fact that you are controlling an actual physical entity in the piano action, as opposed to streams of electrical current, so the numbers get limited to a more central range."

Buzzy

(I also ordered the owner's and service manuals.)
His answer was a non-answer, kind of using circular logic. "It only goes up to 100, because it's a piano and can only go up to 100.

No, the answer was something much more technical, and I'm not sure I can remember it all. The Disklavier itself uses much smaller increments of measurement than the 128 steps of standard MIDI practice. The MIDI Grand uses the same measurement system they were developing for the Disklavier. They put out the MIDI Grand first, but they used the same laser/flag interrupt system to calculate the speed of the hammer.

The Japanese executive in charge of the creation of the Disklavier and MIDI Grand was a piano purist who did not want to make it MIDI compatible, so in the design phase they didn't bother to make it easily translatable to MIDI code. The idea was for the Disklavier to be the ultimate player piano, and they were going to sell performances by the great pianists, deliverable on 3.5 inch floppy disks, which would be inserted into the Disklavier "cart," which was a computer module on wheels, connected to the piano with a fat 3/4" cable. Its resolution would capture the most subtle nuances -- something that MIDI cannot do with 128 steps of velocity.

MIDI was retrofitted onto the Disklavier before it entered into production, but its addition opened a number of new cans of worms, and to solve all those problems with precision would have required much time for testing. They hurriedly implemented a range translation formula which attempted to put the most natural playing range in the middle (64) and leave headroom for those occasional notes that nearly smash the hammers. Thus, your could play a note at 118 to 120 or so, maybe even 127, but the Disklavier could not play it back any louder than the same note at about 99 - 101. In other words, they just kind of estimated the headroom.

Then there were the low velocities. The original solenoids simply could not be made to rise at the slow speed necessary to play a key at the velocity of 1. Yamaha made 30 the cutoff point for accuracy, and while it would record lower velocities, playback at those levels were just luck of the draw. Moreover, at levels lower than 30, the Disklavier could not reproduce accurate rhythms, especially repeated notes. So, there were a combination of limiting factors: the vastly dissimilar resolutions of MIDI vs. the DK's internal system of counting, the impossible-to-predict top speed that a performer could whack a hammer into a string, and the physical limitations at the slow end of the electro-magnetic solenoid performance in the first generation or two of Disklaviers. (in other words, how quiet it can play accurately)

Thus, the MIDI Grand apparently inherited the worst properties of the Disklavier, without even having the playback system that was responsible for those properties.

You might find this interesting, though it doesn't apply to the MIDI Grand. The solenoids in the Disklaviers were not your normal electromagnets. I mean, they shared much in common with those devices that lock your car door from a remote, but they had to come up with a method of controlling the current that guaranteed precision movement. Mere voltage can't even come close to raising those solenoids with precision movement. So, what they did was to use the frequency modulation that they developed in their DX7 and other FM synthesizers years ago. With FM voltage, they could peg any speed for any solenoid, and even could program a calibration table for each solenoid to make it work with greater accuracy.

So, the Yamaha Disklavier and the Yamaha DX7 both rely on the same technology to make them work! Bizarre, isn't it?

Shooshie

PS: I'm repeating 20 year old memories here; I hope they made it this far without too much deterioration. Yamaha's Bill Brandom and Carter Schull taught me everything there was to know about the Disklavier. Bill called me "Mr. Disklavier," and spent many hours on the phone with me telling me all the deep-stuff that they don't put in manuals. Carter visited the house/studio many times, often going out to eat with us, keeping us informed with various behind-the-scenes Yamaha info. He was a big fan of the show.
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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by Salvadoredelle »

I own a Yamaha C7 MIDI grand piano and love it! I use it mainly as a standard grand piano in my recording studio and I also rent it for stage and studio and tours. The MIDI is great for the most part... it is NOT a player piano but a MIDI controller and a great one too! I love the feel and have had mine voiced to be a little less bright in tone and a medium action. It plays and records nicely! I use the MIDI sparingly for recording other MIDI instruments... I have a ton of them!
One thing it is pretty good for in regards to MIDI is on stage or in rehearsals is I can connect to a Piano module, not so much for FOH mix but for the stage monitors in a full band situation when it needs to be real loud in the monitors... I'll add the sound module in on top... I'll also add strings to the piano sound too and for some arrangements it works great... But the Piano is awesome! and when I had it re-voiced it was like having it new again! The MIDI is great for rock/pop type situations but you need some good programming of the keyboards level scaling to your modules and keys to make it work... the high end can get away from you so there is some programming in the velocity stretch up there you need to keep under control. On thing I like is the semi quiet mode you can put it into, it has a lever that pulls a thick felt strip between the hammers and strings and mutes the acoustic piano sound... but not totally! so it's good for late night playing and I kinda like the muted sound too and have recorded it as an effect... It's a killer MIDI controller for my studio! but the piano is what I got it for.
I have the original owners manual and pedals etc... I also rent it out!
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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by rcasper »

If you get this posting I am stuck and need help. I have a 1988 C7 MIDI Grand and the Instruments have all gone away. I thought it was because the battery died (35 years go figure) but I can not find anything to help me figure how to reprogram they voices. Point me some direction to get help if you can.
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Re: Yamaha MIDI Grand Story

Post by mikehalloran »

rcasper wrote: Wed Jun 15, 2022 7:45 pm If you get this posting I am stuck and need help. I have a 1988 C7 MIDI Grand and the Instruments have all gone away. I thought it was because the battery died (35 years go figure) but I can not find anything to help me figure how to reprogram they voices. Point me some direction to get help if you can.
Bob Casper
949-448-0353
Yamaha USA is down in Buena Park. I’d scroll to the bottom of this page to find a number of support and contact links.
https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musica ... index.html

It would surprise me if they couldn’t put you in touch with someone who can help. There are many pages to links for restoring the data to many of their keyboards, for example.

With older units, normally, you’ll find a dead keep-alive battery somewhere—important to make sure it hasn’t leaked and taken out circuit boards or other components. Without a fresh battery, a data restore will not be saved. For this, you’ll want a pdf of the service manual.
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