$200 a track to transfer MIDI files to a Disclavier

[mikehalloran]

Interesting business model, no doubt about that:

http://getrealpiano.com/

[MIDI Life Crisis]

For $179.99 I'll do the same thing AND fix a few wrong notes in the process. Lol

[MIDI Life Crisis]

ps - and it'll be played by a live musician. But wait! No, never mind. No specials on Thursdays.

[cuttime]

But Wait!- there's more! If you order now we'll also send you this beautiful set of gourmet steak knives, lovingly crafted by Asian artisans!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

But Wait!- there's more! If you order now we'll also send you this beautiful set of gourmet steak knives, lovingly crafted by Asian artisans!

They'll look great in my UK bathroom!

[Shooshie]

Oh, good grief. There are two ways to do this: the easy way and the right way. I'm pretty sure they aren't advertising the right way.

From 1991 through 2007, I was joined at the hip with about 6 Disklaviers, arranging music for 5 at a time, and with a spare one here and there. Sometimes I would do solo albums on one, always for someone else. I did record some Skryabin etudes (all of Opus 42) on a Disklavier, and tweaked the MIDI recording so that it sounded at least as good as Horowitz's version of one or two of them. But most of my efforts involved pop & rock classics and a client's originals.

The upshot of this is that while a Disklavier is a "real piano" at least when someone is playing it at its keyboard, its musical reproduction hardware and software were far from perfect. The timing was perfect; I can say that much, but the loudness, pedals, and accuracy of chords and runs often left a lot to be desired. The result was that I had to develop techniques to make them sound like a person was sitting at the keyboard. That means, I adjusted every line, every note. Nothing came out of our MIDI arrangements that had not been completely edited by me to make it sound "real."

And I promise you, I could not do your song for $200, not then, and especially not now. It would take at least a day, and maybe more, to do this, and at my rates, I'd have to do it in a couple hours to price it that low.

But there are other ways. You could record a song to a Disklavier's 3.5" floppy by knowing how to start up the hardware. Use a certain secret sequence, and it would record from your MIDI connection directly to the floppy disk. Then the floppy could be used in any Disklavier of the time. (I'm pretty sure they don't use floppies now.)

Or, if you just want an audio recording, all you have to do is play your MIDI sequence to the Disklavier while it's started up in MIDI mode. It would play the MIDI and you could record it directly. But the likelihood of your getting a "real" performance that way is very small. If you are a Chopsticks player who just wanted your MIDI version converted to audio by a real piano, then it would probably suffice. But someone who wanted to sound like a concert pianist would not.

Why? Because the Disklavier interprets MIDI quite differently than, say, Ivory. In the first place, the quietest notes that it reliably reproduces in time are around the MIDI velocity of 30. Your average concert pianist plays probably 40% of their notes below that velocity. It would often play notes down into the teens, fairly reliably, but the timing was not certain at that level. For adagio, that may not be a big deal, but trying to get a bunch of 16ths at vivace to play in time below MIDI velocity of 30 was darn near impossible.

Then there were the pedals. The original Disklavier had two pedal modes: on/off and HD mode. HD mode (HiDef) played the pedal as a continuous expression pedal. But it had two problems. Number one: it recorded MIDI slightly out of time, and two: it had a bug in it, whereby the On/Off mode never stopped working when in HD mode. So, in the middle of your continuous pedal, a string of MIDI CC#64 controllers rising smoothly up with the dampers, there would be a sudden firing of a value of 127. When you released the pedal moderately, in the middle of your sloped string of controllers going down, there would be a sudden value of 000. It had a way of throwing the accuracy off, even if there wasn't time to completely jerk the pedal up or down all the way. If moving very slowly with the pedal, it actually COULD go up or down all the way. Worst of all, when it happened it made a big "CLUNK" in the pedal mechanism.

I spent a good portion of my time removing the errant pedal controller from every single pedal motion. This was, by the way, the original Disklavier with the little cart on wheels that contained the computer. I never got to try the new models to find out if they fixed that problem. I described it in great detail to their American representatives, especially to Bill Brandom, but whether the Japanese overlords ever acknowledged it is a fair question.

You have to know, in the first place, that the Japanese top-dog of Yamaha did not want the Disklavier to have MIDI inputs. He envisioned it as a high-end playback device for the rich. It was not supposed to go into a studio. You were not supposed to use it to create MIDI tracks and play them through it. A classical or jazz artist would come to the Yamaha studio, play some performances which would be recorded on the 3.5" floppy disk, then it would be duplicated and sold to Disklavier owners as "content." It was to be a very elite, very closed playback system: "have Marta Argerich or Chick Corea in your living room." Someone convinced him late in development to add MIDI, using the argument that it would drastically streamline the process of editing wrong notes, and that every artist wants his/her recording to be free of wrong notes. So, they added it. But to record your MIDI to floppy disk required a secret startup sequence that was not documented in the manual. They didn't want what we were doing to happen. We convinced Yamaha that they would be wise to get on our side and run with us, so reluctantly they hired a publicist for us, and they put their entire West Coast Disklavier staff at our beck and call. I'm pretty sure that later versions of the Disklavier streamlined the MIDI in/out. They learned a lot from us.

Another problem with Disklaviers was multi-tracking. There was a built-in 500ms delay when playing MIDI through a Disklavier. That time lag gave its computers time to process the velocities of the notes, so that it could begin moving the keys in time for the notes to hit at the specified velocity at the precise instant that they were supposed to fire. It takes longer for a quiet note to play on a piano than for a loud note. Human performers automatically compensate; they aren't even aware that they do it. But if you try to play two notes precisely together, one at a velocity of 100 and the other at a velocity of 10, you will begin moving the latter significantly earlier than the louder one. The Disklavier processed all this with a CPU that was slower than the first Macintosh. They just made the 500 ms a default delay. Expert users — with technical knowledge of the device — could change that default, but it wasn't advisable.

So, when multi-tracking, your MIDI out, playing through a Disklavier, would happen a half second late. If you played another track to go with it, you'd have to shift that track by a half-second earlier to get it to line up with the others. But there's more to it than that. What if you have a piece of music with tempo changes? Especially large, sudden changes, or accelerando, or ritardando? Every tempo marker represented a new calculation of "what is a half-second?" If you have 60 tempo markers in a Ritardando, you have to... well... ah, forget it; you're screwed.

Incidentally, if you examine your DP software you will find several places where you can check a little box that says "preserve original performance." Especially the SHIFT command. So, if you tell DP to shift a track of notes by a half second, and there are accelerandos and ritardandos present, it will calculate every note so that it falls exactly in the right place, even through the tempo changes.

It wasn't always that way. Those boxes exist because yours truly petitioned MOTU over and over for 6 years until they finally saw the light and added it. There was a lady software engineer working there at the time. I had presented my case to all the guys. One day they put the woman on the phone with me. I described the problem. Rather than the male response, which was "just use the SHIFT command," she immediately saw the problem I was talking about. When the tempo changes, a half-second shift is not a simple thing. You have to calculate the shift for every single tempo mark. She saw it the moment I said it, and she immediately extrapolated the problem to film cue issues. She was devastated! She said "this won't do! This has to be fixed!" I explained to her that I'd been telling her colleagues that for 6 years, but they wouldn't listen to me. They did not understand the problem, no matter how patiently I explained it. "SHIFT should work," they always said. I explained why it does not. (how far do you move a note to make a half second at 120bps vs. 60 bps? Answer: twice as far. Shift won't do the trick unless it calculates every tempo change, which it did not do until December of 1997.) So, that was one of my major contributions to DP. There were many others, but that one feature, 6 years in coming, saved me literally thousands of hours of manually shifting notes over tempo changes.

So, you see, MIDI on a Disklavier was problematic almost by design. Well, no almost to it; it was problematic by design. Part of the problem was Yamaha's, and part of the problem was MOTU's and every other DAW developer out there. NOBODY's DAW shifted notes while calculating for every tempo change. MOTU's was the first that I know of, and only after 6 years of haranguing.

Back to the original topic: the folks offering a quick $200 transfer from MIDI to a "real piano" are probably working with the latest stuff, and it probably works very well. Maybe they can transfer MIDI to piano to audio with few hassles. But it wasn't always that way. I'd have to see it to be a believer. Yamaha used to call me "Mr. Disklavier." I have a Disklavier watch, coffee cup, and other Disklavier bling that they used to bring to me every time they would come out. I knew the president, Terry Lewis, VP Carter Shull, and all the Disklavier staff led by Bill Brandom, and moreover, they knew me on a first-name basis. It was a grand old time, and I miss that. But I don't miss the problems inherent in MIDI on that fabulous instrument.

Shooshie
PInk Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon medley on 5 Disklavier pianos, solo piano played "live" by Ariel, 1992

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Oh, good grief. There are two ways to do this: the easy way and the right way...

For me, there's one right way. Learn to play the 'effen instrument... LOL Real time, man. You know of what I speak, Shooshmeister!

[Shooshie]

Oh, good grief. There are two ways to do this: the easy way and the right way...

For me, there's one right way. Learn to play the 'effen instrument... LOL Real time, man. You know of what I speak, Shooshmeister!

Yeah, but even that doesn't necessarily produce a "real" MIDI file. I mean, if you want to record yourself that way.

There's no competition between live, recorded audio, or MIDI; they're just different options we use to achieve something unique in each. The Disklavier is a magnificent instrument. For one who knows how to use it well, the possibilities are amazing. For one who wants to cheat live performance, it's not going to be as easy as they think!

Shooshie

[bayswater]

For $179.99 I'll do the same thing AND fix a few wrong notes in the process. Lol

Be careful.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

For $179.99 I'll do the same thing AND fix a few wrong notes in the process. Lol

Be careful.

Why start now?

[kassonica]

half a second latency