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Topic: Player piano (Read 3386 times) previous topic - next topic

Player piano

I just started college this fall, and am constantly being amazed at all the cool stuff they have in the music department. I haven't even gotten into the midi lab, yet. But by far the coolest thing I've seen was a player piano that worked on MIDI. When I saw it in use, it was playing the accompaniment to a trombone solo. A laptop computer ran the software, and connected to this black Yamaha upright piano. The keys and pedals moved according to the MIDI commands, causing real hammers to hit real strings -- no synthesized sounds here, a nice way to overcome what is in my opinion the biggest limitation of MIDI, that is to say, the inability of synthesized sound to be on par with acoustic instruments.

Has anyone else seen anything like this? I was thinking that many percussion instruments would be relatively easy to turn into this sort of MIDI device. Wind instruments would present an interesting challenge...

Re: Player piano

Reply #1 –
Until last year I worked just around the corner from the famous Harrods department store in London. They have a player piano on every floor. I sometimes spent my lunch hour just admiring the phantom piansts. In their music department you can buy the pianos and also software to play on them (Is this really in midi format? I seem to recall it was sold as ROM cartidges) The best bit is that you can buy performances by particular pianists.

Regarding midi wind instruments. I have seen a blown midi input device. I haven't managed to get my mouth around one and I'm not sure what principle it operates on. However, it looks a bit like a childrens toy soprano sax. I understand that it can be progammed to generate pitches according to the fingerings of a range of woodwind instruments and to generate volume information according to breath pressure. I have a mail order catalogue somewhere with some more details which I will pass unless someone else provides more complete information before I unearth it.

But the point about the player piano is that it is a midi (or whaterver) output device. The mind boggles to think how you could achieve a midi controlled wind instrument output device - or does anyone know of one?

To avoid the problems of controlling emboucher perhaps something like bagpipes would be the easiest to achieve. Project for a rainy day - build some midi bagpipes.

Re: Player piano

Reply #2 –
A friend of mine had/has (he moved to La Jolla, California, a couple of years ago, and I haven't seen him for a while) had one of those, an upright Yamaha Disclavier (sp?) While he is a Computer Science professor at U. of Cal., San Diego, he is also an talented musician, and he will improvise on the piano, recording the midi, then edit the midi to fix wrong notes, polish the timing, etc., etc., and finally print out a score.

AND -- if you go to www.deger.com you will find a source for a midi bagpipe, except I think it only records, it doesn't play back.

Cyril

Re: Player piano

Reply #3 –
Cyril wrote:

...... a midi bagpipe, except I think it only records, it doesn't play back.

That's a relief!!

Barry Graham
 

Re: Player piano

Reply #4 –
You may be interested to know that you get MIDI'd pipe organs as well. About 10 yrs ago I went to a concert of Carlo Curley's in a nice church in Hammersnith (London, England) near the flyover. Partway through a piece, we suddenly saw him stroll into the body of the church and sit down to listen to his own performance. It created quite a stir!

I was in Harrods a couple of years ago, pity I missed the Midi/player pianos.