Today, the Yamahamusicsoft blog is proud to present our first in a series of posts from Cathy, one of Yamaha's PianoSoft managers. Over the coming months, she will be letting us in on the some of the details about the people behind the your Disklavier music and how it gets made. Cathy starts us off today by recounting the story of how audio and PianoSoft first came together.Hi! My name is Cathy and I have been involved in PianoSoft development since 1990. When the Yamahamusicsoft team asked me to recall some “historic moments,” the first one that popped in my mind was the “eureka” moment we experienced when we realized we would be able to combine the Disklavier with singing. Click here to read more.
At this point in PianoSoft development we offered two types of PianoSoft: PianoSoft Solo which contains piano music only, and PianoSoft Plus, which contains piano plus synthesized voices. One of our most talented consultants, Tom Zink, had often said he thought it would be great if we could add audio to our MIDI files. At this point the idea was just a pipe dream but not long afterward, the Disklavier Marketing department asked our department to create PianoSoft with audio. Jim Leahy, the chief PianoSoft engineer, and I gave each other dumb looks and left the room.
We hurried on over to Tom Zink’s house and asked Tom if adding audio to PianoSoft would be possible. I think he was probably wondering why it took us so long to ask. He “ripped” audio from a CD and then played the Disklavier along with it. When he played it back, we had the live piano with the audio recording for the very first time. I remember saying then that I would never forget how exciting it was to hear the two together.
This was just the first step because there were many other technical hurdles to overcome. For example, at first the music was playing out of a computer through the Disklavier – not out of the Disklavier itself. Again we had to go beyond our department for help.
Dane Madsen is currently the Digital Piano Marketing Manager at Yamaha but at this time he was a project manager for the Piano Division. Dane is a fine musician who, as a kid, read gear magazines instead of comic books, so he has always been a step ahead in technology. Dane figured out how to make PianoSoft Plus Audio masters, then Yamaha Japan created a fantastic mastering tool, and now we have more than 80 PianoSoft Plus Audio CDs in the PianoSoft library.
PianoSoft creation is most definitely a team effort and over time, I look forward to telling you more about the people who help turn ideas into real products.
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2 comments:
Yamahamusicsoft Blogster stripper dude, can Yamahamusicsoftengeneer Tom Zink (for instance) strip out the male harmony part from the piano score to create a key changing practice disc for a very marginal singer, ah, a close personal friend of mine who, well, promises never loudly to sing in public?
Er, my, um, older friend would like to do it from recorded piano scores perhaps played by a bribed relative unless you already have a digital version of especially Presbyterian Hymnal + carols.
Another nice feature would be the ability to crank up the volume of the male parts on PianoSoft Plus carols for singalong as well, into a set of WiFi earphones for the 'ear' phony with vanishing tone responses at the audiologist.
Reminds me of an old Civil War joke about a Reb in full retreat with the Army from some disaster or other, wearing only a burlap sack shirt, called up before a passing General. "See here, General. How many shirts does a man have to have for this job?"
Dadd
Hi Dadd,
What I would recommend is creating or otherwise obtaining Midi versions of the songs you want to practice. If you can't find the songs you want, either on Yamahamusicsoft.com or elsewhere, there are any number of programs you can use to create the files yourself.
Then, if you're using a Mark III or Mark IV piano, you can load the Midi files and transpose them to whatever key you want for practice.
-Doug
Yamahamusicsoft.com
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