Looking at the title of this post, I be you you think I’ve really lost it. It may not be New Year's to you, but here at Yamaha, our year starts April 1st!
With a new year comes a whole new twelve months of PianoSoft and Piano Radio planning and new releases. We already have several concepts and projects underway. We’re working closely with Yamaha Japan to select Classical and Jazz pieces that are beloved and not currently represented in the PianoSoft library. You can look forward to more Beethoven, Brahms, and Ravel, just to name a few. Also on the docket is a charming collection of familiar classics like “Für Elise”, the Schubert Serenade, and Rubinstein’s "Melody in F".
But wait...there’s more. One exciting development is that the "First Lady of the Disklavier", Sue Downs, has signed on to perform the songs of Cole Porter. We cannot wait to hear her treatments of his great tunes.
We are also pleased to be able to offer full albums of Billy Joel's music for the first time, and have compiled two collections that will be released soon - one for PianoSoft Solo and one for PianoSoft Plus. There's a lot more in the works, but I don’t want to spoil all of the surprises so I’ll save some for the next article.
As far as radio developments go, we'll soon be adding several new pieces to the Live Piano Concerts Station. Tune in now to hear two Hungarian Rhapsodies, the spectacular Abegg Variations, the Brahms Variations on a Theme by Paganini and many more great pieces. Much more is planned for the coming year, so check back for more updates.
As for other plans, we're always looking for the great new music to produce and learning more about what music is most relevant and popular, so we can bring it to you and your instrument. We’ve got our eyes (or I guess I should say ears!) on iTunes, Glee, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and anywhere great music is performed. But, to help make sure we're giving you what you want, we’d love to hear from you and learn what music you would like to hear on your Disklavier pianos. Feel free to leave a comment on this post to let us know what you'd like to see us working on for the coming year.
Happy New Year!
- Cathy
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2 comments:
I would so love to get more performances from Jim Brickman (with him as the performer).
The feedback I have for the online radio is that I'm finding it difficult to put it on to set a mood (which is what I want to use it for). For example, I may want dinner background music and so I'll pick classical or Jazz. It can start out fabulous and all of a sudden some romping, fast piano piece comes on and I'm forced to turn the piano off and switch to my iTunes collection. It would sure be nice if you guys had mood channels where I could count on a certain volume/speed.
Also, why can't you guys get more stuff for download? I bought a floppy drive for my E3 but that's not the point. It's about having to wait for it in the mail.
Not to be all negative, I've been REALLY happy with my past few purchases (Police, Alicia Keyes, Stevie Wonder). The quality of the arrangements really makes me want to play them over and over. Please keep up the great work!
Sean,
Thanks for your comments! I'll do my best to address some of your suggestions, and I'll make sure they all get passed on to the right people if I can't answer them directly.
As far as downloading goes, I can assure you that everything we've produced that we can be selling as a download, we are. However, there are some cases where licensing issues make it impossible for us to sell a download version even if the floppy disk is available. In most of these cases there are only 1 or 2 songs on the album that are problematic, and we hope to get around this issue by offering individual song downloads in the future.
In terms of your radio suggestions and Jim Brickman requests, I'll pass these on to our content creators. I agree that they are both great suggestions.
Thanks again for the feedback.
- Doug
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