Hi Terry and others;

Solenoid pianos use property file formats. The earliest played off of
cassette tape, then Floppy disk and then CDs. There are efforts now to
go to other digital media, but that is outside this scope.

Ignoring cassette tape systems, the bulk of this is on floppy disc.
Mostly due to the Rights management licensing. A needle drop costing
say 25 cents vs 5 dollars or more for newer digital media. (Dont ask.)

Most solenoid players can play SMF0 files on single density double sided
disks. That is the mainline. Care should be used as many files that
come from windows and such are SMF1 with copyright data in the first
"MIDI Chunk." 90% of the so called SMF0 files I got were in this format.

The CD, is not WAV. Rather it is a digital form of encoding called
Manchester encoding. The MIDI is multiplexed into the PCM. Years ago I
started to reverse engineer this. There was not much point in going
into the details. This is not a good method to distribute on as the
expression is limited in the piano tracks.

Probably the simplest solution would be to use the van Bascoes player
into the midi in port on the solenoid piano. Get a cheap laptop and a
MIDI USB converter and there is no worry as to what the format is.

As for documenting all the various formats, that is a bit of work. I
had to construct my own documentation on the Pianodisk format. There
is quite a bit of documentation in the Diskclavier Yamaha Yahoo group.
From there was posted something called DKVUtils. These are a set of
files for making your own Yamaha diskettes.

The real issue of the different solenoid pianos, is that they all treat
the note velocity (expression) a bit different. To that extent there
are a number of utilities and *.cal scripts for adjusting the velocity
of the MIDI data.

Putting all this in one place would be a godsend, as you have well
observed there is a lot of things in a lot of places.


-julie



> The Law of Unforeseen Consequences has emerged from out of my
> web site's ever larger library of midi type 1 files. The
> community of people owning solenoid pianos continue to find this
> collection attractive as it provides a whole new library of
> music seemingly denied from contemporary sources.
>
> The systems represented by this community include Disklavier,
> PianoDisc, Pianomation, Pianocorder, PianoForce and possibly a
> new system about to emerge from Wayne Stahnke.
>
> The unforeseen consequence is an ever increasing number of such
> people are discovering my web site for the first time and are
> confused as to how to make my files work on their pianos. The
> most common misconception is the failure of them to work from a
> freshly burned CD.
>
> I am aware that most of these systems expect a form of WAV
> coming off CD's. Some systems will accept midi type 1 files
> from a floppy, while others seem to only accept midi type 0 from
> a floppy. I understand that all (?) have a standard MIDI-IN
> port, but I'm uncertain about type 1 vs type 0 files.
>
> For the first time for me, somebody local has contacted me for
> advice. He may have what may be an older PianoDisc system
> in a grand piano. I personally have never had my hands on a
> PianoDisc system, so this will be a learning experience for me.
> I'm arranging to see him next week with my laptop fitted with a
> UNO USB to MIDI-IN adapter cable, which I have used successfully
> with a Pianomation system.
>
> I am frequently receiving such requests for advice for people
> worldwide. For most I have referred them to their appropriate
> discussion groups, from which I sometimes note what may be
> conflicting advice. I would like to be able to direct them
> to a page on my site containing suitable advice and setup
> routines for these systems.
>
> Is anybody aware of such a document existing somewhere? If
> not, I would appreciate collecting advice on setup routines that
> I can assemble into a general document that most people will
> find useful.
>
> Thoughts of others?
>
> Regards,
>
> Terry
>
> Terry Smythe 204-832-3982 (land line)
> 55 Rowand Avenue 204-981-3229 (cell)
> Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3J 2N6 smythe@... <mailto:smythe%40shaw.ca>
> Preserving a unique slice of our Musical Heritage
> http://members.shaw.ca/smythe/rebirth.htm
> <http://members.shaw.ca/smythe/rebirth.htm>
>