Crazy Entertainment Idea...

[mixedgas]

I used the term notch filter a little bit loosely there (as Sheriff John Bunnell would say; "like some kind of renegade forum user with trigger happy keyboard fingers, and a disregard forum protocol, typing his way recklessly to date with oblivion" ).

I was of course talking about software performing digital sample recognition thus acting in the way of an analogue notch filter.

OLD SKOOL SIMPLE 1980s CRAZY OLD DUDE ANALOG WAY (FOR MIDI) (Steve Ducks as Heroic throws a brick at him for suggesting this)

the Panglin to winamp plugin FFT already does the binning vs note. Now how to do the color. It should not be hard to translate MIDI to DMX and do this with a FB3.

MIDI to CV converter ---> CV to DMX using a Northlight systems board ----> DMX to Pangolin FB3. All off the shelf and inexpensive, there has to be a way. CV to DM would give you about 250 possible beams or level per color channel. If you had a midi out for each note in the chord, and 4 channels of MIDI to CV you could feed the 4 channels of a Northlight board and get R,G,B and position. could FB3 decode a 4 word DMX or can it just handle 255 cues? or would you need a full blown pangolin>????

The FB3 could easily take care of the color part.

http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/a...th/midi2cv.htm

Or Add three or more color eproms to the above circuit and its done, I'd repeat 24 colors across the 256 possible notes (note raw midi has 00 as silance?) 256/24= 8 banks, = simplify the octaves?? I'm dangerously getting close to part of music ed I've forgotten.

Pianoman, see if your school has "Art of Electronics" by Horrowitz and Hill in its library.


http://www.paia.com/midi2cv.asp

and there are lots of other MIDI to CV systems out there.

You can have some latency in the color change as the sound takes a while to propogate to the audience. So waiting for four 32 kbaud serial signals to be decoded for notes in a chord would not be bad. Besides modern editing software is gonna let you route stuff out a another midi channel anyhow, the die hard analog synth guys are absolute technology freaks and have ways around this in both software and hardware.

I'm supprised Shobley has not done this for the laser harp.

Steve

[Mr.Coffee]

I think the most Apt question at this point is whether or not you own your own piano. If you can mod your piano, I'd add midi to it a la the Yamaha player grand or other such pianos. If you want the sound of a piano, then even the roland hammer action digital pianos are out, so you'll need the strings, and the sound board, and all the fussiness that comes with them.
that being said, heroic is correct, you can do this with mics and software, to the tune of several grand, but it should work once you've got the bugs out. You'll have to tweak it from venue to venue, but once you've got the procedure down, you should be in good shape.

If you own your own piano, have midi added to it, it will be more of a hassle on the start, but the ease of use will pay for itself, as it will be the system that does all the work at that point in time, ie, just a piano with some wicked lasers. It will also work better in a symphony or band surrounding, where you'll most likely be playing with the lid half or full open, which would color the sound your sample mics would see if you went the fft route.

I completely forgot!
You might want to try a Helpinstill Piano pickup. http://www.helpinstill.com/
I'd use that instead of the mics for the FFT. That way you won't be anywhere near as susceptible to environmental sounds. I've used them as the piano source for stage monitors, and they work very well. well enough that you can get certainly samples from them. (I wouldn't want to use them exclusively for recording, but we have dialed them into the main mix before in crappier houses where I needed better headroom). Also, they're not permanent, which means you could bring your rig to a venue and not have to take your piano in.
one thing of note, they make different pickups for grand pianos vs uprights, though in my experience you can use both in both.

[Pianoman]

I actually have 4 pianos, 3 uprights (1 of which was a gift) and a baby grand. However for this to even be practical, the system would have to be mobile, in other words, able to be moved and used on any piano. I'm not sure if anyone has checked lately, but the cost of shipping a piano to different venues across the nation is pretty dang expensive. I only know one pianist that does that and he's very famous and makes millions.

I opened this thread because I was interested in finding out if this would even be possible, and what routes could be taken to achieve the desired effect. From the great input you guys have given me it appears to be very possible as long as I have several thousand burning a hole in my wallet (which I don't right now). However, right now, I'm going to try and study, and gain an in depth understanding of the concepts you guys have presented, so that maybe I can pull this off in the future. I'm dreaming now, but I plan on turning this into a reality in the future, so thanks for the input! If you have more ideas, please keep them coming, I'm interested in any ideas you have. Remember, mobile, cheap (negotiable once I start making some money), effective.

[Laserman532]

I estimate the project to cost ONE BILLION DOLLARS I'll need a 50% deposit and I will get right on it I know this does not contribute technically to the problem at hand but I am still available for hire

[Pianoman]

Thanks, when I get one billion dollars I will either hire you to build this for me, or just buy every laser in existence . BTW, I already have some binaural recording microphones from a company called core sound. They are really nice, I payed 250 for them I think. I could incorporate those into the mic pickup idea. That would save a little bit seeing as I already own a nice set of mics.

[mixedgas]

4 pianos, hum....

"Its a pretty good crowd for a saturday
And the manager gives me a smile
cause he knows that its me they'e been comin to see
To forget about life for a while
And the piano, it sounds like a carnival
And the microphone smells like a beer
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
And say, man, what are you doin here? "

Billy Joel.


Here: available code, off the shelf board, already works:

http://www.nutsvolts.com/media-files...r-NV200808.pdf

[DJ DoubleBass]

...............

[platinum]

So wait, I can add MIDI to my upright Piano? Would this just be pickup or also include playback like that fancy Yamaha I saw at the music store back in the 90s?

-Jonathan

[Mr.Coffee]

As far as I know you can mod a piano to add midi generation capability, but I don't know if you can add the mechanism to make a player piano. However, I don't build pianos, so I can't really tell you what that entails.

[Pianoman]

Ok, a player piano can be made from ANY piano (non electronic) however it's much cheaper to get a player piano that was built as a player piano. Basically the whole mechanism that transfers the energy from striking the key into the hammer that strikes the string has to be removed. Inside the piano, directly under the hammers, a series of piston like rods are placed and are run to an onboard computer. It's a fairly simple device, but it has to be adjusted to the piano's "personal" hammers. This allows the pistons to recreate a human's touch. The speed at which they fire, the duration, the tonality. It's all incorporated into the device. In essence a midi device could be put on a piano fairly easily if you can find someone that knows what they are doing. There aren't many electrically savvy people that know much about pianos.

The mechanical part of the piano.