The Disklavier Piano-Guide To Free or Low Cost Music

Hi

Thanks for taking a look at this guide.  It is under construction and I am building a little each day.  At the moment I am addressing earlier Disklaviers which do not have the ability to play common Midi files

Once you have purchased your new Yamaha Disklavier piano, the question arises, "Where do I find music to play on my piano?"  You are probably aware that Yamaha has a catalog of  music you can purchase but that doesn't mean that you have to stop there.  There are other more economical and in some cases free access to thousands of quality files from other sources on ebay  Great Music Here  and the internet in general.  There are just a few warnings however before you go downloading files indiscriminately and attempting to play them on your piano.  Here are some important pointers..

The Disklavier (depending on the model) can play both SOLO piano and piano with either synthesized or recorded accompaniment.  This next section discusses SOLO piano.  Whether your piano has a CD or not, the best way to play SOLO piano is from floppies!!

What kind of files will play SOLO piano on the Disklavier?

ESEQ files.  Yamaha's proprietary format
Standard Midi Files (SMF) type 0 and or type 1.  Most easily found on the internet.
Audio Midi Files (for players with CD drive)

Not all Disklaviers will play all of the above file types. Use this list to see what files your piano will play

Group 1
MX100A/B, DGP with controller DKW10, MX80 with controller DK5CR all play
ESEQ files on 720k (2DD) floppies

Group 2
MX100II, MPX100II, DGPII with controller DKC100R
play ESEQ and SMF type 0 files on 720k (2DD) floppies

Group 3
DGP1 with controller DKC100XG
play ESEQ files on 720k (2DD) floppies
SMF type 0 on 1.44(2HD) floppies

Group 4
All other Disklaviers with the following controllers
DKCxxxxx
play ESEQ files on 720k (2DD) floppies
SMF type 0 and type 1 on 1.44(2HD) floppies

Any  Disklavier with a CD player can play audio midi files

Once you know what kind of files will play then you will have a better idea of what you are looking for and where to find it.

If your piano is in Group 1 then you will need to be able to convert the common midi file to ESEQ and be able to format a 1.44 disc to 720k. 

The following instructions will work with Groups 2, 3 and 4 also,  but since you have Standard Midi file capability you may want to proceed to the section below discussing your model (info is still to come)

Group 1 Instructions for solo piano

This is what you will need...

A floppy drive on your computer or a USB external floppy drive
Midi2Eseq.exe (a free utility)
GNMIDI  utility available at  www.gnmidi.com  (30.00 USD)
Instructions for making a common 1.44MB disc into a 720k disc (since 720k discs are not easily available commercially)
EExplore.exe ( a free utility to manage the files on your floppy discs)
Veloset.exe to adjust loudness of the file (important!)

You can download the required free utilities here. 

www.carolrpt.com/Software/dkvutils.zip         There are 6 utilities in the Zip file but for now you will only use 3 of the 4 with the yellow music note icons.



The basic process

1. Format a few 720k discs
2.Download some SOLO piano files
3.Use GNMIDI to make sure all piano data is on Channel 1
3. Convert the files from Midi to ESEQ files
4. Copy the files to discs
5.Use EExplore to create a directory and make some adjustments so that your piano player will play the discs
6. Make a volume adjustment to the files (most files off the net are TOO LOUD)

Detailed process

To format a 1.44MB disc to 720k

For Windows XP users

Looking at the disc label side up and holes closest to you cover the right hand hole on the underside with a small piece of scotch tape.
Place disc in your computer drive and go START>RUN and place this command into the box and click OK
cmd /k format a: /t:80 /n:9
Change the letter a: to match your floppy drive letter if necessary. I have exaggerated the spaces between,  but there is just one character space between the above command words i.e....
cmd(space)/k(space)format(space)a:(space)/t:80(space) /n:9
In future, the command will always be available to you when you go START>RUN from the pull down menu
Now follow the prompts for formatting. It will take about a minute to format, At the end, it will ask about volume label. Just hit RETURN for “none” and you’re done.
For pre- Windows XP users you can format a floppy using the built-in utility but you will still need to cover the hole in the disc as described above.

Now create the following empty folders on your HD and give them the following names
Raw Midi Files
GNMIDI Adjusted Files

Download midi files to your Raw Midi Files folder. 

Midi files can be found all over the net but solo piano you need to dig a little deeper.  Just Google Solo Piano Midi for a bunch of sites.  It is important that the music was intended to be played solo or it just won't sound right. Your piano won't know what to do with files that have been created to emulate rock bands, orchestras, and the like.  You can usually play the midi file with your media player to determine if it is solo or not.  You should also use this to hear whether the file is generally well played or not. There is a lot of badly rendered music out there.  The music should also sound like there are louds and softs and not all one volume.  All one volume usually indicates the file was constructed by computer input rather than played initially on a real piano by a human being.  Delete the bad sounding files leaving only the files you want to keep.

Now it is time to make some adjustments to the midi files using GNmidi.
Load the utility GNmidi (available at www.GNmidi.com)
Go to File>Batch Conversion...>Map Channel Numbers in All Midi files
Go to each pull down box and set the channel to 1
Click OK
Browse to  your source folder (Raw Midi Files)
Browse to your destination folder (GNmidi adjusted files)
Click OK then Yes


Now it is time to convert the files in the GNmidi folder into ESEQ files using Midi2Eseq.exe which you should have downloaded and unzipped from   www.carolrpt.com/Software/dkvutils.zip

After loading the utility click on Open,  then drill to the folder containing the files and select and OPEN all of them.  Go explore the folder and you will see a new file has been added to the folder for each original midi file with the extension .FIL.  Now copy no more than 700k of the .FIL files (not the midi files)to a pre-formated 720k floppy.

Now load the utility EExplore.exe and drill to your  floppy of .FIL files.  You will see the files all with a ? mark beside them as well as a PIANODIR.FIL  with red X.  Right click on this file and CREATE INDEX.and you will see the PIANO.DIR will lose the RED X and all the files will have music notes beside them. At this point you can give your Disc a name if you right click on the PIANO.DIR file. Right click on a song file and choose SONG PROPERTIES.  Make sure the Solo button is chosen  and you can optionally use this box to give your songs names which will be seen on the display on your piano .  Do not play this in your piano yet as one more very important step is still to come....

 Most solo piano files from the internet will kill your piano because they are way too loud. Load the Veloset.exe utility to adjust  the file volume.  Once loaded go to OPEN and drill to the first file on the floppy.  Do not attempt to adjust the PIANO.DIR.  You will see a graph representing the overall volume of the notes within the file.  You want the file to Max at about 85-90.  Each vertical line gives you an idea of the relative number of notes at a ceratin velocity. There are 2 sliders.  The left slider will simply move everything from side to side. I recommend using this slider first but you don't want the left  vertical bars to start any less than around 10 so you may in fact not be able to adjust this slider at all.  If you see notes that are already less than 10 then proceed to the right slider..Pull it down so that the file graph ends between 85-90 and hit save.  You will hear your floppy re-write the file with the new values.  Do this for each of the song files and then you are ready to play the disc in your piano.

Instructions for Group 2, 3, and 4 to come!

Group 2 Instructions for Solo piano    (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

Group 2 has the ability to play both Eseq files and the more common Standard Midi File type 0 (SMF)  although they still need to be placed on 720k discs.  The advantage of being able to play SMF is that you don't need to convert the  files to Eseq as you would with Group 1.

This is what you will need

A floppy drive on your computer or a USB external floppy drive
Instructions for making a common 1.44MB disc into a 720k disc (since 720k discs are not easily available commercially)
A program to convert SMF type 1 files to SMF type 0 files
Veloset.exe to adjust loudness of the file (important!)  one of 6 free utilities you can get here    www.carolrpt.com/Software/dkvutils.zip