A Piano with a Tech Boost

The piano or pianoforte is one of the most versatile musical instruments available, capable of making beautiful music. From the classics to rock and roll, it has made great contributions to music throughout history.

The beginnings of the Piano dates back to the early 1700s’, where a man called Bartolomeo Crsitofori from Padua, Italy is credited with its invention. Later during the period from 1790 – 1860, it went through a lot of changes, which led to its modern form. Well you can read more about the piano here if you are interested :)

In this day and age where everything has gone hi tech, it’s quite appropriate that the humble piano to get a facelift as well. The latest such instrument is the Yamaha Disklavier Mark IV version 3.0 upgrade, which is billed as the world’s most advanced piano.

One of it’s main features is its audio recording capabilities in .WAV format, not just in MIDI, so people can use it as a recording studio to capture not just the instrument, but external sound like vocals and other musical instruments as well. All recordings are stored in the piano’s hard drive (he he who would’ve thought that we’d ever use the words ‘piano’ and ‘hard drive’ in the same sentence) and can be easily transferred to a PC via USB.

Other cool features include:

- Can be controlled by Pocket Remote Controller along with PC’s and Mac computers

- Video outputs can be viewed by connecting monitors. Piano Soft Plus Graphic files combine MIDI, audio, text and graphics to offer true multimedia experiences

- Easier search function to quickly find songs

- Improved timer play controls

- Improved support for DisklavierRadio and DisklavierMusicStore. DisklavierRadio is a streaming radio which includes a MIDI feed in each channel, which enables the instrument to play live. DisklavierMusicStore offers songs with both piano and MIDI accompaniment tracks, which users can purchase and download.

- An open-ended software-based architecture built on Linux operating system. Updates can be downloaded directly from the net. Comes with a 80GB hard drive.

All in all, this is one cool piano. Imagine if Mozart was alive today what kind of music he could create with this baby.

Now the important question is how much would all this gadgetry set you back? Well the Disklavier Mark IV, version 2.0 starts around $35,000.00. Well frankly, I’d rather spend that on getting a customized Harley and stick to playing an old fashioned traditional piano, but then again that’s just me :D

Press Release by Yamaha

Gizmodo Article

නව තාක්ශනයේ පියානෝවක්

දැන් කාලයේ හැම දේම දියුනු වෙද්දි, පාරම්පරික සංගීත භාන්ඩත් අලුත් වෙන්න එපැයි. මේක ඒවගෙ අලුත් වෙච්ච පියනෝවක්. යමහා ආයතනයෙ සංගීත අංශය විසින් නිශ්පදිත මෙය නම්වේ.

මේ අපූරු සංගීත භාන්ඩය පරිගනකයක් සමග සදා තියෙන්නෙ. එහි සමහර විෂේෂාංග නම්:

- ශබ්ද පටිගත කිරීමේ පහසුකම්
- පරිගනක තිරයක් සවි කිරීමේ හකියාව සහ එමගින් රූප මාද්ය නැරබිම
- පට්ගත කරපු සින්දු පහසුවෙන් සොයාගැනීම
- මේ සදහාම සැකසූ විෂේශ සින්දු අන්තර්ජලයෙන් ලබගෙන එවා වාදනය කිරීමේ හැකියාව
- 80 GB දෘඩුකාංග තැටියක් (Hard Drive)

දැන් අපිට වෙදගත් වෙන්නෙ මොනවත් නෙමේ, මෙම අපූරු භන්ඩයේ මිලයි. දල වශයෙන් මේක ඇමරිකනු $35,000 ක්



Pic source Yamaha