Piano recital flies over the Internet

In late November 2007, I attended a piano recital in New York City featuring the extraordinarily talented pianist Edisher Savitski. The only hitch was, the Yamaha Disklavier he played was at his home in South Bend, IN.

How was it done? Over the internet, of course.

But that was just the half of it. The Manhattan room we were in housed another Disklavier that reenacted all the movements and sound of Savitski’s piano in South Bend.

Every sonic nuance was accounted for. All the keys move, even the black ones. The pedals motioned up and down as well, reflecting Savitski’s fancy footwork almost 1,000 miles away.

As you can imagine, the Disklavier piano is a marvel of both audio conversion as well as motion and sensing functionality. At its core, the instrument uses a Linux-based computer—referred to as the I/O center—and High-Definition MIDI for the conversion of much of the sound and motion.

Once a key is struck, at least two types of optical measurements are taken, and this information is then translated into High-Def MIDI. The same goes for the pedals, and many degrees of pedal motion can be recorded by the optical sensors: “Practically anything the player can do with his/her foot,” said James Steeber, acting director of Yamaha Artist Services.

That information is, in this case, transferred over the Internet to a local laptop. However, two pianos are capable of talking to each other without requiring intermediate computers.

At the receiving end, the data is basically converted to pedal and key strokes controlled by electromechanical solenoids. “On the Mark IV Pro, keystrokes can be applied in an even softer overall balance than is generally thought possible by a human player,” Steeber said. “So the range of expression is incredible and quite faithful.”