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Siri Plays a Grand Piano With Some Help From AirPlay and Yamaha

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Yamaha used some technological trickery to enable Siri to play a concerto on a Yamaha Disklavier Grand Piano.

By converting a MIDI songfile into an audio file that the iPhone can play and connecting the audio output of an Airport Express to the analog input of a MIDI-enabled Disklavier piano, the iPhone can "play" the MIDI file via AirPlay and control the multi-thousand dollar piano.

As explained to The Loop's Jim Dalrymple:
Then, you simply ask Siri to play your favorite song from your iTunes library, and Siri responds immediately, by making the Disklavier's keys and pedal move up and down, recreating the performance, including full orchestration.
Click to expand...

Article Link: Siri Plays a Grand Piano With Some Help From AirPlay and Yamaha
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/12/19/siri-plays-a-grand-piano-with-some-help-from-airplay-and-yamaha/
I would have given up my favorite bike, bat and swimming rights to have one of those so my Mom would hear music coming from our living room while I was out a window playing with my friends.

Now if only it would have worked for my weekly lesson with Miss Stanley, a true wicked witch, who would have wondered wtf i had been doing in my practice sessions at home.
 
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Can it play some LMFAO
 
Let's be clear here, it's playing a playlist to a device that has MIDI sheet music, *not* converting notes from an MP3 song to a harmonic piano scale. Don't be the idiot that throws out the stereo to make room for a disklaviar piano. :p
 
justit said:
Let's be clear here, it's playing a playlist to a device that has MIDI sheet music, *not* converting notes from an MP3 song to a harmonic piano scale. Don't be the idiot that throws out the stereo to make room for a disklaviar piano. :p
Click to expand...

According to the linked article (The Loop) it actually is streaming a converted MIDI file that still has the MIDI information embedded in it.

If that's correct, then I'd like to know how to convert a MIDI to an MP3 and keep the info such that the Yamaha can handle the signal properly to play the piano. Does anyone have instructions for that?
 
I guess if you were in the market for a digital piano, this might make sense. But it's a lot cheaper and simpler to hook an iPhone up to a stereo and have Siri simply play digital audio tracks from your playlist. Now if Yamaha had a REAL piano hooked up to play MIDI via Siri, that would be something!
 
It may be true...

I dont´t find it difficult to believe for Siri to play the piano this way, but why did they had to produce the video in a matter that everyone could thinks its not true; some of the reasons I hated it were:

1.- They used two different iPhones, one while explaining and another one at the close ups, you can see this by looking at the wallpaper at second 53, that's a different one than the iPhone shows just a second earlier.

2.- At 1:56 you can see a change of day because the time at the iPhone's status bar goes from 8:47 to 5:26 or so.

3.- The most important reason for doubting this video is why doesn't the AirPlay icon show at 1:56 when asking Siri to repeat the song, while in the two other close ups it did...
 
jayducharme said:
I guess if you were in the market for a digital piano, this might make sense. But it's a lot cheaper and simpler to hook an iPhone up to a stereo and have Siri simply play digital audio tracks from your playlist. Now if Yamaha had a REAL piano hooked up to play MIDI via Siri, that would be something!
Click to expand...
They did have a real piano play MIDI via Siri. It's not a digital piano.
 
jayducharme said:
I guess if you were in the market for a digital piano, this might make sense. But it's a lot cheaper and simpler to hook an iPhone up to a stereo and have Siri simply play digital audio tracks from your playlist. Now if Yamaha had a REAL piano hooked up to play MIDI via Siri, that would be something!
Click to expand...

That was a real piano playing MIDI. I own one (though I own the upright version). Believe me. It's real. Mine was $17,000. The one they're showing there is I believe in the $40-50K range (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). My piano tuner would definitely confirm that it's real ;)

Now if I could just figure out what they mean by "Take a standard MIDI songfile and convert it to an audio file (while maintaining the MIDI data)." How the heck do you do that?
 
Ferbaca said:
I dont´t find it difficult to believe for Siri to play the piano this way, but why did they had to produce the video in a matter that everyone could thinks its not true; some of the reasons I hated it were:

3.- The most important reason for doubting this video is why doesn't the AirPlay icon show at 1:56 when asking Siri to repeat the song, while in the two other close ups it did...
Click to expand...

Ok, I'm in a bit of a rush, so I can't do much research on this....

But are they streaming the music from the iPhone? If so, is AirPlay the correct term to send it from the iPhone/Mac to an Apple Express? I thought AirPlay was just for streaming to an AppleTV or AirPlay enabled receiver.

Either that, or maybe they're controlling an iTunes library on a Mac that's sending it to the Airport Express. I'm not sure Siri can control such a library, but that could be what's going on.
 
davidg4781 said:
Ok, I'm in a bit of a rush, so I can't do much research on this....

But are they streaming the music from the iPhone? If so, is AirPlay the correct term to send it from the iPhone/Mac to an Apple Express? I thought AirPlay was just for streaming to an AppleTV or AirPlay enabled receiver.
Click to expand...

AirPlay was originally AirTunes, which was originally featured on the AirPort Express.
 
Something else is going on behind the scenes

Two comments on the original The Loop article:

by Steve Hoge:
"audio output of the Airport Express is then connected to the analog MIDI inputs of the Disklavier"

Huh? What the heck is an "analog MIDI input"? This thing is doing pitch-detection and conversion to MIDI in real time?

by Thirdwaver:
"Take a standard MIDI songfile and convert it to an audio file (while maintaining the MIDI data)."

How is this done?​

Both of these questions need to be answered by Yamaha for anyone to understand exactly what is going on. I suspect this has a lot more to do with the SmartKEY for Disklavier invented by Craig Knudsen than SIRI.
 
thirdwaver said:
Now if I could just figure out what they mean by "Take a standard MIDI songfile and convert it to an audio file (while maintaining the MIDI data)." How the heck do you do that?
Click to expand...

Those old enough to remember tape loader computers from the 1980s, or Modems from the '90s will have some idea.

MIDI is pretty simple, and very fault tolerant. It'll accept a decent amount of signal degradation before throwing up errors.

Converting the MIDI to an analogue signal such as audio is simply a case of running the digital waveform through a DAC. Getting the digital back at the other end similarly requires only an ADC. The audio being streamed through AirPlay would be seem meaningless and unpleasant to us.

The only trick to all of this is that most ADCs and DACs limit pretty hard between about 10-20Hz and 20-24KHz. MIDI is pretty low frequency, and might not not translate well through the D-A-D process. As such, the MIDI may be mixed with a carrier wave of some kind. The article doesn't provide enough detail to know. (Edit: this process is typically known as modulation/demodulation, from where modems take their name).

Either way, this is cool, but nothing unprecedented
 
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