Since my broken bones have been healing these past 6 weeks, I have finally taken the time to continue my research into music software available for cheap or free from the internet. Not only have I discovered new ways to play with my Disklavier, like multi-track and ensemble recording (I can play 4-hand duets by using only one (unbroken) hand to record the parts 4 times!) but I can generate sheet music in ways I never thought possible. For a piano tuner, I never got any musician genes - I couldn't tell you what kind of chord was generating the harmony I hear to save myself. I learned to read music, but it took 35 years before I realized there was a pattern to it! I learned to play the french horn, trumpet and saxophone as a kid by memorizing the fingering charts. And after 45 years of playing at it, I still can't play the piano without my dog crying! But I love music! To me, one "owns" a piece if you can acquire the sheet music. I own a 6-foot stack of music and I can play about 1 inch of it. The only way I ever hear music is in my car on those rare occasions I turn on the radio or see a movie and notice the soundtack. By the time I hear something I would really like to learn to play, it has been out of print for years! This brings me to one of the reasons I bought a disklavier. I have a client who can listen to any song and then sit down at the piano and play it. He has always felt his musicianship was inadequate because he couldn't read music. Boy, did I ever set him straight! I have been meaning to burn the few songs I want to learn to play to a CD and send it to him; then invite him over to play them on my disklavier and generate MIDI files. I could then take those MIDI files my piano generates and print the sheet music from them! I found a programs that will take a scanned picture (TIFF) and use OCR to generate either a music notation file or MIDI file from which sheet music can be printed. It's a great concept but you still have to do some editing. Also, the music sounds pretty "mechanical". But the newest, coolest, thing of all (as opposed to 10 months ago when I did this research for my mini tech in Arlington last year) is that progress is being made to turn wave files into MIDI files. That means that I can take a song from a CD, make a wave file of it, take it into one of these widi programs, and generate a MIDI file that will play my disklavier. This same MIDI file can also be taken into a notation program and the sheet music will appear! - needs editing though!!! But I am happy as a clam just playing with all these modern toys. One way or another, I am going to hear piano music in my own home, whenever I want to, whatever I want, and however I want to hear it! Carol Beigel Greenbelt, Maryland
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