Computer Turns Piano Into High-Tech System for Precise Reproduction

Since 1828, musicians have achieved magnificent results with the Bosendorfer piano. And that was without the help of the Apple Macintosh computer.

With the Macintosh, the Bosendorfer becomes another high-tech wonder, a computer-based piano reproduction system.

Each key and each hammer of the Bosendorfer is equipped with optical sensors that read the notes played, and enter them into the computer, which records the musical arrangement and replays it.

With the Bosendorfer, students and teachers can analyze performances, notes can be changed or edited before playback, studio costs can be reduced, and if Brahms would have played on the computer-based piano, his actual strokes of the piano keys could still be preserved.

Costs About $75,000

The extra-special, Austrian-made Bosendorfer, on sale for about $75,000, is on display at the National Assn. of Music Merchants Winter 1988 show, which continues through Sunday at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The company said only a limited number of piano buyers will be interested in the grand piano, which has $30,000 worth of electronic add-ons. The Royal Academy of Music in London has bought one, and other music schools and recording studios are potential customers, according to Hal Vincent, a spokesman for Bosendorfer, a subsidiary of Kimball International in Jasper, Ind.

In demonstrations Friday, several quick-fingered piano players tried to outrace the computer. But no luck. The sensors scan every 800th of a second, and the computer replay hits the keys to the exact touch that they were originally played.

The music greats aren’t alive to speak of the wonders of the computer in today’s music, but St. Paul, a 23-year-old writer and performer formerly with the rock group Prince and the Revolution, is sold on its uses. St. Paul was at the show promoting a different computer product, a new software music transcription package being developed by Coda Software in Bloomington, Minn.

Notes Are Transcribed

With Coda’s package, which is scheduled to go on sale this spring, a writer plays notes on an electric keyboard or guitar that are fed by an interface into the computer. Instantly, the computer screen displays a line-staff, and then transcribes the notes being played.

“It takes a lot of time to transcribe every note by hand. A computer is something that most writers won’t want to do without,” 23-year-old St. Paul said.

Other transcription software already is on sale in a market that Apple Computer estimates will be worth $100 million this year. But Coda, started two years ago as a division of Wenger, a music furniture maker, claims that its $800 package, which comes with 800 pages of support documentation, goes beyond all other products.

The Coda package allows for 3,200 different instruments--or 3,200 staves of music--to be entered for any arrangement. The package is quicker than products now on sale, it is designed to adapt to advancing technologies and it is cognitive, according to Phil Farrand, designer of the package.

Knows Chords

“It doesn’t just enter things. It knows what a chord symbol means to a score,” Farrand said.

Music arrangers, composers, editors and copyists are expected to buy the package, which Coda hopes will be sold in many of the nation’s music stores.

Even though high technology is taking over the music business, surely some instruments--like the cymbal--hasn’t gone high tech.

“Wrong. Cymbals used to be made only by hand. Today, they’re using advanced machinery to mass produce them. And some of these electronic instruments have cymbal sounds built in,” said Jim Atlas, president of Jim Atlas Sales, a cymbal company in Levittown, N.Y.

The company offers machine-made cymbals, but Atlas claims the best product will always be handmade--which he also sells.