Just announced: the three major digital piano manufacturers have decided to join forces and have asked the software company of Redmond to program a common operating system for their instruments. Microsoft, well-known for its ‘Windows’ operating system, has been charged with the development of an ‘exact, reliable and always functioning’ solution for the software side of digital pianos.
Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer led the last-minute negotiations necessary to establish this consortium including all major manufacturers. Talks have secretly been going on over several months. At a common meeting, it was announced that ‘the time of adversary is now over’; ‘we need a system that is state-of-the-art technology’. ‘This will also create lots of new jobs’. Furthermore, as could be heard from well-informed sources, a part of this revolutionary concept will be the installation system that will be available for older digital pianos: ‘Controlled Repair Assessment Package’, that can be ordered for 199,-$ as an upgrade kit, will also bring new colors and decorations for digital piano screens.
The only question that remains is what will happen if the screensaver goes on while you play…

It's THAT time of year again!

Just goes to show how dewster's revolutionary forces are gaining momentum...

Nachtschatten, sounds interesting. Do you know if the new instruments will use the Windows XP kernel, or will it perhaps be based on the new WinMob 7?

Cheers,
James
x

From the bolded words one can tell that this is an impossibility! hehe!

I think I like Google's "g-piano" offering better. No need to host your own piano software or buy a powerful computer. The midi data goes the Google server cloud where it is rendered to sound using state of the algorithms and sample sets and then the audio is send back.

Some problems with latency are reported but otherwise the system works well.

BTW: The best "April 1st" product is on Moog's web site. They have "auto-detune". It works for vocalists just like Autotune does but rather then correct the pitch to the nearest chromatic note, it de-tunes correct pitches to sound like any of several pre-sets such as "drunken sailor" and so on.

James, you were not in the loop? This has been a real secret then.

Rumor has it that after looking a lot a squiggly lines they decided to do the move and will develop the Windows SystematicHolisticInteractiveTransmission 7 system.

The Google system could be hard concurrence! I'm just wondering how they will use all the key strokes that will be transmitted to the cloud as well - can they somehow translate them and propose personalized advertisement according to the music style you play?

OK, I admit this one was too easy. But there was nothing going on the DP forum (maybe except the Ferrari piano)... I quite liked the new scale system over at the piano forum.

Cheers

They are planing to re-use the mobile OS for this because (1) it was decided they did not need the full functionality of a general purpose computer and (2) The name "Win CE" or more commonly "wince" seems to be descriptive of people's reaction to the product.

Okay, I'm surprised that Microsoft are continuing with Win CE - I thought Win Mobile was the way forward?

Anyway, thanks for the info.

Cheers,
James
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My joke about the Google "G-Piano". I of course made that up totally out of thin air.

But I can't believe it, by total chance I just found "DSMI". No Joke.

http://code.google.com/p/dsmi/

Click the "download" tab and see if it is not real.

Nachtschatten, fascinating in case the collaboration between the major DP manufacturers works out fine. At the moment, it almost sounds like a very well done 1st of April story, but that could be just because of the timing ;-)

Happy Easter to everybody!

DOH!

Unbelievable.