Pedro, while you can 'never say never', I believe it's unlikely. Kawai is first and foremost a piano company, so this is our priority.

Kind regards,
James
x

Pedro, you may be interested to learn that two representatives from Kawai's Brazilian distributor, Pianofatura, visited Kawai Japan late last year. I had the pleasure of meeting the two chaps, and we enjoyed chatting about Brazilian football and Brazilians playing in the Premier League.

They seemed rather enthusiastic about the new board too.

Cheers,
James
x

Really nice to 'hear' that... but now tell me, football? auhauha Bleeergh. I hated when I was in high school and the gym teacher obligated me to play football. I prefer to stay quiet listening to music. :P You should meet more of our music... much more pleasant than football (IMO).

Pedro, I must confess that I am a big football fan!

My home town is Norwich, and I still follow my 'local' team (nicknamed 'The Canaries', who play in yellow and green incidentally...) every Saturday.



However, I also am rather partial to Brazilian music; the percussive rhythms, the smooth sound of the sung Brazilian Portuguese, and of course the energy of Sammba. I love late 60s/early 70s funk&soul music, and stumbled upon the band 'Funk Como Le Gusta' a few years ago. Arguably a little to 'commercial' in places...especially for my fussy tastes, but they have a great tight sound that fuses different styles together. I haven't listened to their music for a little while, so will have to load some of their tunes onto my iPod.

Of course, if you have any other Brazilian musical recommendations (funk, soul, or otherwise...), please do let me know!

Cheers,
James
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Ahhh... You like a more 'sassy' rhythms... There's a lot of stuff unknow yet out there through our big Brazil... I'm studying more the Brazilian Classical Music, so I'm not hearing too much our Samba, or other smooth rhythms, but, you should hear a little of our Chorinho - it's really fantastic, and so much dancing... it was very popular in early 1900's years through 50's. Very hard to play... and the romantic Bossa, sometimes a little sassy, I have to confess, but, romantic most of the times... There's some kind of stuff that we just call MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira - Brazilian Popular Music) and have some chillin' artists and voices, but not so percussive, more of an acoustic guitar and voice.
I think you maybe like Nanny Soul, a black singer that have a really strong voice, and sound more funky. I love her stuff. Much of her soul in her music. Ed Motta, he's a brazilian master of rhodes. And of course, Hermeto Pascoal... as we call him here 'the brazilian wizard of music'. I hope you enjoy their music.

Hey, James, you have a really refined taste for music... I'm admired. Really.

Anyone noticed that the teaser ad now sports an "Ivory II VPC" logo. Would seem to suggest that this thing is going to ship with a special edition of Ivory II?

Now that is something! The (arguably) best sampled piano tweaked and tailored for a particular action. I am quite intrigued

"A virtual piano controller that plays out of the box". It could be my English but I understand the controller has built-in sound(s).

I think the strapline is more intended to imply that everything you need to start playing (presumably excluding the laptop itself!) is in the shipping box, i.e. the controller and the software.

And it looks like they will be shipping it with 4 softwares... One of those slots have the Ivory II... and there's 3 empty yet... so...

I think such MIDI Controllers have a set of presets for Virtual Instruments and that is what You can see there. Probably calibrated velocity curves, defining MIDI feature scopes and such things.

I think they have a meaningful application instead of a miniature on board LCD display - this will be suggested by this arrangement on the teasers I guess.

It COULD just be custom velocity curves, I guess, but that would be very disappointing compared with an SE of Ivory (and perhaps three others), tailored to the controller. All will be revealed next week, I guess...

Baby steps. When will they put Ivory class sounds inside the DP?


I'm really against the only access being via USB & PC. They need to make all parameters adjustable via the controller itself, however awkward that may be. Otherwise in 10 years or so when operating systems have been "improved" 2 or 3 times and USB has morphed into something not backwardly compatible, this thing will be an expensive, shiny brick. Kawai will support it in terms of drivers and such for a while, but for how long? And how good will those drivers be? Positioning this type of product tightly within the PC loop is a bad move IMO.

Industry needs to update the MIDI physical, electrical, and protocol interfaces in a non-proprietary way and keep it entirely independent of PC hardware & software.

I guess the other three slots are for Vintage D, Pianoteq and... Nord Piano

Hopefully it also has a standard 5-pin DIN MIDI port, which will probably remain useful longer than I will.

I suspect it probably will have a 5-pin DIN port as well, but even if it doesn't, to prevent bricking, just don't throw away your last computer that you have before you buy your next one without USB (assuming that can't get an adaptor to convert from the post-USB interface to USB, which you probably will for another ten years).
If the worst came to the worst, you may not be able to upgrade the sounds on that last computer that you keep for the shiny controller. Big deal. I can't update my Kawai MP9000 that is now 11 years old. It still functions.

The other thing is that Kawai would be well aware of how rapidly things are changing, and may have taken that into account in the design. For example, they may have designed it in a modular way, such that the computer interface can easily be swapped out for something else.

Greg.

Interfaces will always change, that's we're the adapter market thrives on. There are some slow changers/ long stayers however, like din5 MIDI. USB will last for quite sometime as well, be it V3, 4, 5...- but still downward compatible.

That's for the physical interfacing. If the firmware will still support the latest operating systems in the end , remains the question. E.g. some USB audio interfaces (even class-compliant) worked with 32bit OS, but not with 64bit versions. Some companies updated their firmware to support 64bit, others decided the product was too old, or they didn't sell enough new boxes, so they didn't post updates. What will happen to you controller in conjunction with computer hard- and software will probably depend on the future firmware updates. If they stop at a certain point , you may or may not have a problem.

To be honest, I wouldn't worry about it; it'll probably outlive your regular product exchange cycle by far !

Biggest question remains; will it ship with software and will that include a Virtual Kawai Grand in ultra high quality ?! Would be a great extra plus to a controller that already looks very promising.

It's hard for me to imagine a MIDI controller without a 5-pin connector (especially a high-end one, which is what this looks like). Of course, my imagination is not the limit of what's possible...

So far I've never really kept a digital piano long enough that it went out of date in the sense that is worrying to dewster. Too much of an itch for the latest and greatest. There's a pretty good chance I'll buy this VPC. Probably sell it again within 10 years, though, if history is any predictor.

No computer interface has lasted nearly as long as MIDI, so I doubt any will! It wasn't long ago that nobody could conceive of a computer without a parallel port or RS-232 serial compatibility. Firewire is on its way out, SCSI is long gone. Lots of old music gear (even not all that old) can no longer connect to any modern computer except via MIDI port, despite having one of those other interfaces as well. So it does seem to be a safety. Yes, there are sometimes adapters, but not everything works, and if it doesn't, there's no one who's going to do anything about it.

Wow, many thanks for the suggestions Pedro - I'm going to have to check out some of those artists this morning.

Cheers,
James
x

How else would you control your favourite [red] semi-weighted board?

Cheers,
James
x

Mais oui!

det är rätt!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvDyVH-OIx8

A 'sample' of how she sings. This first one is an arrange of one of stevie wonder's music. And below there's one of the Brazilian songs she sings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvyrWIyZYPo&list=PLCD367792D1189F72&index=11

But well, coming back to the VPC... James, it will come with some software in the shipping box?

Pedro, I'm afraid I cannot reveal this information.

Kind regards,
James
x

Here's something from another thread:



Maybe it has something to do with the Kawai VPC? Nord engine within the VPC?

Actually, you can - just not right now!

Right.

The thing is, I bought a large format Epson scanner ~10 years ago for the Historical Society I volunteer for, really nice even now, almost $3k USD so it was a lot of dough for a tiny non-profit to shell out. It has a SCSI interface - I didn't want to go that route as I knew SCSI was inching towards the door at the time, but USB was just coming on the scene and it was pretty slow and not super well supported. Now trying to do a computer refresh and I can't buy a motherboard that will take the ancient SCSI adapter card (PC bus evolution). The old computer is unstable so I want to ditch it but not sure what to do. An internal USB card was made for the scanner but it seems no one bought it and so support is nil.

My dad had a newish HP scanner that he "lost" going from XP to Win7 (no drivers).

I have a parallel port oscilloscope that I "lost" when my new motherboard "lost" the parallel port. I have several expensive FPGA programmers I can't use for the same reason (USB to parallel adapter doesn't work because timing is too inexact).

I bought a used Yamaha FS1r with much functionality controllable only via MIDI & PC, many of the programs wouldn't run in my newish OS. Had even worse issues with the much newer Roland JV-1010 (spartan UI via the front panel, zero support on from Roland on the PC side after their initial lame effort).

Have an Echo MIA sound card in my PC, I fully expect to "lose" it when MS drops support for XP, along with a boat load of software I really depend on.

PC hardware / software / bus / interface / driver support is a chain with too many weak links for one to hold onto a product intimately bound to it for any length of time, and I've been burned by it too many times. I just want to buy some decent keys with some decent sounds and stop the nonsense already.