Friday, August 06, 2021

Adding New Midis to My Mark IV Disklavier Piano

 Over the past few years it has been hard to add midis to my Mark IV Disklavier.  The music store that was accessible using the PRC (remote) and internet connection was not working.  Yamaha decided to move their Musicsoft store online.  The store is accessible on my Macintosh laptop at Yamaha Musicsoft Store  

 

I had tried in 2019 to download a free album from the store using my Macintosh laptop. The download went okay, but the file was compressed as a .PSX file and the album and included midi files had to be extracted. There was no available software for my Mac that would extract the file.  So, after 2 years I decided to pursue this problem and also figure out why the albums I was seeing on my Mac were not available on my piano's internet store (from PRC).

 

Result:  After talking with knowledgeable and helpful staff at Yamaha MusicSoft support, I have found out the following:

* The original Mark IV's that have not been upgraded with new controllers do not have viable access to the store using their piano's PRC.

* But recently the .PSX file type has been eliminated and a new zipfile protocol allows for easy download and unzipping of files on my Mac laptop. 

* Once files are unzipped on your computer, you can transfer to a USB stick (thumbdrive) and use the USB connection under your Mark IV to load the files to your piano.  

* Using the piano's remote or PRC, you can access the USB and then select album or midi file, click on Function and select Copy to place a copy of new songs into your piano library.

I did have one problem with the online purchase and a call to the support fixed an error in my account info.  I was able to enter my new credit card info and purchase an album. (There are phone numbers on the website to direct you to support)

 There is a nice selection of albums online.  Nice to be able to buy some Piano only - again -- thanks to Yamaha!

The "sound of music" playing on my piano has put me in a better frame of mind.  

Support staff, reminded me that any thing purchased in the store is easily downloaded again.  I was able to redownload my free album which had been changed to midi format instead of .PSX

NOTE:  USB stick should be initialized as FAT 32