Light up keys on my piano blink instead of just stay lit

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redrules81
Posts: 4

Post by redrules81 »

How do I get the light up keys on my clavinova to stop blinking and just stay lit instead until I press the correct key(s). It's really hypnotic and distracting.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Sorry for the wait on this!

I'm afraid I'm a little unfamiliar with Yamaha's Clavinova line. Usually when we hear from users with a Clavinova, it's because the key lights don't work at all. It wasn't until Yamaha created the EZ-220 that they seemed to allow outside MIDI input to control the key lights. And even then, it's not an official protocol: keyboards with lights tend to show them even for very quiet notes, so Synthesia is really just sending note messages with the lowest possible velocity.

I worry that the blinking might be a built-in "feature" of the Clavinova. At least on the other handful of lighted-key models we've tested (and in MIDI monitoring software like MIDI-OX), key light messages are sent once when it's time to light up and again when it's time to turn them off.
monkel
Posts: 199

Post by monkel »

I tried Synthesia with the Clavinova CSP 150 and 170. They have a panel above the keys and 3 (perhaps 4) leds per key, to simulate dropping notes (so no lit keys themselves).

When I ran Synthesia I remember that the bottom led would light up, but I don't remember blinking.
abbignale
Posts: 1

Post by abbignale »

Dear developer team,

first of all I would like to thank you for this amazing app, which masters the interaction with so many different types of software. :D

Unfortunately I have a problem.

The above problem still exists. On the Led bar of the csp 170 and csp 150 only the last Led flashes, but only when a key is pressed. The three leds above it do not light up at all.

Can the problem be solved? If so, when can it be expected?


best regards
Abbi

PS: My friends have the same problem.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

(Sorry for the 8 month wait on this!)

The "falling" light display on the newer CSP models is very cool and is something I'd be interested in supporting in Synthesia eventually. The trouble is that spending $4k (and allocating that amount of space in my office for the 7th or 8th "test device") just to hopefully/maybe reverse engineer Yamaha's proprietary communication scheme is a pretty big roadblock.

I wonder if a better answer wouldn't be to get permission from some music instrument store to gather some data from a CSP model. Then work on a solution in the dark without being able to test. Then doing a final test at the store again. That sounds pretty awful, too. :?

Worse, more infrastructure in Synthesia would need to be developed to send the predictive light signals out in advance. So it's one of those things that is very cool but for the amount of technical work involved it's hard to justify for the tiny subset of users that actually have those specific ($4-7k!) models of digital piano.
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