MIDI Your Ivories

As developments in keyboard technology continue apace, the distinction is increasingly being made between keyboard players and piano players. While this probably does little harm to either breed, it does make it harder for the committed piano player who is also interested in using modern synthetic and sampled sounds.

The aspirations of piano players who do not wish to be left in the past are currently being realised by two companies, Poly Trak based in France, and Dyno My Piano, part of the Musicians Service Complex in New York State, both of whom are currently manufacturing a range of products designed to hook up the best available electric and electronic pianos with synthesizers, samplers and other MIDI compatible units.

PolyTrak are manufacturing two MIDI kits for the Yamaha PF 15 and 10 FM pianos. The kits are identical except for a pedal on one kit to facilitate shifting synth patches. The unit transmits information on all MIDI channels, including a programmable split point for driving two separate MIDI units, sustain information corresponding with the sustain pedal on the piano itself, and key transpose information.

The J002 kit, (including pedal patch change), is available direct from Poly Trak costing £204, and comes complete with instructions for installation, (takes about one hour), and a six month guarantee.

Over in the States, Dyno My Piano, who have specialised in remanufacturing Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer and acoustic pianos, are now doing MIDI fits for electric pianos — such as the Yamaha CPs — and for actual acoustic pianos of all descriptions.

Already their clients have included upmarket studios in New York, such as Unique, Rooftop and the Hit Factory and they have also been over to this country installing their units for Vangelis.

The interface transmits information from a row of touch-sensitive switches positioned under the keys in front of the balance rail, and from a switch activated by the sustain pedal, to synth units via MIDI channel 1. There is an additional footswitch which enables any portion of the keyboard to be assigned to MIDI transmission, and enables pitch information to be transposed by any interval.

The system is not available in this country in kit form, although members of the company are interested in coming to Britain to undertake installations. The installation costs $1500 (with discounts for more than one). RW

Poly Trak: (Contact Details)
Musicians Service Complex Inc, (Contact Details)

Platinum Logic

The Zildjian Company have come up with an alternative to their 'brilliant' finish. It's called 'Platinum' and is actually an electronic process which puts a micro-thin skin of chrome onto the cymbal. It makes the cymbal very shiny and flashy of course, and as far as I can ascertain it doesn't affect the sound at all. I had expected it to give a slightly more brittle sound (like the 'Brilliant's') but I was hard pushed to hear any difference. I thought I detected a little more 'shimmer' in there, but this may be psychological because of the appearance. What's more it certainly doesn't 'clang'. BH

Bad Acid

A common worry of guitarists, and others for that matter, is the problem of the well loved PP3 battery spilling its guts in the midst of their favourite foot pedal. As a lot of us know to our cost this takes the form of a blue-green gunge seeping out and spreading itself all over the battery compartment causing, amongst other problems, rusting of the terminals. The buying of sealed, and much more expensive, batteries offers a solution to the problem but at a cost. Anyway once you've had a battery leak you tend not to trust even the leakproof varieties which leads to a common type of paranoia whereby you're forever opening up the battery compartment just to make sure! As an added problem there is no battery made that can cope with being left for hours in a hot car on a hot, summer's day.

The solution to the problem is so simple and elegant that it never occurs to you until somebody (me) mentions it — then it's blindingly obvious. Put the battery in a small plastic bag and seal the neck with an elastic band. I said it was obvious! PW

Minus AD

Take a very careful look at these two photographs, for they are both the same man. On the left Adrian Deevoy, aged 17, pictured shortly after joining the IM&RW editorial staff. A man obviously ahead of his time, Adrian was a fashion pioneer with his Nick Heyward Arran jumper and George Michael shorts.

On the right, however, a sad shadow of his former self. Now aged 21, Adrian's years as a 'Rock' journalist have taken their toll. Drunken nights with the Pogues, a front row seat at Def Leppard gigs, a good kicking from the Redskins. And then there was the demos — those infernal demos — turning up day after day to torment his every waking hour. These heady days have obviously take their toll, and this former pedagogue of taste and style has been seen buying golf trousers from Marks & Sparks and canned lager in the Marshal Keate.

Just three short years on the magazine has left him a worn out, bleary eyed, sex-obsessed, no-good hack fit for only one thing — a staff job on Penthouse. Yes, Adrian's moved up a desk or two in this expanding publishing house we call Northern and Shell to what is suspiciously referred to as a 'Men's Lifestyle Magazine'. Indeed our second picture shows him on his first assignment picking this month's Samantha Fox picture for the magazine's cover. Obviously disgusted with himself he was last seen walking through the office at a strange angle muttering something about tissues.

Meanwhile, we'd like to welcome a well-educated, informed, mature and highly literate new features editor to the staff, but we chose Richard Walmsley instead. Welcome anyway Richard, and as for Adrian, what is left to say but bugger off! TH

It's From You-oo!

Not that I want to appear to be in anyway condoning — let alone supporting — the selling off of our national assets into the private hands of greed, but I do have some good news.

Not about North Sea Oil, (or prisons come to that), but about BT — you know, that company we all used to own till Maggie decided to sell the bits her newly made poor (were told to think) couldn't afford to her friends whom she had made rich enough to own nearly all of it.

Still, all of this has nothing to do with the fact that in its ever increasing efforts to get people to make more phone calls, BT — at least in Liverpool — is willing to offer you the facility of having a tape playing 24 hours a day at the end of its very own telephone line.

Although not officially christened yet, Bandline seems a good name for the service which, as far as I know, is only operating in Liverpool at the moment.

I happen to know this because my own band — Change To The East (since you asked) — is the first to use the service. In fact the idea only came about by accident when yours truly was talking to Mike Clement, a marketing manager at BT in Liverpool, who thought up the wonderful idea, in response to the news that I had forsaken journalism for an honest living in a band.

I immediately sent him a tape we'd made in the front room on a Fostex Multitracker, and before you could say, 'Where've my shares gone?', there it was available for all to hear on any telephone anywhere in the world. So far we've had a call from New York and, would you believe, Russia (cost us a fortune) and, as I write I hear we've had an enquiry from a record company... what a real record company?

BT is run on a regional basis, and just because Bandline is available in Liverpool doesn't mean it necessarily will be available every- or anywhere else. But if the idea appeals to you, the best bet is to contact your local BT office, sell them the idea of Bandline and they'll probably give it you free for thinking up such a wonderful way of persuading people to use the 'phone. The usefulness of it for getting your tapes heard instantly by anyone (from fans to record executives) anywhere in the world is self-obvious and for BT it means more calls. Although we won't rival the annual million plus calls (at least 5p per call remember) that BT handles on its 194 Radio City line, the number of calls we're getting (which can be mentioned) is both encouraging and useful.

Everybody's happy. Well almost — I forgot to tell you that Bandline would end up costing you about £60 a week. Oh yeah — and the other thing you want to hear is on (Contact Details) as BT insist on calling it! See you on the 'phone. PB

New York, New York is IM's Kinda Town

IM&RW's claim to being truly international took another boost when our American edition joined a specially formed publishing company, Crescendo Publications recently. In case you've not come across the US edition in your stateside meanderings, it's pretty much like the British one but with a different accent. Publisher Ron Bienstock and his trusty sidekick Phil Bashe are still at the helm, and promise yet more US scoops in the future from their NY base, now reinforced by their now company. (Contact Details) CM

Gone but not forgotten

We have received a number of enquiries recently, regarding the competitions run by Electronic Soundmaker and What Keyboard? in their September issues. There has been some delay in announcing the results of the two competitions owing to the incorporation of these two magazines into International Musician. Rest assured though, the result will be announced just as soon as we can get through the mountains of entries we have received, and the winners will be notified. So if you think you're in line for the Akai synth or the Cactus Electrodrum set-up watch this space... don't ring us, please! RW