Welcome to KeyAction Summer/Fall 2001

Museum Visitors Reveal Their Creativity With Help of Clavinova and Digital Technology

The Museum of Science in Boston, which featured Yamaha pianos in its Playing With Music exhibit last spring, has found a new star in the Clavinova CVP107 digital piano. It resides in the Music & Sound section of the museum's Cahners ComputerPlace.

Linked to a Compaq personal computer running the special Home Concert 2000 software (co-developed by Yamaha piano consultant George Litterst), the Clavinova is a key display in the museum's program to demonstrate how digital technology can be a tool for creativity.

"It exposes people to something they can do with computers that they haven't thought of before," says Program Manager Susan Timberlake. "Some people sit down and use it as a keyboard with some extra cool capabilities, and other people get more into the computer functions. Our biggest challenge is keeping visitors from turning the volume up too loud!"

Provided by the Yamaha Piano Division together with Boston Organ and Piano, the CVP107 takes museum visitors on a virtual tour of the computer's latest musical capabilities. With the Home Concert software displaying the MIDI code as musical notation on a flat-panel screen, the Clavinova not only plays pre-recorded compositions, but also allows members of the public to sit at the keyboard and play along. The system tracks where the player is and turns the "pages" automatically while speeding or slowing the accompaniment to match. It even senses the player's force on the keys and makes the accompaniment louder or softer, accordingly.

Using the Clavinova's Follow Lights™ in teaching mode, the CVP107 lets non-musicians in on the fun, too, indicating the next note to play and keeping the pages and accompaniment at the user's pace.

"The current exhibit is deliberately geared toward equipment that's within many visitors' own budgets," says Timberlake. "The idea is to expose people to computer technologies that are available at the consumer level. We focus more on the kinds of things that people might want to use in their own homes or their own schools."

And, she notes, the Clavinova digital piano's "coolness factor" is high. "The staff adores it," she reports. "When we first got it, the volunteers could not have been happier, and some of them became quite addicted to it. It's definitely one of the most popular aspects of the exhibit."

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