OT: nothing interesting from NAMM 2012?

Yes, like Arturia, Modartt is secretly developing a real acoustic piano. It will be inexpensive and light and portable, but to control costs it will be monophonic. While it will have 105 keys, and a full harp with real strings, it will strangely only be able to sound one pitch at a time.

Hey, Wait a minute... There is a silent piano already there. I think they should start developing "Silent drums". This is would be a great gift for all of us. Think about all the nuances that you can have with your piano when drummer next to you is not all the disturbing you and forcing you to play louder and louder (and when you put more volume he starts to play even more louder etc.)

Seriously, sometimes I've been thinking why there isn't "half acoustic" drums which do not sound that much acoustically but which you can amplify with mics and PA-system...?

The Yamaha Disklavier Mark IV (and possibly some earlier Mark models) does have a silent function that mechanically decouples the hammers from striking the strings when the key notes are depressed by a live pianist.  One of the uses of this feature in a Disklavier is to allow the piano to "play" sampled sounds via its equipped CPU, audio amplifiers and speakers physically mounted to the wooden frame braces located beneath the soundboard.  For all intents and purposes, this would constitute a silent piano, because a pianist could play the instrument with zero electronic voices engaged. 

As far as I know, this is not true of PianoDisc- or similarly equipped player pianos, because these latter playing mechanisms are aftermarket add-ons, whereas Yamaha grands destined to become Disklaviers are built as Disklaviers from the ground up (with beefed up keybeds and modified actions, amongst other things, to handle the potentially heavier wear from extended playing) -- not as an afterthought.

Cheers,

Joe

P.S.  I attend the NAMM only every 4 or 5 years, because there are not enough new releases of hardware and/or software that peak my interest -- and to be candid, that justify the cost of flying to southern California and endure a crowded four-night hotel stay at higher convention-rate prices.  The last two times I attended the NAMM were in 2009 and 2005.  Still, it is always a pleasure to play all of the world's finest 9' acoustic pianos that are (usually) expertly tuned and regulated for the show:  Bluethner, Steinway, Fazioli, Bosendorfer, S. Kawai, Yamaha CFIII, Bechstein, Schimmel, Grotrien, etc. etc.

I was just at NAMM and got to play those great pianos..and guitars.. and things... took many photos and did a YouTube about it here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEUsW2h-CoA
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