The Yamaha YPG-625 [Archive] - Music & Musician Forums

mutant!

11-11-2007, 03:39 AM

i've never played or seen one, but i can help you make sense of the information present on the internet.

the keybed has a graded, weighted action. the 'weighted' part means its keys feel 'heavy', like a real piano's, instead of those plasticky 'toy' keys you get on cheap keyboards, analogue synths and organs. while this may seem to be a silly feature, it actually helps a huge amount in terms of letting the keyboard sound like a real piano, because you'd play the keys in the same manner as you would a piano. the 'graded' part means that the action is very heavy on the lower keys and gets progressively lighter the higher you play - again, like a real grand piano. i trust yamaha's piano actions (i own a p90), so i can tell you with a great amount of confidence that this piano will feel very, very nice to play.

they advertise it as having a 'usb to host terminal'. it seems to be a usb-based midi connection, which is awesome as it eliminates the need to connect a midi interface to your pc - but given the educational nature of this instrument, it may well be that they've overrided the standard midi functioning with silly software of their own. i can't find a picture of the back panel so i don't know if it has separate midi in/out.

the keyboard has a pitch bend wheel. besides the obvious use, this also means that if you manage to use this as a midi controller, you have that extra functionality as well.

the instrument uses 'long, stereo and multi-layered samples', according to the website. the stereo part simply means that sounds will sound wider and more natural; especially piano, where the bass notes will sound more from the left and the treble notes will sound more from the right. the multi-layered part means that for each instrument, they didn't just record one instance of each note; rather, they recorded every note at two, or three, or maybe even four different velocity (volume) levels. i'm sure you've noticed that loud notes on a piano are not only louder than soft notes, but they're brighter as well - the tone or timbre is different. multi-layered samples recreate this by blending between two velocity levels depending on how hard you play. dig? so the piano will sound much more real.

as a piano, this instrument will probably be great. it'll function as a midi controller. i'm just not sure about how much use you'll get from its other sounds... yamaha tend to load their instruments with sounds that aren't exactly rock vernacular. they seem to market towards casual players... people who enjoy cheesy '80s dx7 electric piano sounds and cheese strings and such. no wonder they're so widely used in the south african jazz context. anyway. yeah. it all depends on what you want to do, man.