The final three programs layer the CFX sample with strings, synth pad, and DX7 electric piano, letting you cover David Foster-style ballad layers with aplomb.Ī simple MIDI song recorder includes a metronome that you can adapt to any time signature, as well as song storage/playback via a connected USB drive. The soft pedal also toggles chorus on electric pianos and vibrato on the vibraphone.
Tuning a digital piano Patch#
The “Jazz Organ” patch is standard ROMpler fare, but with the nice perk of the soft pedal toggling the speed of a surprisingly good Leslie simulation. Four pipe organs provide registrations from sparse to full, and all sound lovely given a combination of the onboard reverb and the piano’s natural acoustics.
Sparkly DX7-style electric piano, Rhodes, and Wurly are covered accurately and are fun to play, though the latter two could have a bit more attitude. Digital sectionįeature-wise, the U1TA’s digital sound engine is akin to a fairly basic digital slab piano, albeit with the stunning multisample of Yamaha’s CFX concert grand I first encountered in the NU1 taking center stage. I’d even mike the U1TA for recording a layer of piano and another sound where I wanted everything to seem like it’s coming from the same acoustic space. Even if I disengaged the acoustic side using the mechanical “silent piano” feature (more on this shortly) and listened to just the digital sounds, I was hard pressed to localize their origin to where those transducers actually sit all the sound was just wonderfully there. With the U1TA, sampled grand, electric pianos, strings, and other sounds “bloom” from within the piano and benefit from its natural reverb in the exact same way as the piano’s own strings. With every other type of acoustic-piano-plus-digital layering I’ve experimented with, I could never quite get away from the sense that the digitally-generated sounds were coming from point-sources different from the piano itself-even if the speakers were cleverly integrated into the piano’s cabinetry. What does this sound like in practice? Incredibly convincing. In effect, the soundboard plays the role of “speaker cone.” The image at left shows a closeup of the whole assembly. When the speaker is energized, the voice coil’s movements vibrate the soundboard without weighing it down. The magnet and other heavy bits are mounted on the surrounding bracing, such that the voice coil can surround the magnet without actually touching it. The coil is so lightweight that it doesn’t cause any dampening issues. Only the voice coil-the little wire-wrapped cylinder from which the rest of a conventional speaker funnels out-is mounted on the soundboard itself. Yamaha’s solution is basically to split the difference. The interface to all things digital is a black panel that resides discreetly under the bass end of the keyboard and provides 19 sounds ranging from Yamaha CFX concert grand to electric pianos to harpsichord, mallets, strings, and pipe organs. Of course, the keyboard is MIDI’ed with optical sensors, which drive the digital sound engine-or an external synth of your choosing, thanks to the inclusion of five-pin MIDI in and out ports. Yamaha sent a U1TA for review, a piano that begins life as their 48-inch tall U1 upright-an instrument so widely used that the “U” should stand for “ubiquitous.” There’s also a TransAcoustic baby grand, the GC1TA, which measures in at five feet, three inches and a $31,099 list price. Best pianos: acoustic and digital pianos for beginners and pros.Best synthesizers: keyboards, module and semi-modular synths.
Tuning a digital piano pro#
The best MIDI keyboards for beginner and pro musicians.
It’s an intriguing proof of concept and hugely engaging to play, but do the practical benefits add up to more than that? Let’s investigate. Yamaha now makes their latest statement of this hybrid philosophy with the TransAcoustic line: real acoustic pianos with supplemental digital sound engines that-here’s the kicker-use the piano soundboard itself, not conventional speakers, as the amplification system.
Tuning a digital piano series#
In the other direction, instruments like the GranTouch series married bona fide grand piano actions to all-digital sound engines, with the more recent AvantGrand pianos adding multi-channel sound, careful speaker placement, and cabinet design in the service of realism.
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