Hello my name's Dane Madsen, I'm the digital piano marketing manager

for Yamaha Corporation of America. Today I'm at Kraft Music

and I'm demonstrating the DGX-650 portable grand digital piano.

For a great deal don't forget to visit Kraft Music

for some incredible bundles. It's available in two colors here we've got

the black with the dark rosewood side panels and stand,

but there's also a stunning white version as well. Let's get into this instrument.

{music playing}

The DGX-650 is a great instrument for beginning pianist,

or the piano hobbyist who wants to learn how to play their favorite songs,

and they don't want to do in a basic form, they want to do it with backing

bands in interactive features.

It makes learning and playing music really really fun.

{music playing}

I love playing with the auto accompaniments it's so much fun to hear all

these different styles whether it's jazz or bossa nova or rock.

And all the different sounds you get to play with go along with it, synthesizers,

pianos, organs,

it's like you could spend your whole night just exploring all these different musical avenues

with this DGX-650

{music playing}

Now the other important feature or aspect to

recreating the piano experience is the touch. How does this instrument feel to

the fingertips of the piano player?

Well we've got the graded hammer standard action which is actually weighted

heavier in the left-hand

and gets lighter as you move up the keyboard emulating the different hammer sizes

on acoustic piano. Very important to the touch.

Classical pianists are really going to notice that.

{music playing}

I like this key action it's very responsive, it's firm,

it's great for playing piano,

it feels really goo when I'm playing strings and synths too.

{music playing}

Let's talk about how this instrument makes it's piano sound.

Actually have a new piano tone generation system in this series,

it's called Pure CF Sampling, and what that means is we've taken the CF3S

concert grand piano, that's a nine-foot grand piano made by Yamaha

famous around the world for winning a classic piano competitions

and festivals. That's been recorded and meticulously assigned

to each one of these keys here.

We've even got multiple recordings per key.

{music playing}

But the DGX-650 doesn't stop at the acoustic piano sound,

we've actually hundreds of different voices in here that recreate different instruments.

One of the simplest ones to do is just to press the dual button where you'll get a nice

string sound layered right on top of the piano sound.

Anything you play instantly sounds like it has an orchestra.

{music playing}

The fact that I can split and layer on this piano is really helpful.

Sometimes I wanna know what it's going to sound like if I have strings around the piano.

So at the push of a button I can have that right off the blocks.

Or maybe later on tonight I'm gonna play with a bass player but right now I need

to know what that might sound like. I could split the keyboard,

and have a bass on my left and piano on the right, and that's really cool.

Another great voice is the acoustic guitar voice.

You can actually hear the fingernails at the picking on the acoustic guitar strings.

{music playing}

Another great thing about portable grand series is the fact that it has styles in it.

Well what's a style?

it's essentially your own backing band complete with a drummer, a bass player,

guitar player

or strings and horns if you need them. The great thing is is

you tell that band what to play, and they'll play the chords and you just play the melody

and you're a one-man band essentially.

{music playing}

The auto accompaniment to the intros and outros and fills,

so it's somewhat interactive and play my song maybe

I don't want it to just start with the beat maybe I want to have a little bit of an intro

like the band is

is revving up to get goin. And you can set up, uh you can set up these auto accompaniments

to work that way, where the kinda plain intro

and then the tune starts and uh maybe in the middle the song you're gonna go to the bridge,

at the push a button you can have a drum fill, the band will change it up a little bit

and then you're in the bridge. You can do the same coming back into the verse.

when you're at the end of the song

there's an outro feature too. Hit the outro and the whole band's gonna

finish up together which is quite a bit more satisfying than just start and stop a beat.

So that's a pretty unique feature here in the DGX-650 and I like it.

Now we've got hundreds of styles here, how do you find the right style to match

the song you wanna play?

Actually there is a great new feature on the DGX-650

called style recommender, where all you have to play

is the rhythm of the type a song you wanna play on any key

right or wrong it'll analyze your rhythm and then give you a list

of styles to choose from.

{music playing}

So that was style recommender

and as you can see you do have to know how to play some chords with your left hand

it certainly helps when communicating to those bands what

chords you want them to play but if you don't know your chords very well?

Well actually there's a great new feature, another great new feature on DGX-650

called Smart Chord. What Smart Chord does

is allows you to play any chord, complex,

simple, major, minor, with one finger on your left hand,

the DGX-650 knows how to embellish that chord.

Check this out, so here I've selected a rock pop type style.

It doesn't require really expensive sounding chords like your sevens and your elevens,

uh that's okay because the DGX-650 and Smart Chord

knows which style I've chosen, its gonna embellish with the right

chord appropriate to the style.

{music playing}

C major, A minor, F

and G, very straightforward.

Now let's play that same chord progression using a jazz style

{music playing}

The C becomes a C major 7 adding the 9th interval.

A minor 7 adding the 11th and F69 cord,

and the G7 adding the 9th interval.

{music playing}

Another great feature on the DGX-650 is it XG Soundset.

What that means is it's compatible with a library of songs we call

"You are the Artist." Now what "You are the Artist" is

is a partnership between Yamaha and Hal Leonard,

the biggest print music publisher in the world. They have

great song books from best-selling artists like Coldplay

Adele and Elton John where you learn to play the songs

the same way you would on acoustic piano but you can actually download the drummer,

download the bass player, and the guitar player and the string section,

all that stuff comes from YamahaMusicSoft.com/XG

Let's take a look at how it works. So I wanna learn how to play Speed of sound by Coldplay.

I press the song button, I go to the Coldplay folder,

and find the backing track that I wanna play along with.

There it is. The score button will actually give me a hint as to where I'm at in the score on the page,

and pressing start plays the backing track.

{music playing}

So I can listen to the piano part to hear what it's supposed to sound like when I'm playing it.

I can mute the right hand so I can practice the right hand while

it plays left and and vice versa, I can even go into Your Tempo Mode

where depending on how accurate I am it will slow the tempo down

until I get back on track.

Now another standard feature on digital pianos is headphone output,

of course you can plug in headphones and practice in privacy.

Pretty standard. What's new on the DGX-650

is that you can choose whether the main speakers stay on or off

for example if you plug into a PA system at your church or your school

wouldn't it be nice if you pluged in that cable and the main speakers stayed on

that way you can hear yourself through your speakers while you're projecting to the audience.

{music playing}

I really enjoy the sound of the speakers on this DGX-650

the way they're spread out it's like the perfect stereo feel

for my ears are. All of the instruments sound amazing through it. It's strong it's powerful,

everything is very crisp and very clear.

{music playing}

So another application of this would be to add a subwoofer for example.

Now the DGX-650 speakers sound great on their own there pointed right at your ears,

they're really really impressive, but if you really want to add some low end to it

you can plug in the headphone out to a subwoofer and it keeps the main speakers on

while you're adding that low end for more bass.

Now let's talk about some of the other great features on the DGX-650.

What's new is a mini-jack aux input. This allows you to connect any mp3 player or

mobile music device or anything that produces a sound,

and use the great built in speakers on the DGX-650

as your sound system. Additionally we've got a great new

audio recording feature. The DGX-650 when you've got a USB device plugged in,

will capture anything you play as a audio wave file,

from there you can uploaded to your computer, put it on iTunes, put it on a CD,

share with your friends and family. It's a great new feature.

Now what's interesting is remember that aux input feature I mentioned?

That actually works with the wave recorder so anything that goes in the

aux input is gonna get captured along with your playing.

For example you take a small mixer, plug in a microphone

now you can sing into the DGX-650 and record your audio

of your singing with your playing.

{music playing}

Let's talk a bit about accessories. When you unbox your DGX-650 its gonna

come with some things, for example the matching furniture style stand you see here,

a music rest for holding your books while you're playing,

ah owner's manual of course, power supply,

and a footswitch that acts as a sustain pedal. If you'd like to upgrade some

these things for example the LP-7A tripple pedal piano style unit,

you're gonna find that in Kraft Music's various Bundles

with the DGX-650.

{music playing}

So there we have it, the DGX-650 Portable Grand Digital Piano

a great instrument for any aspiring pianist or piano hobbyist

who wants to play the piano but they want some interactive features to help

enhance their playing experience.

Whether it's backing tracks, styles, or just choosing from any of the hundreds

voices built into the instrument.

{music playing}

Once again I'm Dane Madsen digital piano marketing manager from Yamaha

here at Kraft Music and thanks for watching

{music playing}