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  • {intro music playing}

  • 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