Hi everyone, it's Rudi from Better Music. I'm here today with some pretty cool new stuff.
This is the new Casio Privia PX-560M, it's a new addition to the range, it's not replacing
an older model, it's actually an addition so it's brand new. A lot of cool stuff in
here, it's not just your average digital piano, they've put a whole lot of features in here,
sort of pro features as well. Some of you may have heard of the other model they make
called the PX-5S which has the award winning Hex Layer Synth engine in it, so this particular
model has actually got a lot of that in it, so you've got real-time control knobs, you've
got a bunch of really, really cool sounds, but to start with I'll just show you the piano
sound, which is in itself is very, very good, there's 256 note polyphony on this instrument,
and the piano is fantastic.
So that's just piano number 1. There's a huge amount of piano sounds in here, so let's get
the basics of this instrument down first, so you've got a naturally scaled, tri-sensor
action on this piano, so it's very accurate to play.
Scaled means it's actually heavier at the bottom than it is at the top, like on a real
grand piano. The instrument is loaded up with 650 preset tones, there is a huge amount of
storage for user tones as well, you can make your own sounds up. You can actually zone
the keyboard into 4 different sections, so you can have 2 sounds in the lower and 2 sounds
in the upper, you can control the levels, you can do anything you want to do for a live
situation, or sort of a home studio situation as well. I'll talk a little bit more in detail
about the synth engine later, because it's just another whole section to the instrument,
we're just going to have a look at the basics today. So I'm gonna go and run through some
of the sounds. So we've heard the piano sound, the other sounds that are really good on this
instrument are the electric sounds, you've got really, really cool electric pianos.
That's a 60s sort of electric piano. You've got your 80s...
There's actually 13 pages of electric pianos in here. If you're using it for, you know
if you're gigging with it, you've got everything you need there. Going into the hex engine,
you've got some seriously good sounds in here. So the hex engine allows you to layer up 6
different actual instrument patches into 1 patch, and then you can layer that again,
so you've got a massive amount of creativity in terms of creating your own sounds. You
can edit any of the sounds as well, there's full graphical editing on board the instrument,
so here's just a few more of the sounds. Here's one of the Hex engine rhodes sounds. So you
can see it's overdriven, so...
It's very, very cool. This is a herbie's rhodes, obviously refereeing to Herbie Hancock.
So again, this is the Casio PX-560M, it comes in this snazzy blue colour, it's available
in some different configurations. So you can buy it just as the piano itself,
which is like, it's around 11kg, it's really, really light. You can get it in a full furniture
cabinet, which is the kit model, with pedals, and a timber stand and adjustable stool.
You can also get it in a pro pack, which comes with a good quality carry case which fits
it perfectly, and also a heavy duty sustain pedal.
So back to the instrument again, so we've gone through the piano sound, we've got 256
note polyphony, very high quality sounds, we've heard a lot of electric pianos, sorry,
I really like electric pianos so I'm always showing them off, but I will show you some
of the other sounds as well, let's go through a couple of those. So things like saxophone.
So very, very realistic, brass sounds.
You've got drum kits in there, I mean you can use the actual kits to write your own
tracks as well.
Again, you've also got some simple features that a lot of these digital pianos have, you've
got a full drum section and automatic accompaniments built in, so if you want to just play along
with stuff you can. Getting to the functionality of the instrument, you've got proper stereo
inputs and outputs, so you can go to a PA system, for recording, you've got a line in,
you've got a little mini-jack audio in as well, so you can run a music player or device
straight in, you've got a USB thumb drive port right here, which enables you to record
WAV files, so you can actually record everything as audio straight onto the stick. You've got
a 17 track sequencer which you can use to compose with, they haven't skimped on features,
they've got USB MIDI, they've also got proper 5 pin MIDI port so unlike a lot of other instruments
in this price range you may only get the USB MIDI, this lets you do everything professionally.
OK so that's a lot of the features we've gone through on the piano, I do want to touch a
little bit on the Hex Synth engine, because this is what really sets this instrument apart
from pretty much anything else on the market in this price range. You get a lot for your
money in here, so I'm just gonna show you a few of the presets and show you some of
the cool sounds that there is. So, very easy, at the moment we're on a piano sound. One
thing I forgot to mention is that there's this beautiful 5.3 inch touchscreen on the
instrument, and it is so clear, it makes it really easy to navigate, it's really, really
nice to use. I'm going to go in here and go to the Hex engine, which we just scroll across,
all the different categories and we go to hex layer. So if I go to hex layer, we've
got all sorts of different patches, and these are using the hex engine so...
Now you see me fiddling with these knobs here, the knobs are real-time control knobs, depending
on what patch, you can assign them to do different things, at the moment we're setting it to
change gain along the synth engine, so...
Depending on what you set it to, it will do all different things, so, we'll go through
a couple of different presets. Let's go into our synth engines, and we'll go for some nice pads.
Again, very easy, if I've got the hex layer on and I want to add a piano or an electric
piano, I just pick it and turn it on and...
I can turn the piano back on or off, you can even assign the knobs to blend sounds in and
out. We've got some great standard sort of synth sounds, like lead.
You've got a pitch bend wheel and a modulation wheel, so as a controller or synth it's fantastic.
Lot's of really cool sounds.
Then we'll go into some of the pad sounds, which are very, very good on this one.
There's just so many sounds on here, you don't get bored of them. There's so many to play with.
Of course with the screen it allows you to edit any of the sounds as well, so that's
another whole video that we'll do at another stage, you can control every parameter, you
can change attack, decay, you can save your settings, you can save up to 400 user settings,
it's really a pro machine at what is not a very expensive price, and piano, again, that's
just going through presets, we're not really getting into the nitty gritty of this instrument,
there's a lot more than meets the eye with this. Again, we mentioned before that there
are some backings and drum beats on here which we can play with, so, they're really, really
easy to use as well, we can just pick a sound...
Go into the backing section and pick what
kind of style we want, so there's all different categories, and away we go.
We can select one, put the accompaniment on, do an intro...
There's a whole bunch of them in there, I mean there's about 220 rhythm styles, you've
also got with the USB MIDI on the back it's class compliant, so you can plug an iPad straight
into it, it works with Mac or PC, you don't need any sort of, you know, mostly don't need
drivers with it, it'll just work, all in all, PX-560 from Casio, brand new, does a lot of
stuff, whether you're playing live, using it at home, using it in the studio, using
it as a controller with software, you've got everything you need to do that with. There
is this little baby brother as well, which is the PX-360, which I haven't shown you today,
it;s mostly the same as the PX-560, it has pretty much all the same sounds, the same
touch, same options available with a timber stand or with a pro kit, it misses out on
the real-time control knobs, and the hex layer synth, and a couple of other small things,
but still also a very good piano and worth checking out. That's it from me, I'm going
to have a little play, and enjoy this instrument. See you later.