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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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C major, A minor, F
and G, very straightforward.
Now let's play that same chord progression using a jazz style
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Once again I'm Dane Madsen digital piano marketing manager from Yamaha
here at Kraft Music and thanks for watching
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