Yamaha Piaggero

Time for an update? Well, I'm glad to say that I've been honing my keyboard skills a bit since I acquired the Yamaha Piaggero not too long ago. This is a very nice keyboard with some pretty good sounds on it. The price is affordable, though I hate that term because who is anyone to determine what is affordable for anyone else? But it was affordable for me and when you include the accessories package--bench, stand, power cord, sustain pedal and piano book--it was a super great, unbeatable price.

I chose the 61 key version because I felt it would be sufficient for me to use and store in my already tiny and cramped room. The 76 key version would have been nicer but also would have taken a bit more room but not much more. Now that I think about it I probably should have gotten the 76 but really this one here suits me completely.

It has 2 sounds each for piano, electric piano, organ, harpsichord as well as string and vibraphone sounds. I mainly use the piano and organ tone banks. The electric piano sounds are not bad at all with one sounding much better than the other. This is true of the organ as well. I find myself always using only one of the 2 organ sounds and one of the 2 electric piano sounds. The acoustic piano choices feature a brighter and a darker sound. Both sound good enough for recording.

Speaking of recording, it has a built in feature for recording that you can play back while you play live on the keys. That is very useful. Also includes metronome sounds.

A feature that I accidentally came across (and then later read in the manual) is a reverse-sustain effect with the sustain pedal. Normally you plug in the sustain pedal and when you press it you get sustain. But I discovered that if you press the pedal while you turn on the power to the keyboard you get the opposite effect; you'll have sustain all the time except when you press the pedal!

I like having sustain all the time. Just sounds better to me. Of course, this doesn't sound good with the organ sounds. But with piano and electric piano it's great.

And one of the biggest selling points of this keyboard for me was the built-in speakers.  It is so nice to be able to play along without either using headphones or having to connect it to an amp or something.

My goals with getting this instrument was to play every day/night and significantly improve my keyboard skills and to use it to compose music. Using only a guitar to compose all your music is limiting in my opinion and leads to creating similar sounding songs or at best, repeated chord progressions. Using a keyboard opens up a new world in terms of composing.

So while I haven't played this instrument every day/night I have improved my skills already and have even learned to play a few songs albeit not without stumbling and making errors. But it feels good knowing how to play some songs and getting those fingers all independent-minded.

Here are photos of both the 61 key and 76 key versions: