Michael Fogleman

Woohoo! I finally got myself a brand new piano up here! As you probably already know, I decided to go with a digital piano. I had many reasons for this decision, and they include: a) didn't want to deal with moving a 500-lb hunk of wood, metal, and strings, b) didn't want to deal with tuning, c) didn't want to bother my neighbors too much with a piano that lacks volume control, d) was interested in having several instrument sounds instead of just one. And I got the one I'd been looking at for quite a while, the Yamaha Clavinova CLP-170. This is one of the better ones, for sure. It cost quite a bit, but I got 6 months with 0% aka same-as-cash, so no big deal! :-) I continue to be amazed by the features on this thing that make it so realistic, and that's what I'm going to talk about in this blog post. But first we need some pictures!

Okay, just two pictures. Isn't it awesome looking? Definitely a great addition to my apartment. Alright, so on to the features! First, one of the most important things about a piano is the feel of the keys. They sorta bounce when you hit them and plain old keyboards just have springs which definitely do not capture this effect. Also, the lower (to the left) keys are heavier than the higher ones, so as you go down the keyboard the keys gradually get heavier and heavier. Well, my piano covers both of these key features (punny!). In fact, it does so in a way that I almost feel like I can actually play better on it than on a real piano. So this is one thing Yamaha definitely did properly.

The other important thing about a piano is the way it sounds (duh!). There are so many aspects to a piano that alter how it sounds, and I don't think Yamaha forgot to consider a single one of them on this model. So here's my little piano tutorial for those of you who aren't too keen on how they work. When you press a key, a damper is removed from that particular string and a hammer hits the string very rapidly to create the sound. If you let go of the key, the damper returns to the string and causes it to stop vibrating. A side effect of this is that if you have a key pressed and then press another, the vibrations of the second string cause the first one to vibrate. This is called sympathetic resonance. Actually it only occurs when the note wave patterns are similar... so C-chord notes will affect other C-chord notes, for example. Well, I put my piano to the test. I very, very slowly pressed down a few keys until they were all the way down. Since I did it so slowly no noise was made. Then, while keeping those keys down, I played another note. And voila, I could hear my other keys resonating! How freaking cool is that? This piano has an entire set of audio samples just for this purpose. Very, very cool.

Now, I'd like you to imagine knocking on the wooden case of a piano. If you've ever done this, you know you'll hear an echo in the piano case. Believe it or not, I can do the same thing to my digital piano by knocking on it. This is because it has a built-in microphone to pick up any sounds, not limited to the sounds it makes itself. It processes the input and sends sounds out the back speakers to emulate the echoing inside of a real grand piano. Again, how crazy is this!? Very impressive. Of course, the real benefit is not having an echo sound when I hit my piano. :-) It's having it do that audio processing on the music I play to make the performance sound much more realistic.

There are lots of little things like that in this piano. Some other things I've noticed are that it has a graded pedal, meaning the sound is different if I have the damper pedal up, mid-way, or all the way down. This is very cool. Another thing is that the piano has "key-off" samples that create the subtle sounds that are made as you release a key. (this is very, very noticeable for the harpsichord which apparently makes a plucking noise when you let go of the key) Needless to say, I'm very happy with my purchase. It's about the best you can get without buying the real thing, but honestly I think this is in many ways a better option, especially for me.

Alright, that's what I wanted to blog about. I'll write another post sometime soon (maybe) about what's been going on in my life, aside from my piano playing! ;-)

posted by Michael  # 9/29/2005 11:06:00 PM