so i have this digital piano or keyboard
or whatever let's not get hung up on the
nomenclature i've had it for about five
years i'm no professional pianist but i
do enjoy tickling those synthetic
ivories from time to time enough to be
bothered by a keyboard without weighted
keys but it also didn't make sense to
spend lots of money on some ultra lavish
thing because my level of piano
proficiency would waste such an
instrument
so i got this
hold on i just gotta boot it up
that's right it's still no effort
november and this piano is gonna learn
us a thing or two about user interfaces
and then we'll talk about some other
stuff
being the most basic model in yamaha's
aureus line this model is pretty basic i
mean it's even got a manual transmission
as you can see by the presence of the
clutch pedal
that was a joke those are just your
normal piano pedals except of course
they're not real they're just switches
but they're not binary inputs either and
also this piano handles the sustain
pedal in a surprisingly wrong way which
i'll show you in a bit
but anyway like most keyboards this
thing offers a fair degree of
customizability with things like key
sensitivity a slew of reverb options
which are annoyingly always on by
default different voices so you can
pretend you're an organist or a
harpsichordist or annoy your friends
like this
[Music]
that voice is a vibraphone and not a
marimba but who's counting oh it also
offers a built-in metronome and some
other stuff it's a pretty fully featured
if on the cheaper side instrument
look at the controls though hi i've now
edited the video and while i kind of
thought this would be the case uh i just
want to make sure that you know yes i'm
aware you can't see the keyboard at all
from where the camera is but remember
what month it is so
just keep that in mind look at the
controls though and you find
there basically aren't any
that's one of the concessions you make
when you buy the cheap one
over here you have a power button and a
volume control an actual potentiometer
even
but uh
that's it
over there you have a single button
labeled grand piano function
i'm glad it can at least do that and
well now we're out of buttons
that doesn't seem like enough
apparently this thing has a bluetooth
radio in it because of course it does
and there's an app you can download for
your phone to control things because of
course there is but all i can say to
that is gross
oh but it does have an integrated key
cover
fancy
i was perplexed by how the heck i was
supposed to control this thing to change
its settings but after staring at it for
just a little while i thought oh
that's right there's a whole 88 other
buttons sitting right here
they're just pianoy yamaha rather
smartly designed this thing an awful lot
like a computer keyboard and this button
here is your modifier key like alt or
control or command or windows or
function
press it once and it will revert back
someone got mad at me for saying revert
back so i said it again be careful what
you wish for
it will revert back to being a standard
piano from whatever function it was in
or at least a facsimile of a standard
piano but if you hold the button down
and then press one of the keys well now
you've done who knows what like started
a sample song
oh good can't have a piano that can't
play the entertainer
side note
i think scott joplin gets a bad or
perhaps incomplete rap for being the
ragtime guy
yeah ragtime as a genre has a very
particular sound but it doesn't help
that just about the only three pieces
anyone ever hears are the entertainer
maple leaf rag and sometimes the easy
winners maybe pineapple rag too
basically everything that was in the
sting
it also doesn't help that people like to
play these pieces ridiculously fast
because
well
[Music]
i mean it's very fun but have you ever
heard the second section of solace
[Music]
or the magnetic rag a personal favorite
of mine
[Music]
appreciation for ragtime and indeed for
joplin seems to come in waves and well
maybe we are overdue for another one
anyway
yamaha gives you a cheat sheet so you
don't have to memorize all these they
are grouped to help make this a little
more obvious though and they've put the
most likely to be used functions at the
very bottom selecting voices and near
middle c the metronome although using
the metronome is probably the most
clunky experience of this scheme as you
enter your desired beats per minute
using these keys six
five
one
two
three you can then have it read back to
you the set speed sixty nine nice then
you can turn it on or off and also
adjust beats per measure and volume
one
two
oh
120
on
it does work but honestly
you're better off just using an external
metronome
this probably isn't the only keyboard in
existence to use its keys in this way
but it nonetheless delights me
because it's a very meta take on a user
interface every piano going back to the
days when we called it the piano forte
or forte piano if you liked that ordered
better has some version of this keyboard
and what are the keys themselves but a
user interface
even an acoustic instrument of strings
mallets and dampers has a ui and the
keyboard and pedals is that using a
simple modifier button to turn that
centuries old design into a parameter
setting tool for the digital copy of the
thing the design comes from is just
i don't know exactly but wow
outside of the ui thing the evolution of
digital pianos like this is just a
fascinatingly weird blend of new
technologies built into and around a
very old interface but the goal of each
new development is to make it seem to
behave exactly like the acoustic version
it emulates
it's like engineering specifically for
nostalgia each step forward is at the
same time a step back and i love it
just think of what this thing is
actually doing
when you get right down to it
this is a really weird machine that
calls up a pre-recorded sound sample of
a real piano producing a single note the
moment you push any one of these buttons
they just happen to be shaped like piano
keys
then it plays that sample
through a pair of loudspeakers
that's just
really goofy when you think about it
isn't it but if you press these buttons
in the right order
you get music
[Music]
but then again i suppose that's exactly
what happens with a real piano
anyway if you can't tell thinking about
this too hard makes my brain hurt i mean
it's just a skeuomorphic nightmare
so let's talk about some of the things
we've done to make fake pianos fake it
better the earliest digital keyboards
were basically sound sample color upper
machines
and not much else at all in fact it
might not have even been a sound sample
or even digital it could have been
synthesized but
that's a horrible substitute for a real
piano especially if the keyboard doesn't
have some kind of force detection which
early ones didn't and so each note
sounded at the same loudness with every
press now this isn't to say that early
piano replacements weren't cool in their
own ways electronic pianos certainly
have their place and brought new and
interesting sounds to the world of music
and let's not forget the earlier
electric piano though that's an entirely
different beast
and there are so many other weird
concepts out there like the melotron
which is an analog sample collar upper
but again different beast i'm solely
talking about the continuing work to
faithfully mimic a real piano in both
sound and function
to that end we pretty quickly developed
keys that could determine how hard they
were pressed by way of velocity
detection basically each key has two
switches at two different depths and it
just determines how quickly the key
moved between those two positions to
work out how hard you pressed it
that was combined with new software
which would alter the volume of the
plate sample based on that
this allowed the player a similar degree
of expressiveness as before and brought
the forte back into the piano
but that's not great either just playing
the same sample at different volumes
isn't actually a good approximation of
what an actual piano actually sounds
like actually in a real piano the key
pushes a mallet into the strings and the
force of that strike changes not just
the volume but also the timber
softly played notes are mellower and not
as bright as keys getting smashed so to
add realism digital pianos and keyboards
started including multiple sound samples
of every note recorded at different
volumes on a real piano thus allowing
for approximating that timber difference
how hard you pressed the key now
determines not only how loud to play a
sample
but also which specific sample among a
set
should be played for that note
and what about how to stop playing the
note
most keys on a piano lift a damper from
the strings when you press them and
replace the damper when it is released
that's why a note continues as you hold
the key
but stops when you release it
this piano does a simple quick fade out
of the sample when the key is lifted
which honestly is close enough however
the sustain pedal the one on the right
allows the player a very important
technique in a real piano this pedal
lifts all the dampers from the strings
meaning every note will continue so long
as the pedal is pressed
this digital piano's sustain pedal isn't
just an on off switch and mimics partial
pedaling where the dampers are rested
slightly on the strings which quiets
them somewhat but not completely
[Music]
this may not sound very important but
trust me it is
oh and speaking of the petals i said
earlier that this piano gets the sustain
pedal wrong here's how
if i were to play a loud chord with the
pedal depressed then play the same chord
again quietly but keep the keys held
down with my finger thingies releasing
the pedal shouldn't do anything because
i'm holding those virtual dampers off
the strings with my fingers
and yet
[Music]
can you hear that
[Music]
that is very wrong and i cannot believe
yamaha screwed that up here
though in fairness they've only been
making pianos since 1900
it seems the logic in the piano reset
the keys sustainedness status on the
second press and dampered the first loud
sample that was started on the first key
press when i released the pedal but
again
that is very wrong and not how it should
work at all
though in fairness i actually only
recently discovered this so it's not
that bad
interestingly though this was handled
correctly with the middle pedal which is
great because nobody ever uses that one
plus lots of pianos don't even have it
and when they do there's no set rule for
what exactly it does
here it's implemented as it often is in
grand pianos called the sustanuto pedal
this pedal will lock any dampers that
are lifted the moment the pedal is
depressed but leave the rest alone
here's what that sounds like in practice
hopefully you understand what's going on
here it's not super easy to describe
with words and if you're not familiar
with pianos
this might be baffling but in any case
if i do the same thing as before and
then lift the pedal
now it correctly lets the original loud
sample continue on
until i actually release the keys
i'm thinking if they got the middle
pedal right
somebody just forgot to put a line of
code somewhere for the other one
oh and the pedal on the left is known as
the una corda or soft pedal
in a nutshell it just makes the piano a
bit quieter while it's depressed a bit
like this
okay so that's about as far as this
particular piano goes when it comes to
the reproduction of sound but of course
there's also the fact that these keys
themselves are weighted to mimic the
feel of a real piano's keys they are
even progressively weighted more heavily
towards the left side of the keyboard
just like a real piano's bass notes
because big hammer make key go slow
but this is actually a pretty basic key
waiting system as things go they only
get more complex from here and some
digital pianos go so far as to implement
actual real piano actions where a real
keyboard moves real hammers that hit
force sensors so basically it's an
actual piano except the strings have
been replaced with sensors and a
computer
remember how i was saying digital pianos
are a fascinatingly weird blend of new
and old tech
yeah those so-called hybrid pianos are
the epitome of that sentiment
then of course there's polyphony that
word means a lot of different things
depending on context and it's confusing
so i'm not going to touch it
to end i want to talk about some of the
other wild stuff that folks like yamaha
are putting into their highest end
digital pianos
real pianos
are much more acoustically complicated
than a mix of sound samples played in
the right order
one of the most basic things this
keyboard is missing is sympathetic
vibrations
with the sustain pedal depressed and all
strings free to vibrate hitting any note
will induce some vibrations in those
other strings particularly those with
harmonic frequencies shared with the
original note
this adds a richness to the notes played
with the sustain pedal that this piano
is not reproducing
at least i'm not noticing it but others
do as you go up in price with digital
pianos these days you not only get the
niceties like real wooden keys and
actual piano actions if you want
oh but
hold on if you're buying one of these
digital grand pianos just
don't i don't understand how people find
this impressive and not objectively
goofy but anyway over-the-top cases
aside new software modeling allows these
instruments to not only account for
sympathetic vibrations of other strings
but also the acoustic profile of the
piano's sound board and wooden case
combined with better and more powerful
audio systems
we're at a point where digital pianos
are really close to their acoustic
counterparts
there are still reasons to have an
acoustic piano to be clear but there are
also a lot of great benefits to these
perhaps chief among them is that they
don't weigh hundreds of pounds that's
nice
also very important to me is that they
don't lose their tuning
oh but on that note i only recently
discovered that this piano allows you to
play two voices at once
one of my gripes with it is that it's
not a very bright sounding piano with
its main voice and the brighter piano
voice it does offer doesn't sound that
real to me
well in a happy accident if you select
both piano voices
it puts the bright piano an octave up
and makes a surprisingly nice change to
the sound
what's more if you adjust that second
voice back down to the original octave
you end up with a detuned sound
it's not quite honky tonk but more like
a parlor sound which i personally find
great for ragtime
i hope you enjoyed this meandering
off-the-cuff look at the world of
digital pianos
it's by no means complete and there are
many rabbit holes you can fall into if
you want so
sorry if i sent you down one of those
but for now as mozart would say
toodles