Watch how Yuuki Shimada, a trained pianist, makes the Genos2 shine with her enthusiastic demos of popular songs:

Blinding Lights
Coldplay – Clocks
Coldplay – A Sky Full of Stars
Michael Jackson – We are the World
Theme from Top Gun2
Black Eyed Peas
Justin Bieber
Robert Miles – Children

She brings in a live Sax Player at the end of her 30-min performance.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXtRhpOYM9k


This is the kind of young talented professionals Yamaha needs to attract a younger audience.

Wouldn’t it be nice, if Yamaha included a Song Preview for every Style just like they have a Voice Preview for every Panel Voice.

They could pick the best song that fits a Style and have someone like Yuuki play through the verse and chorus demonstrating the best use of the OTS and Multipads.

Yamaha could also have Martin Harris play a short doodle for every Style. Martin is the designer. He knows all the hidden tricks to make the best use of this instrument.

Including this additional content would be a source of inspiration for budding musicians.

Many young musicians spend so much time making beats from scratch using Ableton Live, Akai Force, etc. The basic beats and styles that follow your chords with variations fills and breaks are already present in Yamaha Arrangers designed by professionals. Why reinvent the wheel? Why not enjoy making music with the basic building blocks already programmed into an Arranger Keyboard?

The younger generation is mostly unaware of just how sophisticated the Genos2 is with over 1990 voices and 800 styles, Reverb, Chorus, DSP Effects, Insertion Effects, Master Compressor, Master EQ, Mike Effects, Vocal Harmonizer, Multi-track Recorder, etc.

Nice playing and everything as it should be, however totally boring, relying on repetitive styles and letting the keyboard do a lot of the work, I prefer people to fully play an instrument or at least program the backing to make it unique.
For the home hobby player, it's great, as you can sound great without the wait, but I can assure you that youngsters are not going to interested in it, plus most of them couldn't even afford it.
It's a great instrument, but for me it is stuck in the past so gives me a meh. (Song styles have never been a favourite of mine as everybody that uses them sounds just like everybody else rather than every player having a unique sound as like used to be)
Thanks for posting the link.

Bill

Thank Tapas, good fine. Nice to see a younger, enthusiastic person demonstrating. Also, most of the keyboard demonstrations I’ve seen have been done by older European men, so it’s nice see a non European woman demonstrating. Perhaps this could help reach a wider audience?

I think she did a good job of explaining what an arranger keyboard can do in a fun and entertaining way. I’m sure she could play just fine without all the canned intro, outros, and auto accompaniment but she’s just demonstrating possibilities. Just because an arranger keyboard has features like auto accompaniment, pre-programmed intro/ outros, one touch settings, doesn’t you have to use them.

Also, it was nice to see her demonstrate, using the keyboard along with another musician. I do this, too, all the time with horn players, percussionists, guitarists and violin and singers. An arranger keyboard doesn’t have to be limited to 0MB players.. nothing wrong with that, but there’s lots of ways to make music!

Amen to that, montunoman!

In the end, the goal is to MAKE MUSIC, not ‘play an arranger’…

There’s so many, many different ways of doing that, playing styles on an arranger is just one tiny subset of the whole field. It’s got certain advantages, and a whole lot more disadvantages, particularly to players that play piano or full two handed keyboards.

But however you get there, don’t look down on anyone who gets there by a different route, and try not to box yourself in with a rote system. In the end, it’s about the music, not the gear, not us, not a ‘system’. Make music as many ways as you can, because every way of making it helps with every other way of making music!

When was the last time any of us went and played with a band, or another musician (guitarist, horn player, percussionist etc)? Your arranger weighs next to nothing nowadays, it’s no impediment to going and sitting in with a local band that doesn’t have a keyboard player, or sitting in with a solo guitarist and not using any tracks or styles.

It all adds up. Everything you do helps everything else when it comes to music! ❤️♥️❤️🎹

Paul Thirkettle from Yamaha demonstrates how a Guitarist can use the Yamaha PSR-SX920 on stage as a backup band using the Chord Looper function.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4TOVgwM6ms

Arrangers can be used creatively by Singers, Pianists, Sax players, Guitarists, Karaoke enthusiasts for having hours of endless entertainment.



Craig Knudsen from Yamaha was the inventor of the Follow the Lights technology on the Yamaha CVP series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEGePEVAvYQ

Craig was also the inventor of the Kooky Karaoke technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU1UtMfv_88



He is offering all his Follow Me Songs and Kooky Karaoke Songs through his new website:

https://www.clavinovasongs.com/

For the first time, they now work on the PSR-S and PSR-SX series as well.

When it comes to Arrangers, Yamaha has covered the needs from beginners to professionals through their Genos, Tyros CVP, CSP, DGX and PSR line at every price point.

An iPad, backing tracks and mixer costs significantly less and is much easier to carry and setup up for solo players/singers, (Go and watch some live singer etc. and you will find it has been the standard for donkey's years) so unless you have one lying around and are prepared to create your own backings, then it of no use.
Ass to the light system then that was done donkeys years ago when automatics started to be added to organs in the 70s.
The last one is interesting until you realise that you can get mixers with them built in, or even do it on the iPad.

Bill

Once you store your chord sequence rather than create it live and loop on the fly, yes, you’re very much into the same country as using audio backing tracks or SMF’s.

We are many years past the point where audio tracks and SMF’s were simple linear progression tools, start at the beginning, end at the end, same every time…

Nowadays audio backing is multitrack, and can use Markers to restructure on the fly, as have SMF’s for decades. I don’t know anyone in my area using multi-part chord sequencing an arranger to back their guitar playing and singing. All the guitarists are either using audio tracks or SMF’s.

I’ve always been a big fan of interactive live CS use for live arranger play, and the preset multi part CS is cool for an arranger player to allow you two handed freedom for some more complex song arrangements, but by the time you get to a guitarist, it seems like an awful lot of work to get a result far easier produced with an SMF or tracks player.

As for arranger players rather than guitarists, the difficulty in getting truly authentic signature guitar playing from an arranger makes audio tracks a far more practical way of performing guitar heavy music than tolerating weak and incorrect guitar sounds out of an arranger.

In the end, what we’re trying to do is make MUSIC, not ‘play an arranger’. Whatever gets the job done most authentically is the path to making the music the best it can be. I really could have used these multi part CS’s 30 years ago, before audio was practical and cheap. But now it’s all just a bit too late.

I can remember discussions 15 years ago when I felt I was pushing a rock up a hill trying to persuade people here that the simple live chord sequencer was a valuable arranger feature..! Only Roland bothered having one (and even they dropped the idea for 10+ years!). Now it’s ’must have’ technology and I still doubt many of us use it.

I think the CS has been superseded. Just as it hits its best incarnation. Sad… 😢