CyberGene

Yes, but the difference between a pre-composed music (sometimes for years, think some great symphonies) and improvised music makes that analysis and the school of learning it vastly different. Playing jazz is mostly a skill. You can learn it. Of course it requires talent and not everybody would become Miles, Chick or Herbie but more or less it's just something that you master. If I have to invent a metaphor here. Classical music is like an architect designing anything from a small cabin to an opera house, king's palace or a skyscraper and builders realizing it. Jazz is like painters improvising at painting the building on the outside. Different painters would paint it differently but it's always that you can change only the color (and ornaments) of its facade. I am myself a software engineer by trade, so I've used all these services since the very beginning. I think it was Pandora that made me discover so many new post-bop artists and at the same time open my eyes about how same and dull everything was 🤣 This goes as a side-line to the thread but the easy access to music and streaming is both a blessing and a curse IMO.

I think as little difference as it may seem, four zones (where you can put every instrument in each zone) vs three (where you have only pianos in the first and electric pianos in the second) make for a different usage pattern. When I was mentally preparing for the Numa to arrive, I thought why I would need four zones. Because, I always play with a bass player, so I won't do bass splits. I often do Rhodes on the left, lead on the right but that's just two zones. And I think I imagined using the single four zone on the Numa performance like a control room, switching off and on, although I haven't exactly decided what but yeah, that's probably the idea 😀 With the CP it's rather limited. Well, there's the advanced mode on the CP where you can set any instrument type to any zone but it kind of defeats the purpose of the direct interface. So, in other words, the Numa is slightly closer to a workstation type of instrument with traditional multi-zone setups. Whereas the CP/YC are more like very specialized keyboards with dedicated piano, Rhodes, Organ sections and spice it up with a pad or something but the main focus is the ultra direct and easy access to the three main sections (which I guess they copied over from Nord).

Yes, I noticed that and didn't like it! Numa is better in that regard. I'm not sure I'm a guy who would need to turn on/off parts within a performance more though. I'm more of a guy who would switch between performances. I kind of consider a performance like a single sound, well, a performance, maybe that's why it's called this way 😀 I mean, I won't use a performance to mute/unmute instruments within that performance, I'd rather switch to another one... I don't know, I will have to resume my band duties to know more about that. But I upvoted your idea and I think both instruments should support both scenarios.

So, yes, when you change the performance (a new group of four zones with different instruments) while holding stuff from the first one, that is what I mean by seamless transition and is what works on a Yamaha without interruptions. Well, the Yamaha has only three zones, so it's slightly less demanding towards resources. I also believe Yamaha somehow over-dedicate DSP and effect resources just for being able to provide that functionality. I mean, they probably can provide twice more insert/send effects but keep those resources to provide for the seamless transition. More knowledgeable people such as @AnotherScott might be able to provide more details.

As a CyberGene I really appreciate that performance of Gene Harris who was not known to me, thank you! 👍🏻 Indeed, it immediately made me tap with my foot! 🕺🏻 To clarify regarding some of my previous statements. I had been a HUGE jazz for something like 20+ years. I used to listen all day long almost 95% to jazz and swallow everything I got my ears on, starting from early jazz and blues through bebop, post-bop, fusion, funk, acid-jazz but mostly gravitating towards modern post-bop on one hand, and worldy/new-agey jazz on other, with Oregon (the band) getting a lot of play on my Walkman as well as most of the European jazz and ECM stuff. Heck, I was devastated and cried so much when Esbjörn Svensson died in that scuba diving accident, he was my favorite pianist 😢 Along with Chick and Herbie of course. And some Dave Grusin. So, blame it on this total overdo with jazz music, and most importantly the newest plethora of excellent post-bop pianists and bands that seemed like growing from every corner that made jazz for me a boring and even obnoxious music. As silly as it may sound, I was finally able to understand all these friends of mine who used to mock jazz, kind of got what they disliked so much about jazz, despite fiercely arguing with them and defending jazz 😲 I understand my point of view is extreme... Apologies if some people take it as insulting. I tend to overemphasize my written emotions (also probably due to the fact I"m not a native English speaker and can't precisely see the actual weight of the words I use...) I'm now mostly dedicated to classical music, with Scriabin being my big love. But what is funny is I "rediscover" stuff like The Doors. Stuff like Break On Through, Riders on the Storm and Light My Fire would bring me much more enjoyment than most of jazz. Apparently it's rather raw, primitive and unpolished when compared to jazz, yet it has such powerful emotion! Go figure 🧐 P.S. There are three jazz records that I will never stop loving: Kind of Blue and In a Silent Way. And (probably surprising...) Premonition by Paul McCandless (with Lyle Mays on the piano)!

Just to clarify, you play something, you hold the keys down and in the meantime change the performance or the sound assigned to a zone, right? Because that’s what is assumed by seamless transition. It could be that something with my unit was not right but it was on the latest firmware and it would be strange if it was a firmware problem only with my unit. P.S. Also try with an effect turned up, e.g. reverb and delay and then switch to another performance where those are not the same. Or even with some of the insertion effects and switching to a performance with different insert effects.

Also, the pops might have been when switching from a sampled sound to modeled electric piano and vice versa.

Unfortunately I don’t have the Numa with me anymore but I’m sure I encountered a lot of “non-smooth” transitions although I can’t remember if it was on switching performances or on switching the sound for a zone within a performance.

Sure, please recommend me some.

It’s the mass craftization of jazz (just came up with that word) that gradually made me almost a jazz hater. That’s a strong word to make my point, I can still appreciate fine jazz from the greats but the fact is jazz has been dissected to death (pun intended) and anyone more inclined in learning the craft from now countless offline/online/institutional sources will become at least a convincingly sounding jazzman. And a very boring one. In most modern and well-crafted jazz music it’s all about a cerebral satisfaction rather than emotional appeal. It’s been exhausted completely into a homogenous mass that is still a very smart and intellectually prepared music that has its audience but it’s also very rarely creative nowadays. This is just my very biased and certainly outrageous opinion 🙂

Scroll to 1:14 😀 But it’s all golden!

From my short experience with the Numa X, the seamless transition was not always working and there were even abrupt pops and clicks (I believe due to the effect changes). The CP88 is absolutely flawless in that regard.

Jazz players tend to overemphasize harmony, chords and voicing and it gets overbearing for anyone not interested in jazz which is basically everybody 😀 I needed 20 years to realize that. Non-jazz players lack these sophisticated chord-scale abilities but as with anything in life compensate by specializing in rhythmic and melodic playing. Similar to how a classical pianist would make a classical piece “sing” just because he needs to translate the fixed notes into an emotion instead of having to come up with the notes in the first place.

The modern analog polysynths like the Take 5 are too perfect and in-tune and as a result they sound digital 😀 The fact they need a knob to make them more analog through intentional detuning and internal LFO-s and the likes is just silly. Why not take a Hydrasynth then and dial the "analog feel" up, it's the same thing. I really don't see the use-case except for saying "but that's true analog!". You either use a vintage VCO design (not DCO) preferably discrete based (think Moog and OB-X), or just use VST-s or modern digital synths and VA-s. Everything in between is an odd animal. But that's just my opinion.

Exactly how me and my wife got through Covid in February 2021 before vaccines were available. FWIW, never got vaccinated afterwards, nor have been protecting myself or avoiding people, public places, etc. ever since. Life as usual. No reinfection so far.

True that! Besides, I’ve made a blood oath to my wife that I stopped buying keyboards (with the newly arrived CP88 being the last one!)

^ Wow that’s so lush!!! I want it! Also makes it pretty obvious it wasn’t the instrument’s fault in that other infamous video 😉

I own a Behringer Model D. It's my only synth that is a WYSIWYG synth: no patches, no memory, no menus, no endless encoders or jump-to-the-stored-value-potentiometer, only real potentiometers whose position is what you hear and some selectors and switches. Now, you may laugh but it taught me how synths work after all 😀 Exactly because there's no menu-diving, no "virtual" this or that, no dragging of some knobs with the mouse on a computer screen. Every function has a knob/switch and you immediately hear the result. I don't know if it's close to a real Minimoog since I was born in 1979 in an ex-communist country where there was probably only one Minimoog in the entire country, at the state owned studio 🤣 So, for just €250 I purchased that replica, good or bad, and started twisting knobs and stuff and it all clicked in my head. I doubt I could have learned these basic principles on a VA or by menu-diving on a Kurzweil/Korg or whatever. I love Behringer 😀

I also appreciate musicians more than geeks. The problem is there are either those guys who “demo” synths with an oscilloscope or others that just don’t know what is good to play on synths. In that regard I think Dr. Mix is among the best but IMO he’s too pragmatic and doesn’t shy using even sampled synths and software, so he’s not that appealing to the regular hardcore synth purists.

I considered it and I used to own a MP6 many years ago which was a very good stage piano. A few things that made me look elsewhere: - Not available - Too heavy and bulky. - No audio interface to supplement the onboard sounds with an iPhone/iPad - The strings/pad sounds in the Kawai sound meh to me - I'm not a huge fan of the Kawai piano sound and there's not a lot of variations there (no different samples) with either the acoustic pianos and the Rhodes pianos. - The infamous Kawai (lack of) quality. I haven't had problems with my Kawai pianos in the past but there are just too many complaints on the Internet

No, there are no pedal noises and stuff like that but I don't like them anyway. My go to software piano for my solo classical piano recordings on my YouTube is Garritan CFX and I usually turn pedal and hammer noises almost all the way down, leaving only a faint amount audible and you have to listen very carefully to notice it. I don't think something like that is needed on a stage piano since a stage piano is for gigging and those pedal noises won't be heard and can even go in the way of the entire sound. And if I would be recording a critical solo piano, I would prefer software anyway and not the onboard sounds of a digital piano. There's a very long decay with the bass notes of the CFX, the Bosendorfer and the new Hamburg Steinway. The rest of the pianos have shorter decay. I definitely prefer the CP88 much more than the Numa X Piano 88 that I returned. To a certain degree the keyboards feel the same but I had difficulties playing soft on the Numa which could be because of not very optimal touch response but even tweaking didn't yield satisfying results. I also felt I couldn't play well towards the back of the keys on the Numa. BTW, the action in the CP88 is quite heavy, probably heavier feeling than the Numa X. I think some people may not like it. The BHS action in the YC73 felt easier to play and lighter. On the other hand, the connection between the keyboard action and the sound is so well made, once you start actually playing the CP88 it feels pretty good. This morning when I woke up, I reached for the switched off piano and my first impression was "the keys are way too heavy... why is that?" but then I turned it on and suddenly when connected to the sound that feeling disappeared. It was very odd. I think it's important to note that the CP88 is IMO not for people who will play predominantly solo piano, especially at home. The P515 and Clavinova line might be better with resonance modeling and possibly better sampling. I have an AvantGrand N1X at home and the CP88 is a no match but I guess that is expected 😀 The N1X makes me smile every day since I bought it and it's the best piano I've ever owned in my life (and will probably own, unless I win the lottery and can afford purchasing a big house with a nice acoustic grand piano). And the CP88 is for my pop/funk/rock duties (gigging would be a strong word since I'm a hobbyist and play in amateur bands mostly, rarely on stage, mostly in rehearsal studios for our own pleasure) for which it's perfect.

Haha, I feel so dumb for returning that YC73 thinking it was a defect... 🤦🏻‍♂️ OTOH, I think I like the CP88 more than the YC73. I'm not much of an organ guy and can always connect a VB3m to the CP88. But I like the more direct controls of the CP88 and especially the action. So, a blessing in disguise 🍻

I received my CP88 today and I'm very happy with it. No need to post a review here since everything has already been said about it but if anyone is interested, I posted a review on another forum: https://pianoclack.com/forum/d/468-yamaha-cp88-review I have a question to other people with the CP88 though. I've recently returned a B-Stock YC73 to Thomann because the depth encoder for effect 2 on the Keys section could be turned to easily, i.e. there's no resistance when turning it. Otherwise it worked as expected. (I was told by an independent Yamaha serviceman that this is a minor issue, probably caused by a leaked oil from the encoder and so the knob would still work with no worries, only the feel would be lighter but they can replace it for me. However it would require desoldering/soldering and the spare parts are now very hard to find and I may have to wait for a few months). So, I ordered a brand new CP88 instead. Well it has the same "problem" with the "Speed" knob for the effect in the Sub section, as well as the "Rate" knob for the upper effect in the E.Piano section. Some other encoders are also kind of easier to turn than others although they still have resistance. I don't want to return it again because I am exhausted in returning instruments and I love the CP88 so far and this "problem" is indeed minor (and I can ask for encoder replacement later). But I started wondering, is that normal? Can you check if you have such loose encoders on your CP-s? If we assume that is a defective encoder, I can't believe it's the second rather expensive stage piano with the same problem. Then I started wondering, the Speed knob in the sub section may also be used for the Rotary speed which has only two values: Slow and Fast. Maybe they created it intentionally loose, so that when you change the rotary speed through that knob, you can quickly flick through the two/values? I'd be glad if you can confirm this is a bug or a feature 🍻

A lot of these overly expensive reissues will be purchased mostly by snobs and geeks. I guess that's the business plan. Yes, it sounds creamy, it's the best Oberheim sound. But unless you're going to release solo-OB-X albums, who's gonna notice any difference between this and a VST in a mix? Of course, it's also cool looking on stage but how reliable is it and how many will be willing to put it under rough gigging conditions?

I think the guy from Andertons has a specific style of playing that suits mostly R&B and the likes but that is something the OB sound is not famous for. He plays palm smears and staccatos after all 🧐 That’s Hammond technique not exactly working for polysynths. He should have demonstrated long brass swells instead.