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Kawai ES120 midi capabilities


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Just wondering if anyone could shed some light on the ES120 and midi? I played one recently and think it would make a nice board for smaller gigs as the action is nice. But I wouldn’t mind bringing it to bigger gigs where I could midi it up to another board or module.

 

I know it doesn’t have the older 5 pin midi sockets but does have Bluetooth midi and audio.  I have a wireless midi kit so wondering if I plugged the wireless 5 pin midi into my second keys would the kawai be able to communicate with the other keyboard via its Bluetooth feature and would it be reliable for live use? Many thanks in advance. 

Yamaha MODX8, Legend Live.
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I love my ES120 and play it every day. I use Piano #6 which is smoother than piano #1 . It’s the best keyboard action I have ever owned. I also like it’s Rhodes after I turn off its effects.  I don’t know anything about its midi capabilities, sorry.

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Harry was the technical editor of Mark Levine's "The Jazz Theory Book" and helped develop "The Jazz Piano Book." Find 850 of Harry's solo piano arrangements of standards and jazz tutorials at https://www.patreon.com/HarryLikas 
 

 

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I just ordered one this afternoon on Thomann as they were giving a free soft case with it. Will give it a demo and try it out with some boards and iPad and report back if anyone is interested. I played the 110 before and enjoyed the action. 

Yamaha MODX8, Legend Live.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Just got a hold of one of these. Nice piano for its price. Much better action than the newer Yamaha P225 although it is quite light and fast. Black keys seems to have a lot of lateral movement. Took me a while to adjust to playing them. Keys are quite smooth as well and at times felt quite slippy at times and I didn't have a lot of confidence in playing fast pieces accurately. Maybe I just need to adjust to them. 

 

Bluetooth midi works find as long as your audio outputs are coming from your externally connected device. You can channel the sound through the ES120 audio outputs but the latency is too much to try and play live. 1 or 2 seconds delay, unplayable really, even with all buffers engaged. No latency when using your external device as the audio output. Bit of a shame really as it would be nice to be able to play my laptop/iPad instruments through the ES120 outputs. Only means another lead but still. 

 

Also it seems you can only connect one bluetooth device at a time. So for instance if I had my laptop connected via Bluetooth and was playing some software instruments and I wanted to use my phone to dial up some of the Kawai presets via the Kawai remote app it won't work. Only one device at a time. The remote app is ok. Because of the lack of control on the front panel of the ES120 if you need to do any adjustments of layers you'll need the app. A little fiddly too, not sure how comfortable id be using a small screen on my phone to balance a piano/strings layer in the middle of a tune. 
 

Another quirk of the app is that if you are connected to the piano and you select one of the buttons on the piano the app resets itself. So neither the sound you select appears and then you can’t select it until the app reboots. Weird. So apparently you can select sounds via the ES120 panel or via the app. Using both is a no-no. 

 

Im probably spoilt a little with my current Yamaha CP73 in that it has the built in interface and better real time controls, but i miss the extra space of the 88 notes keys and I was looking one that is a bit lighter than the CP and I could run my laptop through. was looking at the Casio px series, Yamaha 225 (disimproved action), maybe a second hand p125 but they never come up. 
 

Unfortunately the ES120 doesn't fit in my car boot/trunk either. Across the back seat yes but I don't like having it on display in the back seat if I had to nip in and out of a venue with equipment. Looks like the search continues. 

 

Anyway just thought Id update in case anyone was interested. 

Yamaha MODX8, Legend Live.
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Yes it’s usb midi and no driver needed. I tried it with my MacBook Air running MainStage via the usb input and it was fine. No need to download any driver. I also tried it with the MacBook Air via Bluetooth and it was also fine except you have to use the outputs of the Mac rather than the es120 outputs. 
 

Am looking at the es520 now as well. Slightly better spec, easier to navigate without the app but again it’s a few kilos heavier. 

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Yamaha MODX8, Legend Live.
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