My New Toy

I bought a new “toy” this past weekend.

Let me backtrack seventeen years ago. That was when I sold my nice piano and made the leap to a digital piano. I really shopped around and bought one that sounded a felt like a “real” grand piano. It cost about five thousand bucks. I never regretted it.

Well, that was seventeen years ago and I’ve certainly gotten my money’s worth out of that piano. Digital technology has certainly progressed since then. My old digital piano had served me well, but it would no longer talk to the computer using MIDI (musical instrument digital interface).

So, I’ve been needing (wanting) a new digital piano and have been shopping around for one for the past year or so. This weekend, I finally took the plunge on a new Yamaha digital piano. It has a lot of “wow” factors.

Yamaha has certainly been the forerunner with digital pianos, as their new ones play and sound just like a grand piano. If you’ve ever noticed on a piano that the strings in the lower part are comprised of two big strings for each note, the middle register has three smaller strings for each note, etc. Subsequently, it takes different pressure to play the bass keys as opposed to the middle as opposed to the higher ones.

The new Yamaha digital pianos even emulate that subtle difference.

Wow.

It even makes the sound of the hammer striking the string and even that can be adjusted to your preference.

It makes about forty-bazillion other sounds; everything from a human voice to an Irish tin whistle. When you play the flute sound, it even includes the sounds of the felt keypads popping on the instrument (which can be adjusted or filtered out.

It allows me to record and overlay lots of tracks.

It has a built-in mixer.

It hooks up to the internet.

It has pretty blinking lights.

I’m looking for the part where it makes espresso.

Playing it is an incredible joy and it sure makes a difference to play something of this quality. I had been playing with seventeen year old technology all this time. Frankly, I didn’t realize that I am, indeed, a pretty darn good pianist after all.

Now, I need to learn how to work all the features on this puppy. Hopefully, soon, you will all be able to purchase my recordings on iTunes, I will become insanely rich and that will enable me to never have to work again.