Quite possibly the most complete and versatile keyboard the brand had ever made when it appeared in 2003. If you get the chance, “Believe your ears.” That's no exaggerated description of this brilliant creation from the three-tuning-fork brand. The slogan chosen for this all-weather machine is “Believe your Ears,” and we'll have no choice but to do just that (believe our ears), because the musical torrent the Yamaha Tyros delivers is practically inexhaustible.
Just when you think you've seen it all, it turns out you keep being impressed and wondering when it'll finally hit the ceiling. For now, we'll enjoy ourselves over the next few lines detailing the wonders of this technical marvel.
To be more precise, the Tyros belongs to the Portatone PSR series keyboard family. It's unquestionably the flagship, and we're going to give it a thorough going-over here. We won't get bored, because this keyboard does it all; it's a true workstation keyboard, the most complete one I've seen to date of all those that have come through our newsroom since this magazine began, and I can vouch that quite a few have passed through, from every well-known brand on the market.
Unboxing
The first word that comes to mind when we set it on the workbench is: galactic. That's the design. Its size: huge. A clean front panel, with just the right buttons for playing and everything clearly differentiated and well spaced, so we don't get confused or press buttons by accident. The clarity of its controls stands out; at all times we'll know which button to press and how to undo the result. Why do I say this? Very simple: it's very common for beginners, in their eagerness to “tinker” with the switches and edit buttons, to enable options they didn't want and then not know how to cancel them. That won't happen on the Tyros for one big reason: its central display. If you'll allow me, instead of a display we'll call it a screen, because its dimensions are very generous and, surprise, it's full color... Yes, really, like a laptop screen, though not as big. It'll be our tutor, our guide... No more straining our eyes trying to see what we're doing while hunting for the right parameter for our sound. On this screen you can follow sound changes, such as sequencing all the sounds you use in a MIDI recording with or without your PC, which effects, EQ settings, volumes, intensities and so on. What's more, you can follow the lyrics of your favorite songs with excellent clarity, if what you really like is trying your hand at karaoke, or view on screen the sheet music of songs you've previously loaded into its floppy drive in MIDI format.
We have a 61-key keyboard with formidable touch response in both velocity and weighting, with up to 128-note polyphony. Getting right into its sections, it has two types of volume (master and input) and controls for an external microphone signal (I told you that you could do karaoke), where we can EQ it and apply all kinds of acoustic processing so it never falls out of step with the keyboard's own signal. The next section takes us to the controls for the song we've selected to show off our vocal skills, such as looping, recording, playback and so on. With this, we can go ahead and throw out those cheap amps cranked all the way up and those karaoke videotapes. If you push me, you could even toss the VCR out the window. Next step. Take a look at the song buttons, grouped into 6 types so we don't get mixed up and have a bit of order (we're presumably downloading a ton of MIDI files from the Internet to load into the Tyros later, right?).
The next block will give us an idea of personal composition, if we don't want to play MIDI files of our favorite artists. You'll remember those hundred-kilo organs that were all the rage in the seventies, and how as kids we were fascinated by their brightly colored little levers, each assigned to a musical style. Well, on the Tyros the view is much more appealing, not because of its simple buttons, but because of what's shown on its little TV (that's what we're going to call it from now on; you'll see I'm not exaggerating). The accompaniment rhythms, up to 300, are grouped into: pop, rock, swing, jazz, Latin, ethnic, ballads, R&B, dance (these are very good), country, soundtracks and more. This accompaniment system is automated to give you total precision and speed in following your chord changes. We control all this with buttons that light up when they respond to our commands and that will give us an intro (up to 3 different kinds), play the body of the song (4 variations to choose from), do a “break” and offer up to three types of song ending. We can even enable a very handy function that lets us stop the sync of the “wheel” at will. Great fun and easy to play, I promise you. If we get lost, we just switch on the metronome and that's it; if we don't know what tempo it's at, we press the button and it appears graphically on screen so we can raise or lower it as we please. Want to shift up or down an octave? No problem. The Tyros's possibilities are countless; I can't stress this enough.
It's one of those top-quality “all-in-one” classics of its era
After skipping over a few mixing controls, the screen leaves us open-mouthed for a few seconds, but we have to move on. We wouldn't buy the Tyros to marvel at its display, but to compose, perform, arrange, sing and study, among other things. We turn to the Menu section, where we can see the wonders the Tyros can do, the keyboard functions, creating our own sounds and digital recording if we want. What really grabs our attention is its help menu. No more poring over a user manual translated into five languages whose size makes it anything but manageable. Whatever question we have, we just press a button and it takes us graphically to the solution, translated into those same five languages.
On to the voices, with a total of 403 preset sounds, 10 spectacular organ registrations, 480 sounds in Yamaha's exclusive XG format, 256 MIDI and MIDI 2 sounds, 31 drum kits (you read that right) and 5 SFX, or special effects, kits. How does that grab you? As they'd say at Harrods department store in London: “if you can't find a specific instrument sound, it doesn't exist.”
The Tyros incorporated new technology in many of its instruments, which we'll describe briefly. It has 10 sounds they call “Mega,” covering guitars and basses. They recreate the instrument's behavior in such a way that you can hear every element as if it were real. For example: the noise of the string as you move along the frets or of the pick as it strikes. The string sounds muted, with dead notes, hammer-ons, slides, harmonics, and a range of strums and body. It's like a sampler, but easier to use. It has another batch of sounds called “Sweet” and “Live,” covering string and wind instruments, with a huge palette of acoustic and amplified electric sounds. Large, stereo, multi-layer samples, needed to capture the natural presence, resonance, expression and vibrato of these kinds of instruments. A real treat for the ears!
The Tyros has a mighty music finder in memory where you can choose from more than 1,400 titles or songs, and the keyboard will set itself to the appropriate style with a selection of four registrations. The real number of titles will be as countless as you want it to be, thanks to the option mentioned earlier of MIDI files you get on your own. By the way, registration memories on the Tyros will no longer be a problem, because it comes with an almost unlimited number of memories.
The multi pad controls let you add polish to your performance with a palette of 200 phrases and sounds that you can trigger whenever you like. What's more, within the song you're playing, you can place position markers wherever you want, which not only let you move through the song quickly but also allow playback loops on whatever section you like, be it verse, chorus or sung part. That's why we said the Tyros was also a powerful real-time music arranging machine. It also comes with hundreds of styles with professional arrangements so you can experiment to your heart's content, or create various styles by mixing them with new accompaniments. If all this sounds complicated to operate, no problem. There are 10 operation buttons available so you simply enter an item number and the keyboard will select it instantly.
More features
We also said that the Tyros is a 16-track sequencer, so you can record your piece in real time. It even lets you record the accompaniment styles, the exact chord progression, pattern variations and the solo notes you play just by pressing REC; it's that simple. But brace yourself for what comes next, because the Tyros has a complete workshop of tools to edit and fix the song you mistakenly played wrong, even if it was just one note. Imagine the time you'll save by not repeating the recording over and over until you get it right.
You also have good effects control over the keyboard voices: reverb (34 presets + 3 user), chorus (26 presets + 3 user), vocal harmonizer (60 presets + 10 user), sustain, polyphony and DSP (183 presets and 10 user). The DSP is a digital signal processor for creating a more natural sound environment. It lets you run effects simultaneously, a five-band digital EQ and even independent effects for the external microphone. On top of that, there's a very functional digital mixer to get CD-quality songs. A mixing console in the Tyros? There you have it!
More: the Tyros is almost completely compatible with any music software. It reads SFF, SMF and DOC files, and includes a File Converter application to play and convert files from the PSR 8000, 9000 and 9000 Pro keyboards. If you want it to work with a computer, it connects via the USB port, so you can transfer data from the Tyros to the computer's hard drive in record time. Software is included that gives you complete control over sound parameters from the computer. From there, if you like, you can split up the editing work.
Remember that the Tyros displays all kinds of sheet music for MIDI songs on its “TV,” including your own recordings. Song lyrics can also be displayed (here you should have the PC connected) so the vocalist can practice or you can throw a wild karaoke party. If there are lots of you, you can connect a separate TV monitor to the video output this marvel comes with. Since we're in full karaoke frenzy, you should know there's a function that shows you which note should be played next. The song waits until you play the note, providing an intuitive way to learn the structure of the score. And with the mic, we can transform the singer's voice by adding vocal harmonies with up to three additional voice parts, as well as applying effects to alter the gender or pitch of that voice. And by the way, if the party gets out of hand and the singer is a bit tone-deaf, no problem: we switch on vocal Cue-time mode and our friend can sing at their own pace while the accompaniment waits until they sing the next note. No more embarrassing yourself, my friend.
It must be said that the Tyros's expandability is made possible by fitting an internal hard drive (optional, of course).
Let's highlight its rear panel, with connections for up to three types of controller pedals, two sets of MIDI IN and OUT, a video jack and USB for a PC, main and sub line outputs (so you can run it through monitors and/or a hi-fi system). We can also insert an external multi-effects unit via its send/return jacks; there's the usual mic input with its potentiometer-style input control and the obligatory power connection, plus connections for subwoofer and standard speakers (another option to equip the Tyros even further, if that's possible).
In short, the Yamaha Tyros is a tool weighing more than 16 kilograms and measuring 1.14 meters long x 40 cm wide x 19 cm high, ideal for the beginner, the entertainment professional, the session musician, the family man, the clueless, the clever, students, workers, and... It's so complete that the magazine's management should have given us the entire issue so we could go on at length. We hope this article has cleared up some questions, but to satisfy your curiosity, nothing beats trying it out carefully at your dealer. Just be sure to go first thing in the morning, or you won't have time to examine it thoroughly. Though you could always ask the bank for a loan, because the price climbs a bit. That's to be expected; remember that the Tyros is quite possibly the most complete workstation on the market. A super best buy.
* Photo: Yamaha Tyros 5
