Ah Peter Bartmanns is amazing ' it is not the instrument it is Peter.

Steve, I have always thought of the piano as an orchestra in itself. The only thing I thought of adding would quiet strings in the background.

Nice post and beautiful song, thank you, John C.

Thank you Stephen,

died and gone to heaven , in that store. Haha.

Peter is brilliant.

Great find.

The CVP809, is more like a SX900 with extra piano options..
The that its comparable to Genos..

At that price, it should have atleast all features of the Genos..

Baartmans never disappoints! Not sure when this took place but I think it was recently. Wish I had known about it since Clearwater Florida is just about 100 miles from where I am, would have loved to attend that performance.

Jerry maybe tomorrow I’ll post a video ( just don’t hold your breath)

I would have loved to go too....wish they would announce that stuff, more public.
That 809 is really a great instrument...expensive, but discounts are available...a place I used to shop in Ft Wayne,IN discounted that stuff a bunch...my Yamaha HS8-T organ MAP price was around $12K, if I remember well, I paid around $8,500. in 1986 ish

I sometimes do wander if I would be better with a 809, I'm re-thinking if full styles are really the way for me...of course we can turn off channels....but on Yamaha organs they call them Rhythm patterns. I'm going to do more playing on the SX-900 with just basic Rhythm's see how it goes.

Steve and I were talking about touch/feel accuracy at lunch....a piano is more forgiving to hitting adjacent notes etc than a synth kbd. You can kind of feel your way around...I probably didn't say that right, but that's the way I describe it.

A Genos with full 88 note GHA keys would be pretty nice. Clavinova folks at Yamaha would,'t hear of it though.

Genos owners....Is the piano sounds in Genos as good as that 809? (or close?) My SX-900 sure is not.

No..
Its not even as good as the piano in modx/montage

The 809 uses piano’s that combine samples with moddeling..
Same as in the CP series of stage piano’s

But the Genos main piano sound is 2 steps ahead of the sx900

Try the SX-900 piano (using MIDI) with a weighted controller - it comes alive. When I trigger the SX from my SV1, or P-121 it's like a whole new instrument. So much more expressive. The lighter keys just don't have the response.

Somehow it leaves mixed feelings. We see a great digital piano of the biggest manufacturer with a great demonstrator, who plays good music, and in the same time it looks like a small gathering of people, sort of a very local thing. I witnessed events like this in Moscow (with Peter and also with Bert Smorenburg) and it looked the same. I believe that Peter Baartmans is a very intelligent man, but perhaps sometimes he questions if this job is that good as it seems…

By the way, recently I posted some of my videos in the Instagram with hashtags like “#psrs950” and most of attention I got was from, not sure how to put it accurately, sort of “Eastern World”.

For a large house this Clavinova can seem like a good choice, unlike Genos it has built-in speakers and you don’t need to deal with a shaky keyboard stand.

But often I find myself to tired (lazy?) to sit at the instrument on a bench, but still inspired to play some music, and PSR placed right next to a sofa really helps to work on some ideas. No such trick with Clavinova, unless you try really hard.

But the craziest thing, I guess, is that after a while this Clavinova gets outdated just like any other keyboard and becomes like an elephant. It would be more reasonable if you could replace just some module instead of the whole piano. Perhaps, that wouldn’t be the best business model for Yamaha.

Finally, it does look a bit odd when all these guitars a played on an instrument like this. Hammered action is probably not the best fit for this either.

Perhaps, I should conclude that having a piano and an arranger separated is a more practical choice. But if you happen to have extra space and money and just want a cool, sort of classy thing (a bit pretentious, perhaps), then Yamaha has already thought of you.

Hi Dave ,
totally agree.

Love my setup.
Actually now have my sx stacked on top of p121, midi connection via my laptop.
Don’t bother using sx keys anymore.
Decided to go for the simplest midi setup I could for “arranger mode” which is simply to use the sx900 for everything and just use the p121 for its weighted keys ( not its sounds) . My de facto Clavinova at a much cheaper price. haha

For Solo piano, I use the p121. Sx gets switched off.

Hi Kabinopus,
couldn’t agree more. You put in arranger functions and it gets outdated.
Be more inclined to invest in Yamaha CLP without the functions, but, how does one make a keyboard and a piano look good together.
( fortunately my setup is in a spare bedroom, I don’t think my husband would like it as the main feature of the living room)
Don’t understand why Yamaha doesn’t make a module, couldn’t imagine anything better than being able to replace the old technology with the new,

The outdated arranger functions is what would probably stop me from ever buying a Clavinova CVP series piano.

My 2 pennies worth, a module would make sense. Somewhere around 2006 I purchased a CVP307, it has served me well. It is outdated but I primarily use it as a piano, rarely do I use it anymore as an arranger. At the time I purchase I did not own a portable arranger keyboard. As great as an instrument it is I would not buy another CVP Clavinova.

Hi Stephen,
Yamaha products are great. Ex neighbor had a clp that’s 17 years, old ,only thing wrong with it, the disk drive failed about 5 years ago.

The piano , perfect. It was top of the line. Technology sound wise probably has improved, but it still sounded great. Put arranger functions in it, would have been outdated 14years ago.

Try selling a second hand piano with outdated arranger functions over here, be impossible. Had an old Technics piano with arranger functions 20 + years ago, only way I could get rid of it was to trade it for a Technics keyboard. Got hardly anything for it, and it was only 1 or 2 years old.

On the other hand , if they had some sort of module set up , that could be replaced, one could have the same piano for years , or even a seperate arranger module would be great.

I just wish I were half the entertainer that Bartman is.

Gary

I'm not sure that Peter is an entertainer by his nature. I'd say that he acts more like a good teacher (professor). He's polite, modest, intelligent and, I guess, rather serious. Well, technically I used to be his student - for three days :-) But didn't had a chance to contact him after that (nor a reason). As he said, at first he was rather nervous doing such presentations. I guess, after doing it for so many years he's pretty much used to do what he does.

Perhaps, you, Gary, more of an entertainer than Peter, as your shows were about your music and singing, while Peter always has some new product to talk about.

On the one hand, this presentation of CVP809 lacks some real innovation or younger people in the audience. On the other hand, maybe I should consider that keyboards and pianos are generally a more mature thing.

I also stack it on top, so I use 2 different midi patches - one that triggers the SX from below, and another that disconnects the two, so I can trigger styles from the SX with the LF, while playing full piano from the RH. If I need more variety, I'll write a third that connects the 121 to the SX for a layer voice only, and no arranger stuff.
It's a great set up. Show us how it looks, Rikki!

Here's mine ...

Cool looking set up!

Hi Dave,
You showed me yours, I’ll show you mine. Haha.

Actually, if I don’t use laptop, I could play r/h full piano and use l/h for sx 900 chords. Just not sure I could get used to playing the 2 layers of keys.
Same goes for layering p121 piano with rh melody voices on sx.
Probably doable, just haven’t tried it.

The p121 is working out great.

Rikki - Better than a Clavinola!

For a short time, I set up my studio gear in my living room. When I had the extra space, it looked like this!

OMG, Dave
Guessing there wasn’t a Mrs Dave at the time.


That is a great selection of gear.

Yup. I'm currently in between wives. (not LITERALLY!!)

Glad you clarified. Haha

Hee, hee ... I had two good ones, and a midlife crisis that should've been a sports car. No regrets - not even the crisis. To quote one of my favorite writers
"There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be..."
Some lessons are easy - some expensive, but as long as you learn SOMETHING - it's worth it, right?

Definitely, Dave. Haha