Hello;

By now I have had my Yamaha PSR-SX900 for almost 5 months. I’m a bit disappointed that the keys became noisy really quickly, I expect that adding some grease would fix the problem, but I’m not ready yet to bring it to the service.

But even with this shortcoming, I tend to think that this is the best option I can have right now.

For a long time I considered Yamaha MODX7 to be my best option, yet I failed to buy it twice. First time I thought that Roland Juno DS76 would be enough, bought that one, although I am still playing it, I regretted a bit that I didn’t buy MODX7 instead, and when I finally got enough money for MODX7, I found a good deal for PSR-SX900 and took it, thus rejected the MODX again.

What surprised me later when I was studying Data Lists for MODX and PSR-SX900, that SX900 actually has a larger collection of “Seattle Strings” than MODX does. I guess it’s because the SX900 was released later.

I guess, the reason why I chose PSR over MODX was that while listening to them on YouTube I concluded that traditional music like BossaNova was still closer to me than some experimental electronic stuff. And while MODX is suitable for all the genres, I have a feeling that it’s more about synthetic stuff and arpeggios, while the PSR line is more about acoustic instruments.

I recorded a small “concert”; this way I try to figure my relationship with arranges myself, still don’t have a conclusive feeling about it.

What I can say, is that 76 keys would be nicer. But even with 61 keys, the SX900 gave me the refreshment I needed after my old PSR-S950; with new drums all the styles sound differently, while new guitars and electric pianos, strings and choirs have really opened a new chapter for me, so even without being perfect it helps to keep the enthusiasm alive, which is the whole point anyway.

Kabinopus, your playing does the Sx900 justice. I keep thinking how the emotion happens in your mind, and it comes out in your fingers. Nice!

Thank you for sharing your music, John C.

Thank you, John :-) I guess it’s the same way as emotions usually come out from
people’s mouths :-) and I’m not usually expressive verbally, so in a way keyboards help me to be more open to people :-)

Nice sounding keyboard and wonderful skills Thanks for sharing your talent.

Lovely, Kabin… are these straight improvisations, or do you you have a roadmap before you start? They have a lovely flow… ❤️

If you don’t mind me making a suggestion, the pianos sound like they are being played fairly hard, seldom sounding like they are getting much below mf. If you aren’t already, try setting the keyboard velocity curve for the piano (but not the pad, if it’s a different Part) to as hard as it goes. You’ve got a good pianist touch, and it sounds like you are losing quite a bit of dynamics at the low end. That type of music and playing really needs to leverage as much dynamics as possible.

You can hear it on the Wurlitzer sound as well. There’s a velocity switch from the cleaner to the slightly distorted samples, and it sounds as you don’t hit the cleaner one very often!

The final compressor will pull everything together nicely for recording, but the piano will sound more intimate, I think… 🎹😎

By the way, your hand angle looks a bit uncomfortable… perhaps bring the keyboard a bit higher or sit a tad lower? In the long run, over years, that bent wrist angle may lead to carpal tunnel or other problems, not to mention short term fatigue. Try sitting at a piano bench in front of a real piano and note your wrist angle as you play, then try to recreate that with your stand and seat. That posture has been tried and tested over centuries and found to be the best!

I truly enjoyed this video. So nice to hear some straight PLAYING here…! 👍🏼😍

Thank you, Zuki and Diki for your attention,

It is mostly improvisation, except for one Russian song at 18:18.

As for the piano sound, I might try some different velocity curve setting, but I have a suspicion that PSR’s pianos don’t really have proper samples for soft touches. My Juno DS is a bit better when you want the piano to sound dark and blurry, but the transition from “piano” to “forte” is a bit unexpected there, so it’s hard to say which is the lesser of two evils.

As for the way I sit I do get this recommendation from time to time. I used to play an acoustic piano at restaurant for 3-4 hours per night and it was too obvious that if I wasn’t sitting high enough I couldn’t play the way I wanted.

Since I didn’t have any formal training, I guess, I can say that I don’t follow any recommendations :-)

So nice! I am feeling all calm and content for a moment.

Class performance from a class person.

So glad to know you, friend.


Russ

captain Russ You are very kind, Russ, thank you! Glad to know you too!

Whatever works for you, works for you Kabin..! I just wanted to warn you about long term effects you may not see for years. There’s no doubt you love playing, and no doubt you have many decades in front of you, and I would hate for wrist problems to make the final decade or so uncomfortable. I know several elderly pianists who play rarely any more because of the pain.

You may not have to go completely to standard keybed/bench heights, good piano benches have a way to adjust the height a few inches, so there is always room to go up a bit and still be legit, but every inch or two upwards on the keyboard or lower on the seat reduces that wrist angle a bit, and may be sufficient to avoid those long term problems.

It might take a bit of time to get used to, but I guarantee that it will be less time than you might find yourself in pain for in your final years. That seems like a good tradeoff! It’s difficult at your age to realize just how long you may be old for, but with luck it’s decades, and that’s a long time to be in pain for, trying to do something you love… 🎹❤️🎹

Hello my Russian fried. Once again, thank you for another spectacular performance - you are so incredibly talented. However, as noted by Diki, your position over the keyboard will eventually place a lot of stress on your forearms and wrists.

Many years ago, when I was very young, my piano teacher provided me with some very useful position information. Your back should be straight. your legs should be positioned as if you were sitting in a chair and when your hands are on the keys, your forearms should be parallel to the floor. For this reason, I purchased a fully adjustable stool, one primarily used by guitar players doing solo acts.



https://www.adorama.com/qlamsdx749.html?...rce=adl-gbase-p

Good Luck,

Gary

Thank you, Gary and Diki, I appreciate your concern. Still, don’t really think that I’m going to change anything as I tried a lot of different positions and ended up with the one which works for me. If I move lower or higher it affects my playing immediately.

Now thinking about it I remembered one evening, I was rehearsing some songs with some woman, they had some Yamaha PSR-E313 or so, and some plain chair, and I had to put something between me and a chair, once the object was found I was ready to play. It was almost 7 years ago, I was slimmer and had hair, but used to be more nervous about anything than I’m now :-)



The songs were not written by me, I guess that’s why I didn’t pursue that projects. The lady was a full-time singer back then, but as far as I know today she works at a bank and enjoying it. Well, a single mother with two children has to be flexible. The video was taken in Moscow, if it makes it to appear fancier ;-)

Thank you Kabinopus for sharing your SX 900 concert and reversal with the lovely singer. Both were very enjoyable.

I was just wondering if you have employed the chord looper on the SX 900 into your playing? I recently acquired a SX 900 as well, and this feature alone made it worth the upgrade from the 950. As Diki often says, the chord looper is a “ game changer” and I would imagine a keyboardist with your impressive skill set and talent , could achieve some amazing results with the chord looper.

Thank you for your kind words, Montunoman; I tried the looper a few times, it worked well; but I guess I’m more comfortable when nothing is predetermined. For this reason I don’t really enjoy playing in a band or with backing tracks, I need to feel that I can go anywhere I want. I’m not saying that my way is any better than any other way, if we all followed the same rules all our music would sound the same :-)

A 28 lbs stool? Pass! It’s amazing how 30lbs+ is too much for a quality keyboard, but then we lug stuff around at least as heavy for little reason… 😂

With my transport setup using the Rock and Roller R-10, I only had to move it a couple feet from the van to the cart, and then a few feet from the cart to the stage area. Very easy to lift and transport. My total time setting up, including unloading all the gear from my van and setting up to perform, taking my time (because I'm old and slow) is about 10 minutes. Everything is streamlined and modified to make all this an easy task. Also, notice the top rack I designed to hold the keyboard, X-stand and speaker extensions. Also, you'll see that I use the keyboard case as a work table while setting up, and a storage compartment for all the bags and covers while I'm working. Not so for most of the arranger keyboard players I've seen on my travels up and down the east coast, and other states. Check out my setup video.



Gary

Nice sounding piano, and your music is certainly relaxing and pleasing to listen to. Latin styles on the SX-900 are awesome, and you played along very nicely.

You should have a look at the free packs available from Yamaha

Thank you, Larry; I think there was a Latin pack pre-installed and it was removed when I installed other packs. Thought, it seems that all pre-installed packs can be restored by the instrument itself, which means that they are just hidden. But I tried them at first and thought that I didn’t need them much.

Yamaha surely did some questionable job with relocating and renaming styles. What used to be “guitar ballad” now is “Irish pop ballad”; and I have to look for some Latin styles in such categories as “Ballroom” or “Jazz”. I guess, it’s a human nature. Even when the best decision is to do nothing, the urge to do at least something is irresistible.

Yes, relocating styles was not the best move by Yamaha. I do find the search function really handy, along with saving to "favorites" another way of quickly accessing those styles.

Almost all Yamaha packs are now free, and if you can master YEM, you can pick, choose, and save only those pack styles you really like.

Have fun, and thanks for your videos

Thank you for posting this Kabinopus, I have been playing this repeatedly as my 'comfort' music for weeks now. The hardest thing about losing Nigel is not hearing him tinkling in his studio!

Thank you, Kerry!

It’s nice to know that playing some music can be helpful for someone else :-)

Perhaps, people close to us stay with us forever, even if we are parted with them, they keep influence us.

Certainly I wish there was some version of the world where everyone can be with anybody without so many obstacles and limitations; maybe someday we’ll discover it; for now we have to play our parts trying to make the best of what we got.

Well, I didn’t want my message to be too short, so I allowed myself to say things like that.

Hi Sergey,

having returned to the fold here on SZ only recently I listened to this concert of yours, which is inspiring to say the least.
Your piano playing is very proficient to my ears, but then I am only a beginner really, and your ability to improvise at great lenght is simply staggering imho. You know that I have come to love the piano as well and my wife adores me if I start extemporizing on the piano as well (....otherwise as well fortunately for me :), but then I often get stuck with four chords, hahaha!!!
I would not know which posture to assume to play in the best way but as you mentioned yourself you have gotten used to a certain position over the years and are most likely to stick with that. As long as you can produce what you can produce I would say: "who cares?"
About the SX-900 piano sounds, nothing wrong with them but I cannot help feeling that I slightly prefer you playing the piano on your Roland, but than there is no accounting for tastes, is there ?
In general the SX is a very good arranger keyboard though with lots of sounds that are up to par, even for professional use.
Keep up the good work my friend !!!

regards
John

Hello again, John;

thank you for your kind attention! As scientists say, to learn something new is a very healthy activity to our minds, and also quite a challenge.

I spend a lot of time with my guitar although it doesn’t seem practical or very promising but there’s something in the sound which I like and can’t find it elsewhere. It’s curious also that some people listening to it would say something which I understand as “you’d better stick to your keyboard” but in the same time some girl (a pretty one as well) would say “I love it” while being unemotional about my arranger playing, so it’s hard to rely on the feedback.

The piano on the SX900 sounds to me very close to what I had on the S950, and I bought the Juno-DS because I was impressed with its piano, so your impression kind of supports my choice. But the default piano on the Juno-DS has its own disadvantage: some notes tend to sound louder than others, and the additional piano, while being more equal volume wise, has some unnatural noises, after a while it can get annoying.

But I try to recall how excited I was when getting my first “grownup” keyboards, which we would call “entry-level” now, and realize that this some sort of “perfectionism” can be a sign that I’m loosing the point.

It’s much harder to get attention on YouTube today than it used to be some years ago, basically YouTube keeps some “gap” between popular content and not-so-popular one, which in its turn makes the gap even larger. If you don’t have enough views, you can’t turn on monetization, and without monetization you get less promotion, because YouTube needs monetization himself.

And I’m not ready to start making videos like “10 worst mistakes you can do with your keyboard” or “all the Beatles’ songs in one minute”, which could attract a larger audience.

One of the largest stores in Russia which sales instruments says things like “it takes us a year to sell at least one TOTL keyboard” or “we are poor and small”.

I’m saying it because I had an idea to move to cheaper keyboards under condition that some store would provide me with them in exchange for promotion, but the facts are that my content is not popular enough, the stores aren’t rich enough and keyboards aren’t demanded enough.

I’m trying to stay open minded, even to check my options in “young” genres like rap/hip-hop, but, well, it doesn’t seem very inspiring after all. Yet, I basically feel good, even being undetermined, although I’m having a cold right now, because I expect that everything will stay in the game, changing its form or not, adjusting, getting simpler or complex, and we can witness it, we can participate, anyway, nothing really stops :-)

Sergey,

I was not aware of the volume issue with the Roland Juno DS, which can put a person off no doubt. At times I wonder why so many people make a great issue out of the piano sound because there is such a tremendous variety of them both in the arranger keyboards , the workstations and last but not least VST.
And very proficient piano players are always among the first to remark that what they hear is actually not the real mcCoy !!!
So be it. Most workstations and arranger keyboards these days offer piano sounds more than acceptable for the average player.
Heck, I still have my 20 year old Yamaha P80 stage piano with an incredible ROM sample memory of 22Mb ( that's right Megabyte and no Gigabytes around ) and I still love it to death....
As a matter of fact I recently finished a very personal arrangement of Clapton's Wonderful Tonight , basically using this piano and I will post it here after finishing this narrative.
They always say that " beauty is in the eye of the beholder " but very much so regarding music "beauty is in the ear of the listener ".
Your comments on the keyboard market in Russia are not very uplifting, I guess here in Holland we are spoiled rotten as far as arranger keyboards are concerned. On top of which thousands and thousands of those in every conceivable price range are being offered as secondhand here in our country.
As to Youtube and monetization, I have never had to bother about that for the simple reason that virtually all of my music are covers ( be it hopefully with an inspiring new arrangement)so I am not allowed to take a penny for those entries on youtube which suits me fine as to me it is just a platform to share my music with family, friends etc. in a simple manner, in particular those living abroad etc.
May I finally commend you once more on your words of wisdom in general as well as your terrific command of the English language, I know how hard it must be taking into consideration I studied a bit of Russian 40 years ago.....as you know by now.

kind regards
John