What a great opporutunity it was to meet the master Peter Baartmans at Piano Distrubtors Orlando. You've seen his videos and you've heard him play in the past and hearing him live beats the You Tube videos by a long shot. Here's my take on the day.

The Orlando store is loaded with a fine selection of Yamaha grand pianos and the entire line of Yamaha digital pianos. Walking into the store was like a kid going into a candy store. I was the first customer to enter the store for the workshop and was introduced to both Peter and Ben Harrison Product Manager for Portable Keyboards, Digital Pianos & Clavinova. Peter was still in the process of setting up the CVP 609 grand piano version with to his preference. After he finished he immediately did a demo of the touch screen, the equalizer and his preferred settings. He did mention he's a pianist and the CVP 609 is his preferred choice because of the grand piano action and 88 keys. While he was doing a one to one demo for me 4 more customers arrived and at that point the workshop started.

I could only stay for 2 hours, when I left he was still covering some of the features of the CVP 609. He did not have a Tyros 5 to demo . All 5 of us that were in attendance got attention that would not have happened with a larger group. Peter is very personable and his personality matches what you've seen in the You Tube videos. Likewise Ben is very knowledgeable guy. I let both know that Yamaha has a large following of devotees to their arrangers at SZ. Peter in fact was familiar with SZ and mentioned he has visited in the past.

This workshop was tailored for the home CVP owner, many of the features demonstrated i.e. registrations, eq, styles, midi recording, audio recording are known to those of us have owned Yamaha arrangers for many years..........but it wasn't all about the features either. Hearing and watching Peter's hands fly effortlessly over the keys was the high point for me. He did a style demo using the I, IV, V progression to demonstrate a Bossa Nova style.......it sounded good, but then he took the tune One Note Samba with the same Bossa style, added some chord progressions with added 9th, 11ths and 13ths that really made the tune come alive. Haven't heard anyone play the tune like he did on an arranger.

One of the very cool features he did a demo of was the just digital piano feature along with the nuances the instrument is capable of. By the way no external amplification was necessary since the CVP 609 grand style has all the amplifcation anyone would need in a home or cocktail lounge/restaurant setting. Loaded into the CVP 609 are samples from 3 different style pianos, a concert grand, medium sized grand and an upright piano. Here's the cool techy part, on the touch screen when you tap the lifelike looking graphic of the concert grand you're able to raise the lid virtually via the screen and with each setting and the higher the virtual lid opens the sound changes. There's also a control via the touch screen to change room acoustics everything from a large cathedral to a living room. I guess that's what some would call "selling the sizzle, not the steak". I enjoyed every second of Peter taking us thru that part of the piano. I didn't realize that the "V" in CVP stands for versatile as in Clavinova Versatile Piano.

Got some photos too, videos to follow once I transfer them from my phone and do a bit of editing to the vids.