Introduction to Yamaha Styles

Site Index for the Styles Section

In 2000, I discovered the digital piano. Some 20 years earlier, I had purchased a Lowrey organ, which I played for several years, but then drifted away to other career pursuits over the decades. I had once more become interested in playing some music and so looked to see if I could get my Lowrey, which needed some touchup, repaired. But electronic organs seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth! I couldn't find one anywhere. But, on visiting a newly opened piano store in my neighborhood, I saw a digital piano demonstrated. It was incredible - an entire band available at the touch of a button, just like my Lowrey, but sounding far better than the organ ever had. I was almost drooling, but it was pretty expensive. I tried another local music store, and they had Yamaha pianos and, sure enough, it did all the same things and even included a microphone for singing! But it, too, was expensive. The next work day, I excitedly told a co-worker about my great discovery, but for every astonishing thing I described, he resonded, "Oh, my keyboard does that, too!"

Keyboard??? What was that? More research and the discovery of Yamaha's arranger keyboards. My friend had a PSR8000. My local music store had the Yamaha PSR740, PSR640, and PSR540 models. I visited my friend's house and saw his PSR8000 and heard him play. I also tried playing and immediately discovered many things: 1) the keyboard sounded great, but only if you actually knew how to play a keyboard -- I'd have to start practicing again; 2) the keyboard was really a computer that let the user do a lot of very different things varying from just playing a song to creating your own original musical masterpiece -- it would take some learning to understand how to operate and also discover what aspect of the arranger keyboard I liked most; and 3) this "keyboard" did everything the digital pianos did, sounded every bit as good, but was a LOT cheaper. I immediately went to the local music store, played the PSR540, the least expensive of the mid-range line, for about an hour. It sounded great. It operated just like the more expensive 640 and 740 models but had fewer voices and fewer styles. At $500, it was relatively inexpensive and, I thought, would make a great learning keyboard. I purchased it that day and took it home as my Christmas present that year.

After about a year of steady practice and enormous enjoyment with that keyboard, I moved up to the PSR2000 when it came out the next year and I also started this web site at that time. Partly because of the web site, I got the PSR2100 when it was introduced then the PSR3000, the Tyros2, and the PSR-S900.

New Keyboards Every Year

I mention all this simply to highlight how much this industry changes over time. These keyboards are, at their heart, computers and like your typical desk-top computer, the features available seem to get better and better every year (although sometimes users are disappointed to see the disappearance of apprecaited features). So, I've arranged the Yamaha styles section to reflect a small part of the historical record of Yamaha arranger keyboards.

The table shown here lists the various Yamaha arranger keyboard model families and the month and year of the press release for that model. In fact, the press release dates provide a quick link to that press release. Similarly, the keyboard model links take you to the Features page (see below) for that model. Very often, there will be several press releases over several months, so these dates are only approximate, but they do give you an idea of when new models have been introduced. U.S. purchasers are keenly aware that it is often many months after a model is introduced before we actually get to see it here in the states. And sometimes months after that before it is commonly available.

The pages in this section are focused on the models starting with the PSR730 series introduced in 1997 and going all the way to the present Tyros3 model introduced in 2008. Some models represented a series of keyboards, for example the PSR740, PSR640, and PSR540. Keyboards in a "family" generally operated the same way with the more expensive models having more styles, more voices and, usually, more features. I refer to the top-of-the-line model in a keyboard family, but many of the styles provided will also work on the more junior brothers.

We also mix a high-end series and a mid-range series. The high-end is represented by the PSR8000, PSR9000, 9000Pro, Tyros, Tyros2, and the Tyros3. The midrange is represented by the PSR730, PSR740, PSR2000, PSR2100, PSR3000, and the PSR-S900. As the table indicates, a new mid-range keyboard is introduced one year and a new high-end keyboard the following year in a two-year sequence. There's no guarantee that this pattern will continue, but changes are new and better keyboards are now on the drawing boards. The PSR-S900/S700 were introduced in July 2007 as replacements for the PSR3000/1500. Most recently, the Tyros3 was unveiled replacing the previous flag-ship model Tyros2.

Similar Keyboards Every Year

If you have paid attention to the evolution of car models, you will undoubtedly have noticed a major model change occuring in one year and then that basic "body style" being carried forward for several years before another major style change. You'll find that same idea in these arranger keyboard models. The PSR730 and PSR740 model families operated much the same way. The introduction of the PSR2000 was an entirely new and different operational system. That system has been carried forward in the Tyros, the 2100, the 3000, the Tyros2, the PSR-S900, and now the Tyros3. It is also essentially the same operational system used in the Yamaha CVP digital pianos. The similarity in the operating system means it is fairly easy to move from one model to another. It also means that many of the styles will be somewhat interchangeable. I say "somewhat" because while the operating system may be similar, the hardware is not and the voices and speakers included with each new keyboard are generally different. Thus, a style from an older keyboard may, indeed, play on a newer one, but it may not sound exactly the same. Styles, however, can be "tuned" to optimize their sound on each of the keyboards. More on this below.

Preset and "Tuned" Styles

For each keyboard, the Styles page gives you the internal preset styles provided with that keyboard. In several cases, you will also find additional style sets, tuned specifically for that particular keyboard, available on the "Styles" page. For example, you will find the Tyros styles tuned for the PSR2000 on the PSR2000 Styles page. You'll also find PSR740 styles tuned to the PSR2000 on that page. In both cases, modifications had to be made to "original" styles to "tune" them for playing on a PSR2000.

Press Releases, Features, Specifications

In addition to the Styles, you will find three additional pages for each keyboard.

	The Press Release page shows you what the original press release had to say about that keyboard.
	The Features page shows the features of the keyboard as highlighted by Yamaha. For more recent keyboards, this page also provides a video demo of the keyboard.
	The Specifications page provides the technical specifications provided by Yamaha.

You can, of course, find the features and specifications of the current models at the Yamaha web site as well as some information on older models. But it can be a chore to find them. Since the PSR Tutorial focuses ONLY on Yamaha arranger keyboards, it will be easy to find that information here.

Style Compatibility & MegaVoices

While there have been a series of Yamaha keyboards produced, they have ALL included a basic set of 480 XG and GM voices. These voices are used in creating the styles for many of the keyboards. It is for this reason that one can take a style that was available on the PSR8000 and play it in the PSR740 or the PSR2000 or the new Tyros2. This style compatibility, however, was broken with the introduction of the Tyros model. This model included the new MegaVoice technology. This technology provided more realistic sounding instruments, particularly the guitars, for the styles built into the Tyros. But the technology was only available in the Tyros. Those original styles will play, as is, in earlier keyboards, but they will NOT sound good. The earleir keyboards do not have megavoice technolgoy. Fortunately, there is software available that can detect and remove the megavoices from the style and replace it with a standard guitar or similar voice. When you see Tyros styles for the PSR2000, that is what had to occur. All the styles had to be tuned, fixing up the accompaniment voices where needed. In addition, the styles on the models from PSR2000 onward, have included one-touch-settings built in and stored with the style. The OTS use the preset voices on the keyboard. If newer keyboards have voices not available on older keyboards, then these voices would also have to be adjusted to "tune" that style for use on earlier keyboards.

This "tuning" of styles is one of the strengths of the PSR arranger line since the PSR2000 model. Not many users actually create their own styles from scratch, but many have learned how to modify an existing preset style to "tune" it to their own particular preferences. It is fairly easy to modify accompaniment voices and volumes to suit your own personal tastes. You can change the default tempo of a style and the various OTS voices saved with that. You can even take parts of a style, for example, a bass pattern used in one style, and put it in another style that you are tuning. All of this can be saved in a new version of the style that you can name whatever you like. So each user can create as many styles as they want with these keyboards. The lessons available in the Lessons section of this site will help you learn how to do all this style tuning. In this section of Styles as well as other sections, you will be able to download styles created and/or tuned by other owners for your use and enjoyment.