PSR273

The PSR273 features a lot of “firsts”. It is the first in the line with:

• A backlit LCD capable of displaying musical notes, chord information and various functions
• A touch sensitive keyboard that responds like a piano
• General MIDI (GM) compatibility for playing songs
• XGlite technology that offers a huge selection of voices & even greater MIDI song file compatibility
• A PC Button for easy computer connectivity

If you're buying a keyboard having piano in mind, you'll want Yamaha's Touch Response feature. On an acoustic piano, striking a key harder will produce a louder sound, striking it softer will produce a softer sound. With Yamaha's "Touch Response" our keyboard responds like an acoustic piano.

The Yamaha PSR273 features a stereo-sampled piano voice and dynamic filtering; technology previously reserved for much more expensive, professional keyboards. Playing piano is fast and easy with Yamaha's Portable Grand function. One dedicated button brings up a great sounding piano, stunningly rich and authentic in its sound and exceptionally responsive to your playing touch, as well as setting up the keyboard to play as a piano in full keyboard mode. On top of all this, a wealth of special piano-only "Pianist" styles, like Piano Ballad or Stride for example, provide professional-sounding piano accompaniment that changes chords automatically as you do, while you play a piano melody on top!

Portable keyboards are compact and light enough to fit just about anywhere – including next to your computer. If you’re planning on connecting your keyboard to your computer, you’ll be happy to know that the PSR273 is GM (General MIDI System Level 1) compatible. What does that mean? It means that the keyboard will accurately reproduce any GM music files that you download into your computer – and almost all music files on the Internet are GM compatible.

But this keyboard doesn’t stop there. In addition to GM compatibility, the PSR273 has a large selection of XGlite voices, offering even greater compatibility with both 3rd party and Yamaha XG software. For a look at some of the GM/XG music titles available from Yamaha, follow this link to yamahamusicsoft.com.

And finally, no matter what level of playing ability you're at, you'll appreciate being able to build combinations of your favorite sounds. Pressing the "Split" button divides the instrument into two parts, allowing you to have two different sounds on the keyboard at the same time, like piano on the right and bass on the left and "Layer" mode allows you to combine two sounds across the keyboard range. For example, you could layer piano and strings and play both sounds at the same time. With 480 voices to choose from, the combinations are only limited by your imagination.

Yamaha makes it easy to get connected with the new PC button. Now, instead of wading through function menus and fighting through a maze of selections, one button is your expressway to music on the web and your computer. All Yamaha keyboards have a special MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) port on the back that let you connect your keyboard to a computer (requires a MIDI Interface like the Yamaha UX16 and music software). Once connected, you can play your songs into the computer, edit them if necessary, and e-mail them to your friends and family. And with General MIDI (GM) compatibility, song data always plays back with the correct sounds.

The PSR273 comes with 100 built-in songs with Songbook. But if you've never played before, where do you start? Well, if learning to play music is important to you, the Yamaha Education Suite II™, a wonderful set of music training functions, makes learning music incredibly easy. Seven types of lessons are available as well as a convenient chord dictionary.

The PSR273 comes with 100 built-in styles, waiting for you to play along with. It's just like having a built-in band. Call up your favorite style of music like Rock, Big Band or Country, press a chord or play Single Finger mode, and the 273 will follow you through a piece of music, providing all of the drums, bass, piano, guitar, horn and string parts for you. And to make it easy and fun, when you select one of the styles, the One Touch Setting function will automatically configure keyboard parameters, such as voice selection and digital effects, to match that selected music style.

In electronic keyboards, the more sounds made at the same time – polyphony – the more memory is needed. Obviously, more is always better because too little polyphony can cause dropouts in dense passages of music. The PSR273 has 32 notes of polyphony, which is enough for the most demanding needs.