PSRK1

The PSR-K1 is a breakthrough product from Yamaha, the world leader in musical instruments. Never before has so much technology been offered in a product at this price point. The K1 comes standard with microphone, SmartMedia card and a display that is capable of reproducing piano sheet music with notation, chords and lyrics. In true home entertainment fashion, you can connect to your PC via USB; download songs from the Internet to play and sing along with and the lyrics and notation scroll as the song plays. And with the new Performance Assistant®, you can play along with the song and not make a mistake – even if you're a complete beginner!

The PSR-K1 comes with its own microphone so that you can sing along with the songs in the keyboard. Simply select a song, press the Karaoke button if you just want lyrics or Score button for full sheet music with melody and chords, and sing your favorite songs. The huge backlit LCD screen with contrast control makes it easy for the whole family to get in on the sing-a-long. To add songs to the keyboard, simply connect it to your PC via the convenient USB jack on the back, and head out on the Internet (example: www.yamahamusicsoft.com) in search of your favorite songs.

Score and lyric capability were previously found on only our most expensive models, the PSR2000/2100 and up. The PSR-K1 is a breakthrough product that features a large bitmapped display that is capable of displaying notation, including treble and bass clefs, chords and lyrics – all in real time. The music actually advances as the song plays. In addition, the display tells you the chords you are playing, the Voice, Style or Song you have selected, the Tempo and the Transposition. A convenient contrast button allows you to adjust the brightness to your liking.

The PSR-K1 is the first Portable Keyboard from Yamaha to offer SmartMedia for storing MIDI song files, including those that you record, effectively giving you an on-board solid-state disk drive with instant access to your data. In fact, the K1 comes with an industry standardized 8 MB card. And if that's not enough, when you want to archive, change or add songs to sing and play along with, simply connect the keyboard to your computer using the USB and copy songs from your computers' hard drive to the SmartMedia card using included SongFiler software. It's convenient, fast and easy.

In the past, when you wanted to learn a new song, you would probably head off to your local music store where hopefully they had the piano sheet music for the song you eagerly were looking to play and sing. This music generally contained the left and right hand piano parts, chords and lyrics. Recently, Yamaha, Hal Leonard and Sibelius got together to create digital interactive sheet music. Here's how it works. Using your computer, go to yamahamusicsoft.com, find your favorite Scorch® song(s), purchase them and download them into your computer. At this point, if you like, you can change the key and print the music using your printer. But it doesn't stop there!

By connecting the PSR-K1 to your computer you can transfer the digital sheet music into your keyboard and it will play the song for you as the music and lyrics scroll by in the screen, so pick up the microphone and sing along. If you press the Easy Song Arranger button, the keyboard will actually "read" the chords in the song (that's called XF) and play a Style (backing tracks like bass, drums and guitar) along with the piano music! You can try the song as a ballad, jazz or rock – or no backing tracks at all. And finally, go ahead and play the piano parts yourself – with or without the backing tracks. With the K1, you can play it your way!

For a demonstration of "What is a Style", click here (1.3MB download – requires Macromedia Flash and computer sound.)

The Performance Assistant is a new feature from Yamaha that guarantees that you can't play a wrong note or chord. Here's how it works. Select a song and press the Performance Assistant button. Play the keyboard – any notes you like. Every note you play will fit the music! If you move up the keyboard, the pitch goes up. If you move down, the pitch goes down. Play a perfect arpeggio, or play chords in time with the music, or really "go for it" and play a solo. How about stride piano? No matter what you play, as long as Performance Assistant is "on", you're "on". Imagine being able to give a concert to your friends or relatives the first day that you get this remarkable keyboard. Well, with the PSR-K1 and Performance Assistant, you can! This feature works with all 100 built-in songs and XF MIDI files.

Our customers have told us that one of the more important features to them, is the ability to connect their keyboard to their computer. The PSR-K1 has many state of the art features to make connecting as quick and easy as possible. These features include the PC Button, which takes a snapshot of your MIDI settings so that you can instantly return to them with just the press of a single button, and a USB port for transferring song data from your computer. In addition, the USB port acts as a MIDI interface, freeing you from having to purchase other MIDI peripherals like cables and adapters to play music. Simply connect the included cable to your computer, open your favorite music software program and hit PLAY. That's it.

The PSR-K1 comes equipped with 486 Voices that include Stereo-sampled Piano, Sweet! Trumpet, Flute, Pan Flute, Soprano and Tenor Saxes, Cool! Jazz Organ, 10 Drum Kits and 2 Sound Effects Kits. Sweet! Voices are special voices from Yamaha that reproduce all the natural expression and vibrato of their respective acoustic instruments. Cool! Voices feature long samples of electronically amplified instruments.

And to get the most out of these great voices, there is a Stereo 2-way speaker system with bass ports. And to capture all of this sound, you'll find a built-in 6-track sequencer for recording your own songs and you can save your songs to the SmartMedia card. And to round it all out, there's a Sustain Pedal Jack (sustain pedal optional), transpose and tuning, auto harmony for the right hand, left and right hand lessons with the 100 songs and a CD-ROM containing SongFiler software and USB Drivers. It's all here.