Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Guide and Evolution to Yamaha DGX and YPG Portable Digital Piano Keyboards

Guide and Evolution to Yamaha DGX and YPG Portable Digital Piano Keyboards edit x

These keyboards have been very successful, they are still made well into 2010s even though they were introduced in early 200Xs.

I was not able to find a guide to which of the Yamaha DGX and YPG had which features. If you want to record and playback songs from the song list from a USB stick, you'll need at least the DGX-520. 

If you want to match a Casio workstation that has aux and mic inputs and records a wav file, only the latest DGX-660 has these all built in. Otherwise it's cheaper to just add a $150 speaker with mic inputs and record into your laptop. 

How to distinguish
77 vs 88 keys
2 line display vs square with music notation and lyrics
soft touch vs weighted hammer keys
obsolete - floppy disk, smartmedia card.
Basic 77 key models do not allow you to save any of the user songs to usb device.
usb to device so you can read and save songs to usb stick
Only top of line latest has aux-input and mic input


The only website I've found that has compatible midi files is 
https://psrtutorial.com/midi/index.html

This tool may be able to add chords and lyrics to play with keyboard
Serenade version 5 - Create Karaoke files from MIDI files
Serenade is Karaoke editor and player for MIDI files. You can can add text to a MIDI file (.mid) and create a karaokefile (.kar). This can be the original text of the song but also a text that you created for a special occasion (wedding, good-bye-party etc.). It comes with a complete sequencer that you can use to cut and paste parts of the MIDI file to match the number of versus you need, transpose the pitch to match your voice, change the tempo etc.


The text is edited in a normal text format, you can copy and paste it from any webpage or wordprocessor. The words are inserted by pressing any key while the midifile is playing. The resulting karaoke file can be played in Serenade or in any other midi karaoke player (e.g. VanBasco or a Yamaha Tyros keyboard). You can also include chords by placing them on separate lines above the lyrics. The chords and lyrics are visible both in Serenade and Yamaha keyboards that can display chords like the Tyros.


There is an incomplete list of Yamaha keyboards at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yamaha_products#Portable_Grand_DGX_/_YPG_series



76 keys battery portable

  • DGX-203 2004 76-Key Digital Grand
  • DGX-305 2004 76-Key Portable Grand wheel control Smartmedia  
  • DGX-230 / YPG-235 2007 76 keys  6D battery replaced by PSR-EW300


88 keys (same as piano), usb to device, no battery
  • DGX-500 2002 88k 3.5 in floppy disk old display sonicstate Floppy can be swapped with USB floppy emulator but not easy to get around all the cables around the floppy bay and you'll need magnetic tip long screwdriver to get inside.
  • DGX-505 2004 88k Keyboard smartmedia. Can’t save to usb
DGX-620 / YPG-625 2005 YPG-625 graded hammer 32 polyphony replaced by YPG-635   "USB to Device" maxg notation musician's friend

Why should you get a workstation DGX vs dedicated piano P115 vs DGX650 video better speakers, backing band styles