Yamaha Clavinova CLP-555

The CLP-555 not only brings you the authentic sound and touch of a grand piano, it also gives you the same beautiful shape and gloss-finished cabinetry. Now you can enjoy the features and convenience of a digital piano with all the traditional beauty of a grand.

What could be more fitting for the superior sound and touch response of a Yamaha digital piano, than giving it a body styled just like a baby gand? And so the CLP-555 was born. This superb instrument features a craftsman-built cabinet with deluxe black laquer finish, to bring both the sound and the elegance of the concert hall to your home.

AWM (Advanced Wave Memory) tone generation is widely acknowledged as the industry-leader for total instrument realism. It starts with CD-quality digital samples of the actual instrument - the Piano 1 voice is sampled in stereo then digitally filtered according to your touch on the keyboard. As you play harder, the sound not only gets louder, its attack and tonal quality change too, in just the same way as the original instrument - the same range of dynamic expression as with an acoustic.

The AE (Action Effect) keyboard puts you in total control of the CLP-555's stunningly lifelike sounds. Modeled on the same principles as a grand's, and the fruit of Yamaha's hundred years of crafting fine acoustics, the AE keyboard delivers the firm yet supple response you need to convey every naunce of your artistry.

A total of nine instrument voices, including pianos, electric pianos, Clavinova tone, harpsichord, organs and strings, offer you the versatility you need to play a wide range of music. Better yet, there's a variation for each voice, effectively doubling your musical palette.

In dense legato passages conventional digital pianos quickly run out of notes. And this means every time you play a new note, a sustained one is truncated as the instrument "steals" its voice. The CLP-555, though, offers you max. 32-note polyphony, giving you all the notes you need to handle fast legato passages, without running out of notes.

Enjoy quick, easy connection to your Windows or Macintosh personal computer via the convenient PC interface. And this gives you access to a virtually unlimited world of music-making potential: you can use your favorite sequencing software to drive the Clavinova. Download the Clavinova's samples into your PC. Take advantage of the amazing range of playback software available for a new style of background music. Or even study a music course with self-instruction software.

The built-in digital reverb puts the ambience of a wide variety of venues at your fingertips. By simulating the way sound waves are reflected from the walls, floor and ceiling, digital reverb adds more life and immediacy to everything you play. You can choose from two different sized halls, a medium size room, or on-stage ambience to get exactly the atmosphere you want for your music. There's also a chorus effect to add more richness to any instrument voice.

With the CLP-555's dual mode, you can stack up two voices for simultaneous play, allowing you to create fascinating combinations. A favorite for ballads is strings and piano. Play staccato, and all you hear is the piano. Play legato, and you hear the piano with a shimmering halo of strings. There's also a split mode to assign one voice, for example organ, to the lower registers, and a second voice to the higher registers, allowing you to sound like an ensemble.

Your touch on the keyboard is one of the major factors that makes up your idividual playing style. And the CLP-555 lets you adjust keyboard response, with a selection of hard, medium or soft, to exactly match your touch. There's even a fixed response settig to turn off touch sensitivity, ideal for use with the organ voice.

Get in tune with everything from avant garde to ethnic music: you can choose from six temperaments (Equal, Pure, Kirnberger, Pythagorean, Mean-tone, and Werckmeister) for total versatility.

The CLP-555 offers you the convenience of a built-in, two-track digital recorder. So you can first record a backing track and then later record a separate solo track, allowing you to build up complex performances too difficult to play in real time. You also have a built-in metronome. What's more, you can even change the tempo or voices after you've made your recording. Of course, you can save your performance to your PC via the PC interface or to an external MIDI recorder via a bulk MIDI dump.