So I have this digital piano. Or keyboard. Or whatever, let’s not get hung up on the nomenclature. I’ve had it for about 5 years - I’m no professional pianist but I do enjoy tickling those synthetic ivories from time to time, enough to be bothered by a keyboard withoutÂ
weighted keys. But it also didn’t make sense to spend lots of money on some ultra-lavish thing because my level of piano proficiency would waste such an instrument. So I got this. Hold on, I just gotta boot it up. ♫ Windows XP startup sound ♫ That’s right, it’s still No Effort in November, and this piana’s gonna learn us a thing or two about user interfaces. And then we’ll talk about some other stuff. Being the most basic model in Yamaha’s Arius line, this model is pretty basic. I mean, it’s even got a manual transmission as you can see by the presence of the clutch pedal. That was a joke. Those are just your normal piano pedals. Except of course they’re not real, they’re just switches. But they’re not binary inputs either. And also this piano handles the sustain pedal in a surprisingly wrong way which I’ll show you in a bit. But anyway, like most keyboards this thing offersÂ
a fair degree of customizability with things like key sensitivity, a slew of reverb options (which are annoyingly always on by default) different voices so you canÂ
pretend you’re an organist or a harpsichordist or annoy your friends like this. ♫ iPhone Marimba ringtone ♫ That voice is a vibraphone andÂ
not a marimba but who’s counting? Oh, it also offers a built-inÂ
metronome and some other stuff. It’s a pretty fully-featured if on the cheaperÂ
side instrument. Look at the controls, though— Hi! I’ve now edited the video and whileÂ
I kinda thought this would be the case, uh I just wanna make sure that you know...
Yes, I’m aware you can't see the keyboard at all from where the camera is but… remember what month it is. So. Just keep that in mind. — Look at the controls, though, andÂ
you find there basically aren’t any. That’s one of the concessions youÂ
make when you buy the cheap one.  Over here you have a power button and a volumeÂ
control - an actual potentiometer, even! But, uh... that’s it. Over there you have a single button labeled Grand Piano Function. I’m glad it can at least do that. And, uh, well now we’re out of buttons. That doesn’t seem like enough. Apparently this thing has a bluetooth radio in it because of course it does and there’s an app you can downloadÂ
for your phone to control things because of course there is but all I can say to that is “gross.” Oh but it does have an integrated key cover! Fancy! I was perplexed by how the heckÂ
I was supposed to control this thing to change is settings, but after staring at it for just a little while I thought "oh"
[said by a woman's voice coming from the piano] That’s right, there’s a whole 88 other buttonsÂ
sitting right here! They’re just piano-ey. Yamaha rather smartly designed this thing anÂ
awful lot like a computer keyboard and this button here is your modifier key. Like Alt. Or Control. Or Command. Or Windows. Or… Function. Press it once and it will revert back - someone got mad at me for saying revert back so I said it again! Be careful what you wish for - it will revert back to being a standard piano from whatever function it was in. Or at least a facsimile of a standard piano. But if you hold the button down andÂ
then press one of the keys - well, now you’ve done who knows what. Like started a sample song. ♫ The Entertainer begins to play ♫
Oh good. Can’t have a piano that can’t play the Entertainer. Side-note.
[ding] I think Scott Joplin gets a bad orÂ
perhaps incomplete rap for being “the ragtime guy.” Yeah, ragtime as a genre has a very particular sound, but it doesn’t help that just about the only three pieces anyone ever hears are The Entertainer, Maple Leaf Rag, and sometimes The Easy Winners. Maybe Pine Apple Rag, too. Basically everything that was in The Sting. It also doesn’t help that people like toÂ
play these pieces ridiculously fast because, well, ♫ Maple Leaf Rag played ridiculsouly fast ♫ I mean it’s very fun. But have you ever heard the second section of Solace? ♫ Bet you weren't expecting a piano recital now, were you? Or the Magnetic Rag (a personal favorite ofÂ
mine?) ♫ Appreciation for ragtime and indeed for Joplin seems to come in waves and, well, maybe we’re overdue for another one. Anyway, Yamaha gives you a cheat sheet so you don’t haveÂ
to memorize all of these. They are grouped to help make this a little more obvious, though, and they’ve put the most-likely-to-be-used functions at the very bottom (selecting voices) and near middle C
(the metronome). Although, using the metronome is probably the most clunky experience of this scheme, as you enter your desired beats per minute using these keys. [a pre-recorded voice reads Six. Five. One. Two. Three.] You can then have it read back to you the set speed. [sixty-nine] Nice. Then you can turn it on or off and also adjustÂ
beats per measure and volume. [One. Two. Oh. One hundred twenty. On.Â
[metronome begins ticking]] It does work, but honestly you’re betterÂ
off just using an external metronome. This probably isn’t the only keyboardÂ
in existence to use its keys in this way  but it nonetheless delights me. Because it’s a very meta take on a user interface. Every piano, going back to the days when we called it the pianoforte (or fortepiano if you like that order better) has some version of this keyboard. And what are the keys themselves but a user interface? Even an acoustic instrument of strings, mallets,Â
and dampers has a UI and the keyboard (and pedals)  is that. Using a simple modifier button to turn that centuries-old design into a parameter-setting tool for the digital copy of the thing the design comes from is just… I don’t know exactly but wow! Outside of the UI thing, the evolution of digital pianos like this is just a fascinatingly w e i r d blend of new technologies built into andÂ
around a very old interface but the goal of each new development is to make it seemÂ
to behave exactly like the acoustic version  it emulates. It’s like engineering specifically for nostalgia - each step forward is at the same time a step back and I love it. I - Just think of what this thing is actually doing. When you get right down to it, this isÂ
a really weird machine that calls up a pre-recorded sound sample of a real piano producing a single note the moment you push any one of these buttons. They just happen to beÂ
shaped like piano keys. Then it plays that sample through a pair of loudspeakers. That’s just really goofy when you think about it, isn’t it? But, if you press the buttons in the right order… [Third part from Solace] you get music. But then again I suppose that’s exactly whatÂ
happens with a real piano. Anyway if you can’t tell thinking about this too hard makes my brain hurt. I mean, it’s just a skeuomorphic nightmare. So let’s talk about some of the things we’veÂ
done to make fake pianos fake it better.  The earliest digital keyboards wereÂ
basically sound-sample-caller-upper machines  and not much else at all. In fact it might not have even been a sound sample or even digital, it could have been synthesized. But that’s a horrible substitute for a real piano, especially if the keyboard doesn’tÂ
have some kind of force detection. Which early ones didn’t, and so each noteÂ
sounded at the same loudness with every press. Now this isn’t to say that early pianoÂ
replacements weren’t cool in their own ways. Electronic pianos certainly have their place andÂ
brought new and interesting sounds to the world of music. And let’s not forget the earlier electric piano
though that’s an entirely different beast. And there are so many other weird conceptsÂ
out there like the mellotron which is an analog sample-caller-upper but again, different beast. I’m solely talking about the continuing work to faithfully mimic a real piano in both sound and function. To that end, we pretty quickly developed keysÂ
that could determine how hard they were pressed  by way of velocity detection (basically each key has two switches at two different depths and it just determines how quickly the key moved between those two positions  to work out how hard you pressed it). That was combined with new software which would alter the volume of the played sample based on that. This allowed the player a similar degree of expressiveness as before and brought the forte back into the piano. But that’s not great, either. Just playing the same sample at different volumes isn’t actually a good approximation of what an actual piano actually sounds like actually. In a real piano the key pushes a mallet into the strings and the force of that strike changes not just the volume but also the timbre. Softly-played notes are mellowerÂ
and not as bright as keys gettin’ smashed. So to add realism, digital pianos and keyboards started including multiple sound samples of every note, recorded at different volumes on a real piano, thus allowing for approximating that timbre difference. How hard you press the key nowÂ
determines not only how loud to play a sample ♫ but also which specific sample among a set ♫ !! should be played for that note. And what about how to stop playing the note? Most keys on a piano lift a damper from the strings when you press them and replace the damper when it is released. That’s why a note continues as you hold the key but stops when you release it. This piano does a simple quick fade-out of the sample when the key is lifted, which honestly is close enough. However, the sustain pedal (the one on the right) allows the player a very important technique. In a real piano, this pedal lifts all the dampers from the strings meaning every note will continue so long as the pedal is pressed. This digital piano’s sustain pedal isn’t just anÂ
on-off switch and mimics partial-pedaling, where the dampers are rested slightly on the stringsÂ
which quiets them somewhat but not completely. [loud chord is played, then suddenly gets quieter but doesn't stop] This may not sound very important but trust me, it is. Oh, and speaking of the pedals, I said earlierÂ
that this piano gets the sustain pedal wrong.  Here’s how. If I were to play a loud chord with the pedal depressed, then play the same chord again quietly but keep the keys held down with my finger thingies, releasing the pedal shouldn’t do anything because I’m holding those virtualÂ
dampers off the strings with my fingers. And yet… [loud chord, soft strike on top, then it suddenly gets quieter] Can you hear that? [same sequence] That is very wrong, and I cannot believe YamahaÂ
screwed that up here. Though in fairness they’ve only been making pianos since 1900. It seems the logic in the piano reset the keys’ sustainedness status on the second press and dampered the first loud sample that was started on the first keypress when I released the pedal but again, that is very wrong and not how it should work at all. Though, in fairness, I actually only recentlyÂ
discovered this so it’s not that bad. Interestingly, though, this was handled
correctly with the middle pedal. Which is great because nobody ever uses that one! Plus lots of pianos don’t even have it, and when they do there’s no set rule for what exactly it does. Here it’s implemented as it often is in grand pianos. Called the sostenuto pedal, this pedal will lock any dampers that are lifted the moment the pedal is depressed but leave the rest alone. Here’s what that sounds like in practice. [a chord is played, then all the keys are played rapidly.
When hitting the original chord, those notes are still sustained] Hopefully you understand what’s going on here… it’s not super easy to describe with words andÂ
if you’re not familiar with pianos  this might be baffling but in any case if I doÂ
the same thing as before and then lift the pedal, [loud chord, soft chord, then no change] now it correctly lets the original loud sampleÂ
continue on until I actually release the keys. I’m thinking if they got the middle pedal right, somebody just forgot to put a line of code somewhere for the other one. Oh, and the pedal on theÂ
left is known as the una corda or soft pedal. In a nutshell it just makes the piano a bitÂ
quieter while it’s depressed. A bit like this.
[he said softly] OK, so that’s about as far as this particularÂ
piano goes when it comes to the reproduction of sound, but of course there’s also the fact that these keys themselves are weighted to mimic the feel of a real piano’s keys. They’re even progressively weighted more heavily towards the left side of the keyboard just like a real piano’s bass notes because big hammer make key go slow. But this is actually a pretty basic key-weighting system as things go. They only get more complex from here, and some digital pianos go so far as to implement actual, real piano actions where a real keyboard moves real hammers that hit force sensors so basically it’s an actual piano except the strings have been replaced with sensors and a computer. Remember how I was saying digital pianos are aÂ
fascinatingly weird blend of new and old tech?  Yeah, those so-called hybrid pianosÂ
are the epitome of that sentiment. Then of course there’s polyphony. That word means a lot of different things
depending on context and it’s confusing so I’m not gonna touch it. To end I want to talk about some of the otherÂ
wild stuff that folks like Yamaha are putting into their highest-end digital pianos. Real pianos are much more acoustically complicated than a mix of sound samples played in the right order. One of the most basic things this keyboard is missing is sympathetic vibrations. With the sustain pedal depressed and all strings free to vibrate, hitting any note will induce some vibrations in those other strings, particularly those with harmonic frequencies
shared with the original note. This adds a richness to the notes played with the sustain pedal that this piano is not reproducing, at least I’m not noticing it, but others do. As you go up in price with digital pianos these days, you not only get the niceties like real wooden keys and actual piano actions if youÂ
want, oh but hold on if you’re buying one of these digital "grand pianos"… just don’t. I don’t understand how people find this impressive
and not objectively goofy. But anyway, over-the-top cases aside, new software modeling allows these instruments to not only account for sympatheticÂ
vibrations of other strings but also the acoustic profile of the piano’s soundboard and wooden case. Combined with better and more powerful audio systems, we’re at a point where digital pianos areÂ
realllllly close to their acoustic counterparts. There are still reasons to have an acousticÂ
piano, to be clear, but there are also a lot of great benefits to these. Perhaps chief among them is that they don’t weigh hundreds of pounds. That’s nice. Also very important to me is that they don’t lose their tuning. Oh but on that note, I only recently discovered that this piano allows you to play two voices at once. One of my gripes with it is that it’s not a very bright sounding piano with its main voice, and the brighter piano voice it does offer doesn’t sound that real to me. Well, in a happy accident, if you select both piano voices it puts the bright piano an octave up andÂ
makes a surprisingly nice change to the sound. [arpeggiations] What’s more,
if you adjust that second voice back down to the original octave, you end up with a detuned sound. [a detuned sound as notes are played] It's not quite honky-tonk, but more like a parlor sound, which I personally find great for ragtime. I hope you enjoyed this meandering off-the-cuff look at the world of digital pianos. It’s by no means complete, and there are many rabbit holes you can fall into if you want, so sorry if I sent you down one of those. But for now, as Mozart would say, toodles.
I am disappointed at the lack of your rendition of 🎶acoustically smooth jazz🎶
That joke aside, this is probably my favourite TC video in a long time. Every joke and pun was delivered in perfect time, but I loved how genuinely excited you were for the weird blend of digital sound production and a backwards-compatible user interface. I'd love to see you do a video about the Moog and talk about Wendy Carlos, and this is a great springboard.
Admit it, though, how much of this video is an excuse to play piano on camera? ;)
Alec surely checked, but given that the "pedal bug" is "just software", maybe the app would allow you to reconfigure them? Just given how unlikely he made such a fuckup by Yamaha seem to happen.
Cool! I didn't know Alec could play the piano!
Ive never seen a middle pedal that isn't just a locking damper. You learn something new every day i guess
For a no effort video that was a stellar Seth Everman impression.
One possibility could be real grand piano that is played via internet by remote controlled key pressers moved by solenoids. Need to pay rent per hour.
Also: laser holograms (depth-illusion based on wave property of light), Lippman plates, near-infrared & ultraviolet photography, data storage on "photos".
Kirlian surface-camera, digital or film, is strange. Kirlian video camera is possible with digital.
Who knows, maybe it could have some medical use.
.
Teletype machines, selectric ball writer, electric blankets
and this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/techmoan/comments/qrsucc/the_longest_used_telephone_handle_type_that_is/
Just a quick correction, timbre is confusingly pronounced "TAM-ber".
Basically, a digital piano will cut up a sample waveform into 4 parts: Attack, Sustain, Decay, and Release. These are the segments which can vary depending on how you play the note(s).
What you hear is a waveform that's been pieced together from a library of samples for each segment from many recordings of several controlled performances.
The result is not necessarily accurate in matching any actual analog instrument, but is actually an ideal sound as determined by engineers.
On a related note, maybe /u/TechConnectify might be interested in talking about one of the oldest digital interfaces still in use, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)?
Alec. CLAVIER controls. It was right there…