My demo+impressions of PSR-S950, PSR-3000 and MM6

[Sergey Kadyrov]

Greetings to all!

Finally I was able to sign up to your wonderful community. Have to admit, it wasn't easy because of a sophisticated protection which this forum uses to fight spammers.

I realize now that I've been playing Yamaha keyboards for 16 years by now and I'd like to share my impressions about it.

I've been pursuing musical career for quite some time with some luck and some lack of luck as well.

My first close to TOTL arranger was PSR-3000. The keyboard before that was PSR-550 which was great, but you can imagine what a change it was.

Now I recall that before getting PSR-3000 I tried to go in different direction using a MIDI controller and VSTs. We all know the story about what kind of sound quality, flexibility and money saving this way is promising to give but the reality was, at least in my case, that there was no fun in it and therefore there was zero productivity.

At that time I had Fatar Studiologic controller delivered to me. Soon it turned out that there was a problem with it as it kept freezing some notes (it didn't send "key-off" messages). I had 6 month warranty and on the last day of it I brought it back to the store myself – wasn't easy, as it was 88-key model, but, luckily, not a weighted one. And I got my money back. After that at another store they were pushing me to buy another fancy MIDI controller, but it just didn't feel right to me.

You know these kind of gloomy musicians who would say "well, what's the point of this accompaniment, get yourself a real deal". But I had tried PSR-3000 before that and it felt just so right that any arguments were useless.

I've been with PSR-3000 for quite a long time. During that I started to play in a restaurant where I was lucky to have a real acoustic Yamaha grand piano. Given that I had always stayed out of any formal musical education it was quite exciting to have that chance. So with PSR-3000 at home and a grand piano at work I must have felt quite content.

When a contact strip in my PSR-3000 broke, instead of getting it to a service (which is a big deal because I live an hour away from Moscow where the service is) I bought an affordable Yamaha NP-30. I connected it with a MIDI cable to PSR-3000 and now I had 76 version of it. To tell the truth it slightly limited the dynamic range of PSR-3000 for some reason, as if NP-30 had some specific velocity curve. But I was content again. 

Later I bought Yamaha MM6 in order to use it on my gigs. Frankly, I never felt that MM6 was "my cup of tea" but it was an optimal choice for the money. The weakest point of MM6 is 32 voices polyphony. But MM6 helped me with gigs, it was also the right keyboard to play with a band. By the way, the band thing was never "my cup of tea" either, but you all know these moments when you tell to yourself "well, I may at least give it a shot" and later you're just waiting for a proper time to get rid of it. Also MM6 helped me as a MIDI controller for PSR-3000 when a contact strip broke in my NP-30 as well.

By that time I was all into making videos of me playing for YouTube and I posted one of them on a social media, that was a page of Yamaha's Russian office. I got contacted soon with an offer to participate in a casting for Peter Baartmans's School of demonstrators. What I had to do was to make one more video of me playing my PSR, so I made this one:


link

Yes, it's not obvious that one key is faulty here.

Soon I was accepted and we had several classes at Moscow. There was Peter Baartmans and Yamaha PSR-S950. They delivered PSR-S950 to my home so that I could prepare my presentation. They also offered me some discount in case I wished to keep it and I took that offer.

That was mostly the whole result of that education because soon there was a crisis in Ukraine and I guess we all live in a different world since then.

Mainly by that time I felt content with PSR-3000+NP30+MM6, also, I had started to practice guitar some time before that, but PSR-S950, which was brought to me by such an extraordinary events, showed to me how much has changed within these 10 years. It had a new piano, new drums, new guitars. The styles had new basses and strings. It was much better with electronic music. So I was inspired for several more years. I started to do some studio work with it as well.

You know that if you play the keyboard for a long time some problems appear. Keys start to make a lot of noise (they need new oil), contact strips get broken. In case with PSR-S950 I also have difficulty with buttons, I presume, the contacts got dirty under them, which is common for old TV-remotes, although I never had this issue with PSR-3000.  Not an expensive service, though, and now I also have a car, so I just need some courage to drive it to Moscow.

But I notice that by the time these contact strips get broken I'm just so familiar with the instrument that I'm thinking more of an upgrade than about fixing it. This is how all my old instruments have broken strips.

While S950 was still okay, I made this video, in the manner like I made the video with PSR-3000 for Yamaha:


link

And later I made this kind of video with MM6:


link

And you know what? Soon after that MM6 got its own broken strip as well!

In a simpler world this story would go on with me getting Genos or at least a new PSR keyboard. Well, I can't be sure that it won't happen this way.

But so far in this complex reality I have my doubts about these things. Sometimes I think that after maximalism there should be minimalism which means that you already know what you need and what you don't need, and instead of getting the full package again you get only specific things.

Now I realize that I'm no longer that young boy/man with long hair, I've lost the half of it and got rid of the other half, put on more weight, got a proper girlfriend, driving license and a bachelor degree (all came as a package, too  ), somehow not that into pop music as I used to be; spend more time with a plain guitar and perhaps just want to play the piano, and I'm afraid to find myself saying one day "well, what's the point of this accompaniment, get yourself a real deal" just like that gray-haired man told me at a store.

I'm curious myself about how I will behave next, will Genos miraculously appear at my home to keep the circle closed or I'll stick to minimalism, getting some digital piano and putting all other instruments far away (expect for my guitar).

Thanks for reading and have a good day!

[Toril S]

Hello Sergey! Welcome to the forum. That was some interesting reading!

[hans1966]

Hello Sergey, thanks for sharing with us your experience with the keyboards, we want to hear that good music of yours. welcome to the forum. Greetings. Hans

[travlin-easy]

Sergey, old friend, welcome to the best Yamaha arranger keyboard forum on the internet. Glad to see you here and I know you will be a great asset to this community.

All the best,

Gary 

[pmedina]

Hi Sergey, wellcome to the forum. I hope to hear from you in the future, playing Russian folk music. Nice description of your musical life.
Regards

[EB5AGV]

Thanks Sergey for the very interesting story.

I miss the videos you comment on your post, it is a problem on my side or are they really missing?

Jose

[Sergey Kadyrov]

Thank you all for your welcome!

Mostly I'm just a reader and I enjoy reading your forums, but it's nice to do it from within rather than from outside as I used to.

I miss the videos you comment on your post, it is a problem on my side or are they really missing?

I used images as links, but they're hosted on another resource and that can be a reason of the problem. I've added textual links now.

[Joe H]

Sergey,

Since you are a piano player first and foremost, I think the contact strips broke in all your Yamaha keyboards because you are playing them too hard physically.  The "organ" type keys are intended to be played with a light touch and not like a piano.

By the way, you are a very good musician.



Joe H