PSR-I500 now on Yamaha's US website for portable keyboards!

[SciNote]

As I regularly check the portable keyboards on Yamaha's website, I see that they are now offering the PSR-I500 for the US.  This is basically an Indian-music-centric version of the PSR-E463, and while I likely wouldn't use the Indian-music-specific features all that much, this keyboard does have a few cool features.

First of all, it has an additional feature for the foot pedal -- a sostenuto function.  It only affects the split voice, and I am not sure if it simply sustains the notes of the split voice, or if it sustains only the notes being held down at the time that the pedal is pressed.  In either case, it at least gives some more flexibility then simply sustaining the right side of a split keyboard (like the E400 series keyboards do).  Of course, the I500 can also sustain just the right side of a split keyboard with a foot pedal, but it appears that the ability to sustain both sides of a split keyboard at the same time is still not present.

It has the ability to assign panning to the split voice.  I don't know if the E463 does that, but my E433 does not.

And... wait for it... it has PORTAMENTO!  I discovered that by accident while looking for something else in the manual.  However, there is no separate button to activate it on the control panel -- it can only be accessed through the function menu and settings.  And, it is not clear if its parameters are saved in a registration.  It is NOT stated in the list of functions that DO get stored to registrations, so I don't know if that is an oversight in the manual, or if the portamento parameters simply do not get saved.  If portamento settings cannot be saved to a registration, that does limit its use in live playing without there being a direct control for it on the front panel.

In exchange for getting the features specific to Indian music, you give up the DJ/Groove functions, which I don't use much, anyway.

When things get back to more or less normal here, I'll have to get to the music store and see if they have this keyboard so I can check it out in person.

[SciNote]

Here's a little more information that I've learned about this keyboard as I've taken a closer look at the manual.

First of all, as for the panning feature for the split voice -- it turns out that not only does the PSR-E463 have that feature, but so does my PSR-E433.  It's just not a feature that I use that much, and I didn't even realize it was there for the split voice.

Now, with that out of the way, I see that the I500 has freeze functions for style/Riyaz and transpose.  For the style/Riyaz, this means that, with freeze on, you can change the registration to get a new sound/voice combination while playing a song without changing your background style/Riyaz during the middle of a song -- a very nice feature to have.  On my E433 -- as well as the other successors to that keyboard (E443, E453, E463), something similar can be accomplished by saving a registration WITHOUT saving a style (or groove beat) to the registration by just making sure that "song" is selected when the registration is saved.  This essentially puts a "null" for style/groove when the registration is stored, which tells the keyboard to not make any changes to the currently-playing style or groove beat when that registration is selected.  By the way, when doing this, please note that you want to press the "song" button BEFORE you start setting up the other parameters of the registration you want to save, because if you hit the "song" button afterward, then some of your settings, like reverb and chorus, may get changed when you hit the "song" button.

Since I rarely want the style to change with the registration, this works fine for me.  I assume the same can be done on the I500, but I haven't verified that.  But with the I500's freeze function, you have more of a choice.  You can save styles (or Riyaz) to a registration and therefore have those particular style/Riyaz settings come up with the registration when you want to, or you can turn on style freeze so that the background does not change when changing registrations, even if you did save a style or Riyaz with that registration.  It is not clear if that freeze function is remembered when the keyboard is turned off and then turned back on.

The transpose freeze is also very nice to have -- especially if you frequently play along with a vocalist.  With my E433 (and the other E400 series keyboards), the transpose function is saved to a registration.  But what if you don't need or want transpose at a particular point?  I always felt that it would be better to have transpose be a more "global" function -- meaning something that is set and applies to the keyboard in general, not just to specific registrations.  Again, I mainly use the registrations to set up a series of sound combinations (like synthesizer patches).  Now, let's say I know a particular song in the key of F, and I use various registrations throughout playing that song.  If I now play that song with a vocalist who can only sing it in, say, Bb, on my E433, I cannot simply set transpose up a 4th (so that F becomes Bb when played), because as soon as I hit a registration button to change the sound while playing, the transpose would be cancelled and replaced with whatever is stored in the registration.  This means that I would need a specific set of registrations set aside for playing with that vocalist, or that I would need to reprogram all of my registrations with the transpose set up a fourth -- a very cumbersome process.

With the I500's transpose freeze, it at least appears to me (again, I have not yet seen this keyboard in person) that you CAN set the transpose to whatever key you want, and that selecting different registrations will not change your transpose settings, which therefore allows you to easily temporarily change the key of the entire keyboard when you need to, and then easily change it back when you want.  As with the style/Riyaz freeze, I am not sure if the transpose freeze is retained when the keyboard is turned off and then back on.

Another curious aspect of this keyboard is that, like the E463, the setting of certain live-control knob features can be directed to either the main/dual voices, or the background style.  However, unlike the E463, this "target" feature (selecting wither it is the voices or the style that gets adjusted with the knobs) cannot be easily changed with a front-panel button.  You have to go into the function list to change it.  The manual does state that the target is saved to a registration, so you can set a registration where the knobs are preprogrammed to, say, control the reverb and chorus of the style.  But otherwise, having to go into the function list to change the target would seem to make it cumbersome to change manually during a live performance.

Incidentally, the style/Riyaz and transpose freeze functions also need to be adjusted through the function menu, but these are not features that you'd generally want to change during the middle of a song, so that shouldn't be a problem.

I still don't know if the portamento feature is saved to a registration or not.  If not, that is an issue, because according to the manual, it also can only be turned on or off through the function menu.  Normally, you probably wouldn't want portamento to apply to every sound you're using during a song.  You might want it on a synth-type sound, but not a grand piano, for example.   So having to dive into the function menu to turn it on or off while switching sounds would be VERY cumbersome during a live performance.  It would still be useful for multi-track recording, however.

I look forward to seeing this keyboard in a music store so I can evaluate it in person.