Yamaha PSR295AD Portable Electronic Keyboard with Adapter

by Yamaha

Product Features

• Keyboard lessons/songs are designed for learning one hand at a time
• Your Tempo learning mode--progress at your own pace
• Repeat and Learn--repeat difficult to learn sections

Product Details

Product Manual [7.36mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 24 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B0002AGMDC
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,478 in Musical Instruments (See Top 100 in Musical Instruments)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The PSR-295 is a wonderful keyboard for people that want to learn to play music. We've beefed up the "Yamaha Education Suite" (Y.E.S.) found on previous models with a new version, Version IV. In addition to the standard Left and Right hand lessons, Version IV includes "Your Tempo" and "Repeat and Learn" modes. The keyboard comes with 30 pre-loaded songs, Flash ROM internal storage for adding more, and 70 additional selections on an included CD-ROM. Simply connect the keyboard to your computer via the convenient USB connector and transfer songs to the keyboard for learning or listening. The PSR-295 is the first in the line with recording capability and also features new performance assistant technology that allows you to play along with songs and not make a mistake - even if you're a complete beginner!

Learn to play with the Yamaha Education Suite IV:

• Keyboard lessons/songs are designed for learning one hand at a time
• Your Tempo learning mode--progress at your own pace
• Repeat and Learn--repeat difficult to learn sections
• Lesson Grading--monitors your progress as you practice each lesson
• Lessons work with internal as well as downloaded song files
• Chord Dictionary--shows you how to play chords and tells you which chords you are playing by displaying the notes and chord name on the LCD screen

Learning to play songs moves to a new level of simplicity with the new "Your Tempo" learning mode. Call up a song, press left hand or right hand or both at once for two-handed learning, and the keyboard will speed up and slow down as you do, literally following you through the song. Once you get accustomed to where the notes are, you can keep the keyboard at one fixed tempo to learn correct timing. If you find one section of the song a little difficult, simply engage the "Repeat and Learn" button and the PSR-295 will stay on that section, repeating it until you feel comfortable. Then move on to the next section. And to top it all off, the Yamaha Education Suite also works with Standard MIDI Files (SMF), allowing you to learn songs that you choose. To add songs to the keyboard, simply connect it to your PC via the convenient USB jack on the back, and head out on the Internet in search of your favorite songs.

PC Button and USB: This keyboard loves your computer
The PSR-295 has many state of the art features to make connecting to your PC as quick and easy as possible. These features include the PC Button, which takes a snapshot of your MIDI settings so that you can instantly return to them with just the press of a single button, and a USB port for transferring song data from your computer. In addition, the USB port acts as a MIDI interface, freeing you from having to purchase other MIDI peripherals like cables and adapters to play music. Simply connect to your computer, open your favorite music software program and hit PLAY. That's it.

Portable Grand function
Playing piano is fast and easy with Yamaha’s Portable Grand function. One dedicated button brings up a great sounding piano, stunningly rich and authentic in its sound and exceptionally responsive to your playing touch, as well as setting up the keyboard to play as a piano in full keyboard mode. On top of all this, a wealth of special piano-only "Pianist" styles, like Slow Rock and Stride, provide professional sounding piano accompaniment that change chords automatically as you do, while you play a piano melody on top!

General MIDI and Yamaha XGlite makes for great sound
The PSR-295 comes equipped with 487 voices that include stereo-sampled Piano, a selection of Sweet! Voices including Trumpet, Flute, Pan Flute, Soprano and Tenor Saxes, Cool! Organ and Electric Piano, 10 Drum Kits and 2 Sound Effects Kits. Sweet! Voices are special voices from Yamaha that reproduce all the natural expression and vibrato of their respective acoustic instruments. Cool! Voices feature long samples of electronically amplified instruments.

And for the utmost in compatibility, the PSR-295 is both General MIDI (GM) and XGlite capable. The Internet has thousands of MIDI song files available and you can rest assured that your PSR-295 will be able to competently reproduce these files.

Mix and match
You are also able to create sound mixes of your own using Layer and Split modes. Split mode allows you to have two different sounds on the keyboard at the same time, like piano on the right and bass on the left. Layer mode allows you to combine two sounds across the keyboard range. For example, you could play piano and strings at the same time. You’re only limited by your imagination.

Performance Assistant Technology – Now anyone (yes, anyone!) can play

Performance assistant technology is a new feature from Yamaha that guarantees that you can’t play a wrong note or chord. Here’s how it works. Select a song and press the Performance Assistant button. Play the keyboard – any notes you like. Every note you play will fit the music! If you move up the keyboard, the pitch goes up. If you move down, the pitch goes down. Play a perfect arpeggio, or play chords in time with the music, or really "go for it" and play a solo. How about stride piano? No matter what you play, as long as the Performance Assistant button is "on", you’re "on". Imagine being able to give a concert to your friends or relatives the very first day that you bring this remarkable keyboard home. Well, with the PSR-295 and performance assistant technology, you can! This feature also works with any XF MIDI files you download into the keyboard.

Sound quality:

• 2-Way Speaker System: Separate woofers and tweeters deliver sounds with clarity and precision for more lifelike instrument voices.
• Bass Boost System- A special port on each speaker adds a powerful impact to bass sound reproduction.
• Stereo (not just 2 Speakers): We all know that stereo sound adds realistic character and spatial depth. But how can you tell if the portable keyboard you're looking to purchase is stereo or not? With Yamaha, the answer is simple. All Yamaha Portable Keyboards are true stereo.
• Digital Signal Processing (DSP): Enhances sound quality with sophisticated digital effects like Harmony, Reverb & Chorus.
• Advanced Wave Memory (AWM): Yamaha Advanced Wave Memory technology delivers amazingly realistic sound.

32-note polyphony
What's polyphony, you ask? Simply put, polyphony is how many notes a keyboard can reproduce simultaneously. The PSR-295 has 32-note Polyphony allowing you to play intricate arrangements and dense musical passages.

Keyboard styles and the One Touch setting
The PSR-295 comes with 135 built-in styles, waiting for you to play along with. It's just like having a built-in band. Call up your favorite style of music like Rock, Big Band or Country, press a chord or play Single Finger mode, and the PSR-295 will follow you through a piece of music, providing all of the drums, bass, piano, guitar, horn and string parts for you. And to make it easy and fun, when you select one of the styles, the One Touch Setting function will automatically configure keyboard parameters, such as voice selection and digital effects, to match that selected music style.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yamaha's best value in a portable keyboard, January 14, 2005

By 

J. DEATS (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Yamaha PSR295AD Portable Electronic Keyboard with Adapter (Electronics)

The PSR295 was introduced in 2004. It has the same tone generator as the PSR275 with more focus on style (rhythm patterns) than in memory songs .The PSR295 is the entry level in Yamaha's intermediate line of portable keyboards, the PSR275 is at the high end of their entry level keyboards, so if you're just learning to play you might consider the PSR275.

The PSR295 is Yamaha's best value, for around $200 you get over 400 instruments, including a full GM set and Yamaha's XGLite instruments. A six channel sequencer allows for recording of your own songs and a USB port and MIDI USB bridge driver makes connecting the PSR295 to any computer a snap (the USB MIDI driver is especially great if you want to connect the PSR295 to a laptop for MIDI file downloading or connecting to PC sequencing software such as Sonar Cakewalk, Cubase, etc...).

Also I suggest you check out the Casio CTK691. The CTK691 features more on board memory for songs and more instruments (voices), however it lacks the sound quality of the Yamaha PSR295 , those who say otherwise are comparing the sound of the speakers (the speaker system in the CTK691 is a bit better), hook the two up to earphones or an amp and the PSR295 shines. Both offer a GM set, but only the PSR295 offers Yamaha's XGLite (there are quite a few MIDI files floating around that utilize XG) so don't be fooled by the CTK691 apparent more voices, the 400+ available on the PSR295 are better quality. The CTK691 features a standard MIDI port, to connect it to a PC or laptop you're going to be out $20-$40 for an adapter, worse yet if your sound card doesn't have a gameport you'll could be out $60+ for a MIDI card/cable. Yamaha has the right idea by providing USB and a MIDI bridge on top of USB, surprisingly it has very low latency when used as a MIDI Controller (using Cakewalk Sonar), the PC mode button makes it easy to tt configure the keyboard with popular MIDI setups and makes using an external sequencer extreemly easy.

My only compliant with the PSR295 is that they didn't include a standard MIDI IN/OUT port along with the USB. Although I was impressed by the low latency of the USB MIDI driver, it would have been nice to be able to use the keyboard with E-MU 0404 or M-Audio Audiophile 2496. Some of the new budget end "pro" audio cards include excellent MIDI I/O which this keyboard will be unable to take advantage of. Still if I had to pick between USB MIDI and standard MIDI, for a portable keyboard USB is much more practicle

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for those trying to learn piano, February 11, 2005

By 

J. Stevenson (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Yamaha PSR295AD Portable Electronic Keyboard with Adapter (Electronics)

PROS:
-Extremely lightweight for its size
-Comes with power supply (unlike many other keyboards an amazon.com) and _adjustable height_ stand
-Instruction manual is very well done, and includes music theory (e.g. how to form almost any type of chord)

CONS:
-LCD Display is small; you'll need good eyesight
-The stand that comes with it is not too sturdy; once I decided on the right height for it, I had to reinforce it by wrapping an old piece of speaker wire around the hub a few times. (Hey, it worked!)
-Doesn't come with a USB cable

Although the songbook included is aimed at beginners (with less than, say, a year of piano experience), it's a great piano for anyone trying to learn chord-based playing. You can enter virtually any chord (such as F#m7b5) and the display will indicate what keys you must press to play it. This is very helpful when playing through a fake book and you come across a chord you don't know how to play. (NOTE: As you're playing, the display shows the bass and treble clef indication of every key you play, but does not name the actual chord you're playing (e.g. "Bm7") unless you have the ACMP activated.)

The transposition function is convenient--if you only know how to play in one key, you can play along with any other musician playing the same song in a different key. The pitch-tuning function is also nice (in case you're playing along side a slightly out-of-tune instrument and want to match its sound).

All in all there are well enough features to justify the price; you'll save 22 bucks in shipping by buying it from Amazon, and mine arrived one day after they shipped it out!

NOTE: This piano doesn't come with a sustain petal (as another reviewer indicated), but has a jack for one if you decide to buy one separately.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Value for Money, June 5, 2005

By 

Rajat Ahuja "RAj" (San Jose, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Yamaha PSR295AD Portable Electronic Keyboard with Adapter (Electronics)

[Please note that this product is currently available from Amazon under three packagings: PSR-295 (no adapter), PSR-295AD (includes adapter) and PSR-295MS (includes adapter and stand). I bought the PSR-295MS package.]

I got this full-length keyboard at a great price of $190 with included adapter and keyboard. Both accessories are a must, since this thing is huge.

The product shipped in two days (from PA to MD) with free shipping. I was delighted to find a helpful instructional DVD in the package to get started with the basics, so I didn't have to go through the manual, except for detailed and advanced features.

Also included was a Song Book, with staff music for some popular songs. It's great for someone who knows how to read music - I'm still learning to. There's also software to transfer music between PC and keyboard.

"Portable Grand" is just a one-touch button option to set the keyboard to Grand Piano mode. Of course, this cannot be expected to sound as great or realistic as a high-end digital piano or an expensive wooden one. However, the touch sensitive feature makes it as realistic as possible.

Here are the features I liked:
* Display shows notes and chords being played in three ways - staff notation, note name (ex. E# m7 aug etc.), and graphical (actual keys on a diagram).
* Truly Touch (Force) Sensitive Keys (can be toggled on/off).
* 487 Voices (incl. ~360 XGLite voices).
* 136 Accompaniment Styles to play along.
* Built-in songs which can be practised using Yamaha Education Suite. (Buil-in feature).
* Jog Dial to move between voice/style/song numbers.
* Flash memory to record your songs.
* Direct USB connection (MIDI-USB connecter cable *not* required - that cable would cost around $40).
* Software to transfer songs and voices between PC and keyboard.
* Truly stero output (not just two speakers).
* Phono/Line-Out socket.
* Sustain pedal socket (pedal not included).

Here are some things I didn't like:
* USB cable not included. ($7 extra from Amazon).
* Volume sometime seems a little low. But then, you can always pass output through amps if you really need it that loud.
* No mic or line-in socket.
* Phono out uses 1/4 inch pin. Had to buy a 1/8 to 1/4 converter from RadioShack.
* LCD display is highly "directional", visible only when looking at a particular angle. This is not much of a problem when playing sitting. However, if playing standing, this may be a little inconvenient.
* No sustain toggle switch. If you don't have a sustain pedal, turning sustain on/off manually takes a couple of steps.

Overall, at under $190, free shipping and included adapter and stand, this is a great buy for beginners as well as advanced users.

I had a Yamaha PSS-11 long back. It was a good beginner keyboard but it soon outgrew me, since you couldn't play it with two hands. Overall, I like Yamaha quality and find their keyboards much more professional than Casio ones (maybe I'm wrong). Of course, "real" professionals would use KORG, but that'll be upwards of $1000! :)