For beginner piano students and composition students, the reasons for getting a digital piano are obvious: portability and affordability. The problem is choosing a piano that's right for you. With its combination of amazing sounds, fun extra playing features, and inclusion of the powerful Yamaha Educational Suite, the Yamaha PSRE413 is a strong contender for anyone's first digital piano. It's the instrument that'll help you get better, faster.

When Playing Is Fun, Learning Is, Too!
When practice feels like a chore, what's the point of playing? Yamaha understands this, so they've packed the PSRE413 full of amazing sounds and a few extra performance features that'll have you playing your instrument, not just practicing on it. Every Yamaha digital piano boasts the incredible Yamaha Portable Grand. One button press brings up the amazing, stereo-sampled sound of a real grand piano, with all the dynamic range and power of one of Yamaha's $250,000 instruments. And the PSRE413 recreates this sound beautifully with its powerful built-in stereo speakers. In fact, these speakers make all of the PSRE413's hundreds of different instrument voices sound great, from orchestral strings and woodwind to electric guitar and fat synthesizer sounds. Upping the fun factor are the included arpeggiator function (for instant electronica grooves) and the pitch wheel--an interactive controller usually found only on more expensive instruments. This digital piano is a blast to play, and there's no more effective… read more secret to your student--or yourself--to stick with the piano and learn, fast.

What Is The Yamaha Educational Suite?
In short, it's the next best thing to having your own private piano tutor who's on-call 24/7. The Yamaha Education Suite--or Y.E.S.--guides you through lessons that will progressively improve your playing and sight-reading skills. Simply load up one of the YPG235's 30 internal songs (another 70 are included on CD-ROM) and the on-screen piano graphic shows you which notes to play. Next, choose one of the lesson modes: "Wait Mode" stops song playback until you play the correct note; "Your Tempo Mode" slows playback down when you play incorrect notes, so you can learn at your own pace but start to get a feel for rhythm; "Minus One Mode" plays a song with one part removed, so that you can play along with the other elements of the music. Think of it as piano karaoke, except you choose what part to play. These three modes follow a natural progression, each building on an ability mastered in the previous mode, and each lesson has seven levels of increasing difficulty to push those abilities even further. An automatic grading function provides you with honest feedback on your playing. No apples for the teacher here, just the hard, satisfying truth! There's even a chord dictionary for familiarizing yourself with common chord voicings and intervals. Even if you're planning on eventually studying with a teacher, the Y.E.S. will give you a huge head start and distinct learning advantage, making your private lessons that much more rewarding.

Access An Infinite Library Of Music
Once you're comfortable with sight reading, you're going to want to play as many different pieces of music as you can find. The YPG235 can help you there, too. A USB input connects the keyboard to your computer, and from there, the Internet. Any song saved in the popular MIDI format can be downloaded to the YPG235, with real-time feedback displayed on the graphical keyboard. Your Yamaha can even play back the file hands-free so you can hear it before you play it yourself. Having trouble finding a particular song? Load up Yamaha's Digital Music Notebook, an online service that lets you download transcriptions of the most popular music of today, as well as additional lesson books. Load the songs directly onto your YPG235, or use your computer to print them out as sheet music. The Yamaha YPG235 is your portal to a whole world of interactive, musical entertainment!

Six-Track Recorder: Compose Your Own Music
The ability to sight-read notation will have you understanding music in a whole new way, so it'll only be a matter of time before you'll want to start writing your own. For the budding Bachs, Beethovens, or Sufjans out there, the YPG235 has a six-track sequencer built right in. Record a chord progression, than layer melody, counter melody, harmony, or whatever you like on top. Experiment with combining different instrument sounds in one song--the YPG235 has over 361 beautiful sounds to select from, including organs, woodwinds, strings, even drum and guitar sounds are at your disposal. Save your favorite work by uploading to your computer via the YPG235's USB port.

Yamaha's digital pianos have inspired millions of budding musicians, and the Yamaha PSRE413 sports all the features that make Yamaha digital piano great--with a few fun extras, to boot. There's a reason so many players stick with the Yamaha brand as they become professionals, and the proof is in the PSRE413. read less