Electric Guitars

Perhaps the worst sounding voice on Yamaha home keyboards ( in my opinion ) is the Overdrive and Distortion Guitar. They sound unrealistic and lack fuzzy and crackling distortion. Yamaha has always been known for great sounding synths and their Saw Leads are no exception. Combining them with the Electric guitars is a great way to add distortion. Follow these steps and you will be rocking hard right away.

Step 1: Select the Electric Guitar of your choice.

Step 2: Turn on Dual Voice and select Saw Lead ( if you are not using one of the Synth-Focused portables, select Saw Lead 2 instead ).

Step 3: Press Function and turn the volume of the Main voice ( Guitar ) all the way up ( if you haven't already ).

Step 4: Turn up the volume of the Dual voice ( Synth ) to 96.

Make sure the volume of the Synth does not exceed 96. This makes the Synth less prominent then the Guitar.

Step 5: Play a note ( or a chord ) and hear the difference.

If you are using a keyboard such as the PSR E423, turn the knob assigned to the Cutoff effect all the way up. This affects both voices and adds even more distortion. You can go another step further by plugging your keyboard into a Guitar Amplifier. Small ones are fairly inexpensive.

So which keyboards have the Dual function. Here is a list of Yamaha products currently on the market that include this important feature.

YPT 310-320

PSR E313-E323

All Synth-Focused and Piano-Focused portables.

In the next post I will discuss how to make other voices sound better using the Reverb effect found on every Yamaha keyboard.



   

Introduction to Layered Sounds

Before I begin, please note these instructions are for adept to advanced Yamaha keyboard players. Beginners may find it interesting, though.

First of all, I understand most people do not like XGlite voices. I'm here to tell you if you can't pay $3000+ for a Motif XF, you may want to read this.

Most synthesizers on the market today have voices that are created by combining other sound frequencies to produce the instrument you want to play. These are called instrument "layers". Take the Kurzweil PC3 for example. It uses the exact same principles to produce its high quality voices ( and you can access the individual layers directly from the keyboard if I'm not mistaken ). In the next post I will explain how to apply a similar process to all Yamaha home keyboards. Preforming with your keyboard while using this process requires the Dual function. Relax, I will also explain which keyboards have this feature.