Piano apps are a hit among digital piano players. They make it child’s play to use numerous functions, while special options even expand the range of features a digital piano offers. The Yamaha Smart Pianist app is offered free of charge for smartphones and tablets.
Yamaha Smart Pianist is already something like the Swiss Army Knife for digital pianos. The piano control app is free of charge and only works with Yamaha instruments. This includes the current Clavinova models, Arius YDP-145 and YDP-165, the NU models of the AvantGrand series, the TransAcoustic 2 instruments and the Portable Pianos P-125, P-145, P-225, P-515 and P-525. The audio-to-score function is certainly the most outstanding feature of the Yamaha Smart Pianist app: unique among the piano apps currently offered by digital piano manufacturers! But Smart Pianist can do much more.
In contrast to selecting sounds via the piano controls, this feature of the Yamaha Smart Pianist app enlightens many. The otherwise abstract labels such as PIANO or E-PIANO give way to attractively displayed grand pianos, upright pianos or keyboards as well as venues.
Want to play the CFX Grand in a cathedral? Here you go: just swipe on the screen and play the next grand piano with perfect reverb effects on the keyboard. Close or raise the grand piano lid a bit? It’s simple: you touch the piano lid in the graphics and adjust it to your liking.
If you want to tune your grand piano sound down to the smallest detail, that’s also possible: adjustments to touch response, overall tuning, the intensities of damper resonance, Virtual Resonance Modeling (VRM). The extent to which you can adjust such details depends on the available functions of the digital piano model. However, the great design of the interface motivates you to explore the possibilities – even if you don’t really want to tweak the sounds. The app practically explains the world of acoustic pianos very vividly.
Especially on digital pianos with fewer controls, these settings are often a bit confusing. In the Yamaha Smart Pianist, however, this is displayed very clearly: Select the main sound under MAIN, and the second sound under LAYER – then play. The SPLIT function is just as easy to use. The split point is simply moved in the keyboard graphic below the instruments. It could not be clearer.
A great option if you just want to jam with some beats and bass lines. Playing with the accompaniment function lets you practice the rhythmic feel and above all is fun. Composing rhythms and setting up accompaniment tracks is easy in the Yamaha Smart Pianist app.
The song mode of Smart Pianist is a real highlight, introducing a unique, revolutionary feature for playing with Play-Alongs: Audio2Score! Yamaha Smart Pianist can convert any song from your music library into a lead sheet score. One then even has the option to read the chords either as notation or as a lead sheet version with chord symbols.
This is a great feature for practicing piano accompaniments. You simply run the song and then play along to it according to the lead sheet. Audio2Score automatically runs in sync with the music, but the accuracy of this function certainly depends a lot on the music material. However, even with harmonically ambiguous material, Smart Pianist will find a suitable interpretation of the chords. This works amazingly well with normal pop and light music. Ingeniously simple and a real help for everyone who wants to play along to their own songs.
The easiest way to connect to the app is via the USB-to-Host port. However, with appropriate Yamaha accessories (Yamaha UD-WL01) a wireless Wi-Fi connection is also possible. You can also connect to the Smart Pianist app via Bluetooth.
Basically, you can also link a Yamaha digital piano via USB to any MIDI application, such as a sequencer like Steinberg Cubase on a PC or laptop. Mobile apps like Cubasis also communicate via USB MIDI. If you are using an Apple tablet, you will need the Camera Connection Kit to connect via USB.
Almost every Yamaha digital piano supports USB MIDI/audio, which is the easiest way to merge the external audio from a mobile device into the audio system of the digital piano.
Smart Pianist makes controlling a digital piano absolutely transparent. It further offers surprising possibilities such as the detailed editing of the piano sounds and especially the audio-to-score feature. The latest version is even capable of converting pdf sheets into score + music.
The Yamaha Smart Pianist app is available for iOS and Android devices, with the app for Apple mobile devices being more up-to-date.
Release date: 07.2017
Platforms: iOS (iPhone/iPad); Android
Manufacturer: Yamaha Music Europe GmbH
Jörg Sunderkötter
High fun factor and super easy to use! Yamaha Smart Pianist is a great piano app for Yamaha instruments.
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