Whew! We’ve come a long way on our trip through the Yamaha Smart Pianist™ app. So far, I’ve covered three ways to play along with your favorite music:

• MIDI songs
• Audio songs (audio-to-score)
• Auto-accompaniment driven by a chord chart

Today I’m going to discuss another way: playing along with PDF sheet music.

And, guess what? I finally found and tried “Backing Conductor“!

PDF scores

Interpreting PDF sheet music is a really cool capability and learning aid. However, you need to keep in mind that Smart Pianist is a work in progress. There are gaps and limitations. I’ll mention these issues as I go along.

The biggest limitation — Smart Pianist does not handle scanned sheet music. Yamaha is upfront about this limitation. So, if you’re hoping to use your own scanned sheets, forget about it.

Yamaha recommends “commercially available PDF scores.” Unfortunately, this description is pretty vague and hard to apply in practice, that is, when you’re buying a sheet music PDF from an on-line site. Quoting the Smart Pianist manual:

“Commercially available PDF score” refers to score data that is sold commercially as data in PDF format. It does not include data such as scanned or photographed printed scores that have been saved in PDF format.

In some cases, you may not be able to playback the corresponding Song even if you import a commercially available PDF score. For these cases, the playback button will not be shown. Even when you can playback the corresponding Song, the playback may not match that of the PDF score.

Give Yamaha credit for transparency; they are quite aware of SP’s current limitations.

So, I did some experiments. I did a lot of experiments. I had the best luck with true piano scores having at least right- and left-hand parts. I buy most of my sheet music from Sheet Music Direct (SMD). Their service is good although their PDFs are price-y. [Wait for a sale or subscribe to PASS in order to save money.] In SMD’s terminology, you should look for the following kinds of arrangements:

• Piano, Vocal & Guitar Chords (Right-Hand Melody)
• Piano, Vocal & Guitar Chords
• Piano Solo
• Piano & Vocal
• Easy Piano
• Very Easy Piano

Uh, yeah, you get the idea. Avoid guitar TAB, guitar chords/lyrics, lead sheet/fake book, and Real Book.

Skirting Real Book is a major bummer because I like Hal Leonard’s Real Book series (e.g., Real Rock Book, Real Pop Book, Real R&B Book, etc.) The Real Book lead sheets are scanned.

Here’s the sixty-four dollar question, “How do I know if a PDF contains scanned music?” If the notation or text obviously looks hand-drawn or furry, it’s a scan. High resolution scans can fool you. I inadvertently purchased a scanned version of Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them”, for example.

If you can, magnify a PDF page 600 percent. If the text and notation look smooth, you should be good. If you see jaggies, small gaps or fuzz, pass it by. Not all on-line sheet music retailers support zoom capability, which is how I got fooled.

I would avoid lead sheets in general even if they are not scanned. Usually, Smart Pianist will play the melody and will not play the chords. At this point in time, I believe Smart Pianist needs a full right- and left-hand arrangement for chord analysis. SP doesn’t seem to interpret chord symbols above the staves. I hope Yamaha is working on this problem; it would be totally cool to drive auto-accompaniment from the chord symbols alone.

Let’s get playing

Assuming that we have a suitable sheet music PDF, let’s get going. PDF songs are stored in the “User Songs” category. Tap the four-leaf clover icon at the top of the screen and go to the top-level menu. Tap the big Song button in the top-level menu. [Click images to enlarge.]

Smart Pianist displays the now-familiar song selection page. Tap “User Songs” and scroll to the song that you want to load. In this case, I’m using a PDF for Carole King’s “It’s Too Late”. Tap the PDF song and hit the Done button in the upper right corner of the screen.

Tap the Import icon at the top of the screen to import a PDF into the “User Songs” directory. Tap the Edit icon if you want to select a PDF song from “User Songs”.

SP analyzes the sheet music PDF and then displays the sheet music score. SP displays a minimized control panel at the top of the screen. You have instant access to seven functions:

• Clover icon: Tap to go to the top-level menu
• Song name: Tap to return to song selection
• Record button: Record your performance
• Play button: Play the sheet music score
• Metronome button: Start/stop the metronome
• A-B button: Loop a portion of the score
• Guide button: Turn on the Guide function

Tap the triple-dot icon to see even more options!

Tap the triple-dot and SP displays a much bigger control panel. You get the functions that I just mentioned plus more:

• Song position slider: Go to any measure in the score
• Tempo: Change the playback tempo
• Part: Turn parts on and off
• Style name: Choose an auto-accompaniment style for Backing
• Registration icon: Save or recall a registration
• Balance Mixer icon: Balance playback and performance levels
• Settings icon: Change Song Settings

That’s a lot of stuff. Usually, you will change a few settings and minimize the control panel for serious playback and performance. Otherwise, that big old panel hides the score!

Unfortunately, even the minimized control panel occasionally hides chord symbols and other parts of the score. I hope Yamaha fixes this behavior in a future update. It’s a drag to be playing along and, whoops, what are those mystery chords? It’s like having a musical pop-quiz right in the middle of a song. Not good.

You might decide that certain Parts are annoying. The Part buttons in the expanded control panel let you turn Parts ON and OFF. Left and Right are self-explanatory. The Others Part refers to a melody line that may (or may not) appear in the score. The Backing Part is Backing Conductor! More about Backing Conductor in a minute.

You may decide that certain Parts are too loud or too soft. Tap the balance Mixer icon in order to set Part levels. Maybe you want to make your own performance louder or make the backing quieter? The Balance Mixer is the place to set Part levels.

Goods and bads

As I said, Smart Pianist is a work in progress. It does some things very well:

1. Analyze a piano score and play back the right and left hand parts.
2. Play the melody (Others) staff correctly.
3. Follow repeat symbols.
4. Follow brackets such as first ending, second ending and so forth.

A standard repeat will be taken only once. Pop music (like “It’s Too Late”) has instrumentals which are usually marked with a repeat. The performer is expected to improvise as much as they want (or the audience can tolerate). Forget extended solos, SP repeats only once.

Smart Pianist ignores score markings such as “D.S. al Coda”. If you see a textual song structure marking, prepare for surprises. SP occasionally blows through a coda marking and you’re suddenly flying through hyperspace to the next grand staff, wherever that may be musically.

I don’t think Smart Pianist does much of anything with textual markings and symbols above the staves, including chord symbols. Yamaha have much work left to do.

The A-B repeat button lets you mark a section of music for practice. SP’s A-B repeat has the same quirks as Yamaha arranger keyboards. Playback does not smoothly loop, that is, you get a pause between B and A when the repeat is taken. I suppose this behavior is OK for practice, but you won’t be able to loop a section and jam.

Backing Conductor

As you might expect, sheet music (PDF) score playback sounds stiff and mechanical. The music feels like an over-quantized MIDI file with life squeezed out of it.

The so-called “Backing Conductor” feature may be more to your liking. Backing Conductor turns on auto-accompaniment and feels more musical.

Expand the control panel to its full size by tapping the three dots icon. Smart Pianist offers four Parts: Backing, Others, Left and Right. The buttons turn their respective Parts ON and OFF. Turn on “Backing” and Smart Pianist enables the Style selection button.

Tap the Style selection button and choose a style. I like to use “Cool 8Beat” for “It’s Too Late”. This is where you can express your creativity, so feel free to try different styles and tempos.

With Backing Conductor enabled, the Play button starts auto-accompaniment. If a Part is too loud or too soft, tap the Mixer icon at the bottom of the expanded control panel. Then move the sliders to adjust the mix.

Song Settings offers a mixer of its own. Tap the Song Settings icon in the lower right corner of the expanded control panel. SP displays the Song Settings page. Tap “Mixer” to bring up the Mixer tab. The Song Settings mixer gives you detailed control over individual parts: Pan, Reverb Type, Reverb Level and Volume. There are Master controls on the right-hand side of the screen. The buttons across the top of the mixer turn individual parts ON and OFF.

One important oversight by either Yamaha or me — you can’t change the instrument assigned to Others Part (channel 3, above). Those strings drive me crazy!

Smart Pianist deep dives

At this point, I hope you have learned more about Smart Pianist than your average YouTube video. 🙂 Smart Pianist is a surprisingly deep application when it is paired with a CSP-series digital piano (series 100 or series 200).

Here are links to a few related deep dive articles:

• Smart Pianist MIDI SysEx for chords
• Using Smart Pianist with Extended ChordPro
• Yamaha Chord Tracker revealed

Copyright © 2025 Paul J. Drongowski