Tag Archives: Smart Pianist

Smart Pianist: Sheet music tutorial

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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:

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.]

Select a sheet music PDF song

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”.

Score display for “It’s Too Late” PDF

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!

Full size sheet music control panel

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!

Control panel occasionally hides chord symbols

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.

Set Part levels in the Balance Mixer

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.

Beware! One giant leap past a score marking

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.

Use Backing Conductor for auto-accompaniment

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.

Select an auto-accompaniment style

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 mixer

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:

Copyright © 2025 Paul J. Drongowski

Smart Pianist: Re-image a song with style

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Today, I want to build on my Smart Pianist audio-to-score tutorial. The audio-to-score feature lets you play along with an audio song selected from your music library.

Did you know, you can re-imagine an audio song using a CSP auto-accompaniment style? Let’s find out how.

Audio-to-score recap

I assume that you read the audio-to-score tutorial. Just in case you haven’t, here’s a brief recap. The screen captures below summarizes the process of selecting an audio song in your music library. [Click on images to make them larger.]

How to select and load an audio song

Drill down from Smart Pianist’s top-level menu. You first display the top-level menu by hitting the “four leaf clover” icon in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Touch the Song button and you’re on your way.

After Smart Pianist (SP) analyzes the audio song, it displays a basic score in familiar music notation. SP’s analysis discovers the song tempo and key signature, finds the underlying chords, and discovers “sections” corresponding to verse, chorus, bridge, etc. SP produces the score by applying an accompaniment pattern to the chords. Here, we’re going with the most basic pattern, block chords.

I’m using Carole King’s classic “It’s Too Late” as a running example.

“It’s Too Late” chord chart and score

In addition to a notated score, SP can display a chord chart — kind of a lead sheet. It contains the chords and section information. You might find it easier to follow and play from the chord chart. It’s your choice.

Imagine

You might already know about Smart Pianist’s auto-accompaniment styles. No doubt, you’ve seen the “Style” button in the top-level menu. The auto-accompaniment engine is lurking behind the audio song and sheet music songs, too. [I’ll get to sheet music songs in a future blog post.]

Click on the Song Settings icon in the upper right hand corner.

Song Settings Arrangement tab

Smart Pianist displays the Song Settings page with six tabs along the left hand side: Arrangement, Playback, Score, Chord, Mixer and Song Edit. On the Arrangement tab, Smart Pianist offers two backing options: Original (the audio song) and Arrange (auto-accompaniment). Tap the “Arrange” button to select auto-accompaniment.

Style categories (choose one)

And, now, you choose a Style. Tap the style name in Arrangement settings and Smart Pianist displays menus through which you can choose a style. If you don’t want to venture too far out of the ordinary, I recommend either “Cool 8Beat” or “Easy 8Beat 2” for “It’s Too Late”.

Style selection examples

The CSP and CVP pianos have literally hundreds of styles to choose from. I recommend printing the list of styles in the Data List PDF for your keyboard model. Keep the hardcopy handy; It will make navigation and style selection easier.

SP will use the selected style to play back the song. Go back to the score display and try it.

A few fix-ups: Edit chords

Once you’re back on the score display (or chord chart), tap the play button and hear the result. Smart Pianist and the CSP will play the song in the chosen style.

My audio song has a short anticipation between the Am7 and D chords during verses. (“Anticipation” means played slightly ahead of the beat.) My ears and hands accommodate the notated anticipation when playing against the audio song itself. But, uh-oh. The D chords come too fast with auto-accompaniment and the verses sound glitchy.

Time to correct a few chords. Smart Pianist does its best to detect chords and put them in the right place within the chord chart (or score). However, the D chords are hard-quantized to quarter notes. That makes the verses glitchy.

What I want to do is move the D chords (verses only) back one quarter note to the beginning of the following measure (bar). Unfortunately, SP does not have a move operation. We have to do it the hard way.

Chord edit pop-up menu

When you touch and hold on a chord, Smart Pianist gives you a few options: Copy, Paste (if a chord is in the clipboard), Delete and maybe Undo. Touch and hold the D chord and tap Copy. Touch and hold the D chord and tap Delete. Touch and hold the first beat of the next measure. Tap Paste. Yeah, this is a lot of monkey-work…

I tried a different method, but I can’t say it is easier than copy, delete, paste. I changed each D (verses only) to an Am7. Smart Pianist is smart enough (!) to merge the new Am7 into the old Am7 on the first beat of the bar. Then, I set the chord on beat 1 of the next measure to D6. Based on most sheet music for “It’s Too Late”, those ought to be D6 chords. [Smart Pianist doesn’t always get chord extensions right.]

Fixed-up chord chart and score

Try auto-accompaniment with the fixed-up chord chart and score. Ah, that’s much better, no glitches.

Re-imagine

After chord timing is squared away, let your imagination run wild. Try different styles.

“Dance → Chill Out → Chillout 1” takes “It’s Too Late” to a different place. Pull the tempo back and go downtempo.

Go R&B and choose “Soul & R&B → Modern R&B → Euro Hip Hop”. Trying new styles for an old song is fun!

Balance the mix via Song Settings

Sooner or later, you will feel like the auto-accompaniment is too loud or maybe your solo instrument is too quiet in the mix. Tap the mix icon in the lower left corner of the screen. SP displays a mixer. Move the sliders up and down to (re)balance elements in the mix.

Remix the band members in the style

You can also change individual elements in the style mix. Go to the Song Settings page and tap the Mixer tab. Ride the faders up and down. Tap the instrument icon at the top of a channel to turn the channel on or off. You can mess with pan and reverb type and reverb level, too.

Save everything in a registration

It took a bit of effort to get everything just so. You wouldn’t want to do all that every time you want to play “It’s Too Late”. That’s what Smart Pianist registrations are for.

Save all settings in a registration

Tap the registration icon in the lower left corner of the screen. Smart Pianist pops up the registration dialog box. Tap “Save Current Setting”.

SP displays another dialog box asking for the registration name.

Enter the name of the new registration, e.g., “Its_Too_Late”. Tap the Save button.

Let’s say that your took a coffee break and want to return to “It’s Too Late”. Tap the registration icon. Then tap “Its_Too_Late” in the list of registrations.

Recall “It’s Too Late” with one touch

Smart Pianist remembers virtually everything about the song, so you won’t need to go through that long set-up process again. Arranger people keyboard use song-specific registrations all the time. It’s a great way to store and organize your work.

Have fun and use your musical imagination!

Copyright © 2025 Paul J. Drongowski

Smart Pianist Audio-to-score tutorial

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The Smart Pianist audio-to-score feature generates playable notation (a score!) from an audio song (e.g., MP3, AAC, etc.) Check this short Smart Pianist demo video. Kraft Music has a longer demo video featuring Gabriel Aldort from Yamaha.

Audio-to-score is so cool, Yamaha uses it to tease CSP series and CVP-800/900 series sales. That’s right, you need a CSP or CVP-800/900 to unlock audio-to-score in Smart Pianist. If you don’t own one of these models, you can still generate a chord chart using Smart Pianist or the Yamaha Chord Tracker app.

Smart Pianist has Chord Tracker technology inside. This tech analyzes an audio file and extracts the chords. It also identifies the tempo, key, and song sections (verse, chorus, etc.)

Smart Pianist can display a chord chart — sort of a lead sheet without melody. [Smart Pianist cannot extract melody. Yamaha is probably working on that…] If you know chords, you can play along with the audio song. Smart Pianist highlights the current position in the song making it easy for you, the player, to follow and play the next chord, or play your own melody to fit the current chord.

Not everyone knows chords. Possibly, you may feel musically stuck and want to try a new complementary keyboard part to fit an audio song. That’s where audio-to-score comes into play.

Smart Pianist has a “library” of forty accompaniment patterns. The patterns range from simple “block” chords to arpeggiated chords in both even (straight) time and triplets.

Smart Pianist applies your chosen pattern to the chord chart and displays the result on a grand staff. The word “chosen” is important because you select the pattern from the available accompaniment patterns to fit what your inner arranger wants to hear. This is a handy capability if you’re stuck for ideas and want to try something new with your hands. [It’s a more interesting practice tool than Hanon exercises, too.]

Example song: It’s Too Late

After launching Smart Pianist, tap the “clover” menu in the upper left hand corner of the screen.

Smart Pianist displays the top-level menu shown above. [Click the image to enlarge.] Tap the Song button to select and play a song (audio, MIDI, or PDF score).

Smart Pianist displays the Song screen with playback controls on the left-hand side of the screen. Touch “Tap here and select a Song” to drill down and find a song to analyze and play.

SP displays the Song Selection screen. For this example, an audio song, I tapped “Music Library” and navigated to the backing track for “It’s Too Late”. Tap the Done button to load and analyze the selected song (“It’s Too Late” by Carole King).

SP displays a score using the default accompaniment pattern, “Basic 1”.

Before discussing score patterns, let’s take a look at the chord chart. Tap the Chord button at the bottom of the screen. The backing track is in the key of A minor.

SP displays the chord chart containing the chords that it found and extracted during analysis. If you know Carole King’s music — and “It’s Too Late”, in particular — there are chord extensions (major sevenths and minor sevenths) everywhere. Smart Pianist (and Chord Tracker) does a good job with major and minor triads, but chord extensions and alternate bass notes, not so much. Fortunately, you can change an individual chord by tapping the chord in the chart and editing it.

The score is derived from the chord chart by applying a score accompaniment pattern. Tap the Score button at the bottom of the screen to return to the score. Tap the Song Settings button (icon) in the upper right corner of the screen.

Smart Pianist displays the Song Settings. Tap the Arrangement tab on the left side of the screen and go to the Accompaniment Score Pattern.

Smart Pianist displays a scrollable, drop-down list of the available accompaniment patterns. In this case, the pattern is “Basic 1”. Check out the diagram at the bottom of the screen. This diagram illustrates how the pattern will lay down notes in the right- and left-hand parts. “Basic 1” does simple block chords. Compare the diagram against the score.

Take a look at the three examples shown above. [Click to enlarge, of course.] The examples show how four simple “block” patterns affect the score display. The block patterns all produce block chords with simple left-hand bass notes.

Here are two more examples using arpeggio accompaniment patterns. Choosing new, different patterns is a way to get some practice and to try different keyboard arrangements.

List of all accompaniment patterns

Smart Pianist provides forty accompaniment score patterns:

  • Even – Block [Chords]
    • Basic 1 – 4
    • 8Beat 1 – 3
    • 16Beat 1 – 2
    • Pop Rock, Disco Twist, Ska
    • Beguin, Bossa, Samba, March
  • Even – Arpeggio [Broken Chords]
    • Easy Arpeggio 1 – 4
    • 8Beat Arpeggio 1 – 3
  • Even – Combination
    • Easy Pop 1 – 2
    • 8Beat Pop 1 – 2
  • Triplet – Block [Chords]
    • 8Beat Triplet 1 – 2
    • Triplet Ballade
    • Jazz 1 – 3
    • Blues
    • March Triplet
  • Triplet – Arpeggio [Broken Chords]
    • Slow Rock 1 – 2
  • Triplet – Combination
    • Swing Jazz
    • Slow Jazz

“Even” means straight time and “triplet” means triplet time division.

That’s a lot of screens and diagrams to browse through. In order to save both of us time, I gathered all of the pattern diagrams together (below). Enjoy!

Copyright © 2025 Paul J. Drongowski

Smart Pianist Even – Basic patterns

Smart Pianist Even – Genre patterns

Smart Pianist Even Arpeggio and Combination

Smart Pianist Triplet accompaniment patterns

Smart Pianist, CSP and ChordPro

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Yamaha repurposes hardware and software technology all the time. The Yamaha CSP series digital pianos (CSP-100 series and CSP-200 series) and Smart Pianist borrow a lot of technology from the Yamaha Genos and PSR arrangers. Yamaha Chord Tracker users know that Smart Pianist also has Chord Tracker technology inside.

Chord Tracker provides a number of Smart Pianist-like features. Chord Tracker analyzes an audio song, extracts its chords, and displays the chords in a chart. Like Smart Pianist, Chord Tracker follows the chord chart while playing back the original audio file. Pretty much anyone can use Chord Tracker in this way to figure out the chords to a song and play along.

Genos and PSR arranger people, however, get extra goodies. Chord Tracker can send the chords to the arranger for playback. Even better, you get to choose the accompaniment style. Want to re-imagine a song as a country tune? You can do it.

Extended ChordPro

Chord Tracker sends the chords to an arranger in a Standard MIDI File (SMF). Instead of notes, the chords are represented in Yamaha System Exclusive MIDI messages.

When I analyzed the file format and chord messages, my first thought was “ChordPro”!

You’ve probably seen ChordPro on the Interwebs. It’s that simple text format for song lyrics and chords. I extended ChordPro adding a few new features to make musical time explicit and precise. (Original ChordPro relies on the musician for time.) Then I wrote a Java program to translate an Extended ChordPro song to an SMF suitable for playback on a Yamaha arranger. Check out an Extended ChordPro demo.

Playback ChordPro Example

Well, guess what? Smart Pianist and CSP-170 can play back SMFs generated from Extended ChordPro songs.

Here is a short ChordPro snippet for Steve Winwood’s “Can’t Find My Way Home”.

{t: Can't Find My Way Home}
{key: D}
{artist:Blind Faith}
{time: 4/4}
# Style: SongwriterBallad (stylecode: 5980)
{stylecode: 5980}
{tempo: 96}

{start_accomp}

# Introduction
[C][*IA]
{c: Introduction}
[Csus2:2][*MB] ---- [G/B:2] ---- [Gm/Bb:2] ---- [D/A:2] ---- 
[F:2] ---- [G:2] ---- [D] --------
[Csus2:2] ---- [G/B:2] ---- [Gm/Bb:2] ---- [D/A:2] ---- 
[F:2] ---- [G:2] ---- [D][*FB] --------

{c: Verse 1}
Come [Csus2:2][*MB] down off your [G/B:2] throne, and 
[Gm/Bb:2] leave your body a- [D/A:2] -lone.
[F:2] Some- [G:2] -body must [D] change.
[Csus2:2] You are the rea- [G/B:2] -son, I've been
[Gm/Bb:2] waiting so [D/A:2] long.
[F:2] Some- [G:2] -body holds the [D][*FC] key.

An Extended ChordPro song begins with a header containing the title, artist, key, tempo, time signature and auto-accompaniment style. After the header, you hit the {start_accomp} directive which tells the arranger (Genos, PSR or CSP) to start playing.

The rest of the Extended ChordPro file consists of chords, e.g., 

    [C]   [Csus2:2]   [G/B:2]   [Gm/Bb:2] ...

section control directives, e.g.,

    [*IA]  [*MB]   [*FC] ...

and lyrics (plain text). Oh, yeah, you can throw in comments, too, e.g.,

    {c: Introduction}
    {c: Verse 1}

The Java program (cp2mid) translates the chords, directives and lyrics into an arranger-ready Standard MIDI File.

So, what do we get after we import the SMF into Smart Pianist? The screenshot above [click to enlarge] is the score. The chord symbols and lyrics appear with the staves. There aren’t any notes because the SMF doesn’t have any notes; it’s contains only chords and lyrics.

The chord chart looks familiar. But, hey! Smart Pianist display lyrics interspersed with chords. I never saw Chord Tracker do that.

The final screenshot shows the lyrics alone. All of those dashes (“—-“) come from the Extended ChordPro song. They are placeholders during instrumental interludes.

Summary

Today’s example demonstrates a different way to use Smart Pianist and CSP digital pianos. If you own both a Yamaha arranger workstation and a CSP, you should be able to transfer Chord Tracker SMFs to Smart Pianist and the CSP.

If you want to know more about Extended ChordPro and its implementation, please see:

Copyright © 2025 Paul J. Drongowski

Smart Pianist: MIDI song tutorial

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I have an extensive collection of MIDI songs that are tweaked for the PSR-S950 and Genos (gen 1) arranger workstations. Let’s see what Yamaha Smart Pianist does with them!

Transfer the MIDI files

The first step is transferring the MIDI files from Windows PC to my iPad. I gathered about 100 Standard MIDI Files (SMF) into a directory, “MIDI”, with three subdirectories:

  • GM: General MIDI and General MIDI 2
  • S950: XG files tweaked for the PSR-S950
  • Yamaha: XG files purchased from Yamaha Musicsoft

The subdirectories reflect different vintages and format. I went with PSR-S950 because its voices are a subset of the CSP-170 voices. GM, GM2 and XG are compatible with CSP-170. Depending upon source and phase of the moon, a MIDI file may or may not have chord and lyric data. The XG files from Yamaha Musicsoft are more likely to have chords and lyrics (so-called XF format), but that is not a slam dunk. [Click on images to enlarge them.]

iTunes File Sharing seemed like the fastest way to move 100+ files. Unfortunately, no joy. iTunes found the Smart Pianist storage area without problem with four subdirectories under “Smart Pianist Documents”:

  • demo_audio
  • user_audio
  • user_midi
  • user_pdf

I tried to copy MIDI files into “user_midi” directly. Nope, iTunes won’t do it. The best I could do is to add files to the top-level “Smart Pianist Documents” directory.

That just didn’t seem right. So, I e-mailed a ZIP file containing the MIDI files to myself and downloaded the ZIP into the Files folder on the iPad. I tried to import the ZIP into Smart Pianist directly. It unzipped OK, but Smart Pianist expects to see one or MIDI files, not subdirectories! No joy, again.

Oh, dear. There isn’t any way to organize the MIDI files into folders (or categories) inside Smart Pianist. A linear list of 100+ MIDI files is not convenient or scalable. C’mon, Yamaha, you can do better.

Fortunately, Smart Pianist’s import dialog has a “Select All” option — if you can find it. I had to select the first file and scroll to the bottom of the list of files to find the “Select All” button. Might be a good idea to display “Select All” at the top of the dialog box like right away?

Well, after all this futzing around, I got all 100+ MIDI files imported into Smart Pianist.

Score, chords and lyrics

When you select a MIDI song, Smart Pianist looks for three kinds of data in the MIDI file: score (e.g., tracks with notes in them), chords and lyrics. Three buttons at the bottom of the screen let you select one of these three views during playback.

Smart Pianist displays some kind of score, typically the melody track, maybe a left-hand bass track. If Smart Pianist can’t make sense of the MIDI, it displays empty measures (e.g., whole note rests).

Chords and lyrics are optional in MIDI files and your mileage will vary. Smart Pianist will display chords and lyrics, if the relevant MIDI data are available.

How did Smart Pianist do?

No, I didn’t test 100 MIDI songs. 🙂 I chose four songs for testing:

  • Brown-Eyed Girl by Van Morrison
  • Every Little Thing by The Police
  • Let’s Stay Together by Al Green
  • I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You by Alan Parsons

Brown-Eyed Girl, Every Little Thing and Let’s Stay Together are XG MIDI songs purchased from Yamaha. Most likely, they should have chord and lyric data (XF format). I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You started life as a TUNE 1000 Karaoke General MIDI file and it contains lyrics.

In the case of Brown-Eyed Girl, Smart Pianist generated a score which looks like a combination of a bass line and the opening guitar riffs.

No chords were found, so you don’t get anything useful on the Chords page. I improvised the chords from the score when playing along. Then again, I have a good working knowledge of musical harmony. A beginner or inexperienced player would be lost.

The Brown-Eyed Girl MIDI file has embedded lyrics. Here’s the problem, tho’. What if I want to sing the lyrics and play a piano part? I can’t do it because, in Smart Pianist, by default, you get the piano score or the lyrics, not both at the same time. [We’ll remedy that in a few minutes. Please keep reading.]

Next up, Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. Smart Pianist displays some form of score.

And it displays chords, too. I found the chord display to be the most helpful and I played along with the song ny following the Chord page. Not bad. If you are a Chord Tracker user, you’ll recognize the chord chart structure and format.

No lyrics were found in Every Little Thing, so you’re on your own. Maybe invite Sting over to sing. 🙂

Smart Pianist produced a score for Let’s Stay Together. Looks like the melody line to me.

The Let’s Stay Together MIDI file has chord data and Smart Pianist displays chords. No lyrics, tho’, so the Lyrics page is empty.

Smart Pianist displays a score for I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You. It looks like the melody part, so the first N measures are blank during the instrumental introduction. Play by ear and fool around on a Cm7 scale…

Smart Pianist didn’t find chord data — no surprise as GM doesn’t support chord meta-events. You do get lyrics. TUNE 1000 was good with lyrics. It’s a shame TUNE 1000 as a company died over 15 years ago.

Smart Pianist displays what it can and you can have fun with it. Still, you may feel disappointed. Let’s try to make things better.

Song Settings

Up to this point in the tour, we Smart Pianist’s default Song Settings and went with them. Yamaha borrowed many ideas and features from its arranger workstations. Song Settings are the gateway to those features.

I want to display lyrics on the Score. Tap the Song Settings icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Then tap “Score” to select the Score Settings page.

The Score Settings page has six settings:

  • Choose the score display size: Small, Medium or Large.
  • Display the Left- and/or Right-hand parts
  • Display the Right-hand part on a grand staff (treble plus bass clef)
  • Display chords in the Score
  • Display lyrics in the Score
  • Set note quantization (granularity of the time grid)

The I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You MIDI file doesn’t have chord data, so I left Chord disabled. I turned Lyrics on. I tried turning a Left-hand part on, but Smart Pianist wouldn’t let me. [More about that in a second.]

The screen grab above shows the result. Smart Pianist displays the Score and, behold, lyrics appear below the melody line!

Instead of the melody, I really want to play chords and comp along with the song. In order to find a MIDI song track with the kind of part that I want to play, I opened the (MIDI) Mixer tab in the Song Settings.

The MIDI Mixer shows the instrument type which is assigned to each MIDI channel. (A MIDI song may have up to 16 channels.) Channel 1 has an electric piano (EP) which plays during the entire song. Channel 2 has a fretless bass. These MIDI channels are good candidates for the score.

While we’re on the MIDI Mixer page, please note that you can set the volume, pan and reverb send for each instrumental part (channel). The Master knobs and slider set the overall pan, reverb send and volume level for the MIDI song. You can use the MIDI Mixer to re-mix the backing song!

Now select the Song Settings Playback tab. Here you can turn the Stream Lights on and off, set the Stream Lights speed, etc.

Check out the MIDI Part Channel settings at the bottom of the page. By default, Auto Set is turned on. This instructs Smart Pianist to find appropriate MIDI channels to display in the score. Notice that Right is set to MIDI channel 4 and Left is off. A-ha! That’s why we saw the melody part (channel 4) in the score and why the Left-hand part is disabled.

Some inside baseball — TUNE 1000 the company is defunct, but their lasting contribution is the Karaoke (KAR) MIDI file format. Channel 4 in karaoke-land is the melody channel.

Turn off Auto Set.

Next, set the Right MIDI channel to 1 (the electric piano) and set the Left MIDI channel to 2 (the fretless bass). Tap the Done button to return to the Score display.

Voila! The Score shows the electric piano part in the upper staff and the fretless bass part in the lower staff. And, the Score still has the lyrics. This is just what I wanted.

I don’t blame you if you feel a little tired after menu diving. You wouldn’t want to do that every time. That’s where Smart Pianist registrations come to the rescue. Tap the Registration icon in the lower left corner of the screen.

Smart Pianist pops up a dialog box asking for the name of the new Registration to be saved. Enter the name (I_Wouldnt_Want_To_Be) and tap the Save button. Smart Pianist saves all of the Song Settings. So the next time you want to play this song, just recall the Registration.

Here’s a bonus! I changed to a different MIDI song: I Played The Fool (by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes). Smart Pianist applied the same, existing Song Settings and, by dumb luck, it displayed a nice right-hand part for comping, the bass line in the left-hand, and the lyrics. How good is that?

Well, I hope that you learned some new Smart Pianist tricks. Don’t be afraid to dive into the Song Settings and tweak the Score to your liking.

Copyright © 2025 Paul J. Drongowski

The quest for Backing Conductor

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Yamaha released a new version of the Smart Pianist app. The release notes list three new features:

  • Backing Conductor (CSP Series, CVP Series and P-S500 only)
  • A-B Repeat for PDF scores
  • Scores for the 50 Classics are distributed and displayed via PDF

The Backing Conductor sounded intriguing and I was anxious to jump on it right away.

I noticed that the CSP Series 200 models require a Firmware Update for Backing Conductor. Be sure to check the downloads page for your CSP.

The Apple App store pushed version 3.6.0 to my iPad. No problem there. The screen shot (above) shows Smart Pianist 3.6.0 (January 15, 2025) running and firmware 1.09a installed on the CSP-170. Hopefully, firmware version 1.09a is good because Yamaha never stated if an update is required for the CSP 100 series.

What is Backing Conductor?

The big question: “What is Smart Pianist Backing Conductor?” At this point in time, Yamaha have not publicized any additional information. The Smart Pianist guide, such as it is, has not been updated.

Yamaha software engineering believes that they design intuitive user interfaces (apparently). No documentation required! Quite frankly, if one of my CS students made such a statement, they would have been corrected and marked down. Seriously. 🙁

And so began my quest for “Backing Conductor.”

Post-install splash screens

At one point in my quest, I deleted the Smart Pianist app and re-installed it. Below are two rather informative post-install screens which highlight Smart Pianist’s capabilities.

Blink or idly flip by and you will miss these highlights. Forever — they won’t be repeated.

Yamaha should distribute the example score “New York Hustle”. It appears in other examples. By the way, “Hustle” is misspelled as “Hastle” in the second splash screen. Sorry, I live with a professional editor…

Start-up splash screens

Every time you start up Smart Pianist and connect to your instrument, you will be treated to a different splash screen. Again, don’t blink because you will miss something.

Here are three of the screens which highlight new features in version 3.6.0. Yeah, I know. What are they and how do I use them?

“Backing Conductor” gets mentioned again without details.

Backing Conductor, finally

Finally, I hit on the fourth of these elusive splash screens (below).

Oh, now I see what I should look for!

When a PDF is displayed, Smart Pianist displays this playback control box at the top. Folks who have used earlier versions of Smart Pianist recognize the three part buttons: Others, Left and Right. Backing Conductor adds a new part button: Backing. I guess when Backing is turned ON, you can change the auto-accompaniment style, in this case, Cool 8Beat.

There’s “New York Hustle” and “Hastle”, again.

Taco Bell’s Cannon

Now that I have a clue, let’s try a PDF score: Canon D dur by Pachelbel.

Uh, oh. The Backing button and accompaniment style are greyed out. What gives? In this case, Smart Pianist plays back the PDF score without backing.

One of my big frustration using Smart Pianist is what appears to be inconsistent behavior and options. There must be rules governing behavior and user operations. The rules probably differ by the content/media type:

  • PDF score (PDF file)
  • MIDI song (Standard MIDI File)
  • Audio song (MP3, AAC, etc.)
  • Chords extracted from an audio song

I wish Yamaha would explicitly write down the dos and don’ts for each data type. Explicit rules would set expectations straight and reduce frustration.

Bonus screen

To round things out, here is the Song Settings Arrangement screen for Audio to Score playback.

In this screen, you can choose the accompaniment score pattern to be used when displaying the extracted score and you can choose the backing style. I like the ability to turn different backing parts off (on) individually. Sometimes ya just want a beat, sometimes a beat plus bass, and sometimes a full backing.

Summary

I hope my difficulties have not discouraged you. Maybe you’ll be a little bit smarter then I when you sit down with Smart Pianist.

Before ending, I want to mention my top Smart Pianist want: the ability to add new styles to Smart Pianist. I’m not asking for Style Creator as one finds in the arranger workstations — simply the ability to load new styles and play new backing styles. There are so many user-contributed styles (including my own!), the ability to load and play with new styles would give CSP a huge boost.

Copyright © 2025 Paul J. Drongowski

NAMM 2025: Wait, there’s more!

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Hope you’ve caught your breath. This year’s NAMM (2025) has brought a bumper crop of new keyboard releases.

Just to list a few that we’ve seen. This is an exciting year for players!

Nord Piano 6

Check your credit limit because Nord weren’t finished after announcing the Nord Organ 3. Today, Nord have given us the Nord Piano 6:

  • Dual layers for piano and synth with independent effects
  • Dedicated LED faders for each layer
  • Triple sensor keybed
  • Nord triple pedal 2 is included
  • New spring reverb and spin effects

Two piano layers plus two synth layers will give punters better splits and layers over previous models, addressing a frequently voiced need.

Nord Piano 6 73

Catch the introductory video. Sure sounds nice. The Bonners video hits the highlights.

There will be two models:

  • Nord Piano 6 88, 88-key triple sensor keybed with grand weighted action, 19.2 kg (42.3 lbs)
  • Nord Piano 6 73, 73-key triple sensor keybed with grand weighted action, 16.2 kg (35.7 lbs)

The 73 is priced at $3,599 USD (£2,999) and the 88 is priced at $3,799 (£3,299).

Viscount Legend One

Viscount International have released new videos demonstrating the new Viscount Legend One stage keyboard. Here are a few links to start you off:

Kraft Music have a short page about the Legend One. The 61 and 73 are available for pre-order at $1,790 USD and $1,990, respectively. Now those are competitive prices!

Ketron (AjamSonic)

Ketron is not a well-known name in North America. However, they offer a range of digital pianos, arranger keyboards and modules. They are represented in the United States by AjamSonic.

AjamSonic (Ketron) will have a booth at NAMM 2025 next week. (Jeez, we’ve seen all this stuff and the show hasn’t started!) Here is a video from AjamSonic, including a preview of their NAMM announcements.

  • EVENT flagship arranger workstation
  • EVP 1 flagship grand piano
  • EVP 2 upright/spinet digital piano
  • EVP 4 stage/slab piano
  • EVS pocket-sized professional sound module
  • FUSION multi-cultural (world) arranger and production keyboard
    • EVENT functionality and features
    • Real arranger and multi-ethnic styles
    • Joystick, ribbon, articulations and drum pad
    • 4GByte user flash memory (2GB Sbk and 2GB sampler)
    • Oriental drum kits, sounds and musical scale
  • New sounds, new styles
  • KB series near-field powered speakers (KB5A and KB6A)
  • KS10A active sub woofer
  • KM6 portable mixer

The AjamSonic video is refreshingly mellow. Chill.

Ketron EVS sound module

The EVS caught my eye because I am always looking for new sound modules. Features include:

  • EVENT sound engine in a small box
  • 256 factory presets
  • 256 user presets
  • Ability to layer three voices
  • Desk-top voice ditor
  • USB and MIDI IN/OUT

It can be used as a MIDI file player as well as an external sound module.

You can try the Ketron America link, but Chrome gives me guff.

More Yamaha updates

Yamaha snuck out a small update for the Montage M series. They also released Smart Pianist v3.6.0 with “Backing Conductor”. I’m currently trying v3.6.0 and searching for Backing Conductor within. One question has already gone out to Yamaha customer support — what the heck is Backing Conductor?

[Update] CSP-200 series models need a firmware update to enable Backing Conductor. The Smart Pianist specification PDF shows Backing Conductor to be supported on CSP-100 series and P-S500. I didn’t find a CSP-100 series firmware update, so maybe Yamaha has not yet pushed the update file?

Copyright © 2025 Paul J. Drongowski