Tag Archives: Yamaha vkb-100

Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic (pre-review)

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[I had a chance to think about yesterday’s SHS-500 Sonogenic announcement. Please think of this blog post as a pre-review.]

The Yamaha SHS-500 Sonogenic is a fun instrument for people without musical training. It could very well be fun for musical amateurs and pros, too!

The SHS-500 is an interesting alternative to arranger keyboards. With an arranger keyboard, one typically uses the left hand to play chords which drive auto accompaniment. The right hand carries the melody or some kind of sweetener. Even though some pros like to denigrate arranger keyboards, truly entertaining and creative use of an arranger keyboard takes serious skill as well as knowledge of chords and harmony. [Click images to enlarge.]

Let’s face it — most ordinary folks just want to play along with popular hits. [A “popular hit” depends upon your musical era!] With auto accompaniment, you need to play the harmony either by ear or following a lead sheet. Sure, you can also play along with an MP3 or WAV file, but neither the MP3 or WAV file is analyzed for chords, nor are derived chords displayed such that you can follow along as you play.

The SHS-500 has a different approach. [I’m going to refer to it as “SHS” for brevity and easy of typing.] The SHS communicates with Yamaha’s Chord Tracker app. Chord Tracker not only plays digital audio files, Chord Tracker analyzes the song within and displays its chords. With an SHS attached to your smart device, Chord Tracker sends the chord information to the SHS where it is displayed. Even cooler, the chord information determines the (musically allowable) scale tones to be generated by the SHS.

Bottom line: An untrained user can plays along with their favorite hit. They can flog away at the keyboard and the SHS figures out the correct notes to “play” given the current chord in the song. Cool! You can also record audio data to Chord Tracker.

This is the SHS “Jam mode.” There are five jam modes: 1 Finger, Melody A, Melody B, Melody C, Backing.

Three buttons on the neck control song playback in the app: [Fast Reverse], [Play/pause] and [Fast Forward]. Pitch bend and modulation wheels are also on the neck.

One can connect the SHS to Chord Tracker through USB or wireless Bluetooth. I suspect that Bluetooth will be the dominant option as who wants to dance and play while tangled up in a cable? Same for battery power over AC adapter.

Yamaha priced this product right. Although the MSRP is $499, the street price will be $300 USD. Yamaha initially priced the Reface series models too high and eventually the price was lowered depending upon depend for specific models. (You can tell which models move well and which don’t.) Reface pricing settled around $300. The SHS is targeted for the youth market and a high price would be a turn-off or out of the financial reach of most teens.

Yamaha can sell at a lower cost because they repurposed hardware from the VKB-100 Vocaloid keytar. The VKB-100 is sold mainly to the Japanese market since the player “sings” in Japanese. Yamaha made a smart decision here by repurposing the VKB-100 for the world-wide youth market. Essentially, it’s the SHS’s software which is brand new.

I’m sure there will be people who scoff at the SHS-500. I, for one, love any product or instrument that encourages the love of music. Music education in the USA has taken a big hit due to testing mania and back-to-basics. I’d really like to see more young people take up musical instruments and the SHS-500 Sonogenic might be the ticket. [Plus, I’d really like to have one. :-)]

SHS-500 effect types

    Dist.1     Distortion
    Dist.2     Distortion
    DSP Chrs   Chorus
    Flanger    Flanger
    Phaser     Phaser
    Tremolo    Tremolo
    RotarySp   Rotary Speaker
    LPF        Low Pass Filter (cutoff adjustable)
    HPF        High Pass Filter (cutoff adjustable)

There is also a filter function with adjustable cutoff frequency and resonance.

SHS-500 voice list

The Yamaha SHS-500 has thirty voices. Here is a table from the reference manual.

    No.  Voice              Display   MSB  LSB  PC1  
    ---  -----------------  --------  ---  ---  ---
    001  Saw Lead 1         SawLead1  104   20   91  [Gemini]
    002  Saw Lead 2         SawLead2    0  104   82  [RS SawLead1]
    003  Quack Lead         QuackLd     0  112   85  [Portatone]
    004  Bright Decay       BriteDcy  104   21   85  
    005  Square Lead        SquareLd    0  112   81  [Square Lead]
    006  Under Heim         UndrHeim  104   51   88  
    007  Analogon           Analogon  104   52   82  
    008  Synth Brass        SynBrass    0  113   64  [Ober Brass]
    009  Electric Piano     E.Piano   104   28    5  
    010  DX Electric Piano  DXPiano     0  112    6  [DX Modern]
    011  Electric Guitar    E.Guitar  104    3   31  
    012  Jazz Guitar        J.Guitar  104    0   27  
    013  Acoustic Guitar    A.Guitar    0  117   26  [Steel Guitar]
    014  Electric Bass      E.Bass    104    6   34  
    015  Slap Bass          SlapBass    0  112   37  [Slap Bass]
    016  Synth Bass         SynBass     0  112   39  [Resonance Bass]
    017  DX Bass            DXBass      0  118   40  [DX100 Bass]
    018  Piano              Piano       0  112    2  [Bright Piano] 
    019  Piano & Strings    Pno&Strs  104   39    1  
    020  Piano & Pad        Pno&Pad   104   40    1  
    021  Air Choir          AirChoir    0  112   55  [Air Choir]
    022  Strings            Strings     0  116   49  [Bow Strings]
    023  Brass              Brass       0  117   63  [Pop Brass]
    024  Trumpet            Trumpet     0  115   57  [Trumpet Sweet!]
    025  Flute              Flute       0  115   74  [Flute Sweet!]
    026  Alto Sax           AltoSax   104    2   66  
    027  Tenor Sax          TenorSax  104    3   67  
    028  Harmonica          Harmnica    0  112   23  [Harmonica Sweet!]
    029  House Kit          HouseKit  127    0   65  
    030  Power Kit          PowerKit  127    0   88  [Power Kit 1]

Voices number 029 and 030 are drum kits. Bank select and program change values which match PSR (Tyros, Genos) are noted.

Copyright © 2019 Paul J. Drongowski

Yamaha VKB-100 redux

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OK, sooner or later, you knew I would circle back to the Yamaha VKB-100 VOCALOID keyboard. This little gem is a vocal keytar that lets you play pre-loaded lyrics using an installed Vocaloid library sound. Up to five libraries may be installed including the VY-1 library that ships with the VKB-100.

The VKB-100 can be had for the relatively low price of roughly $400USD, depending on shipping cost from Japan. The VKB-100 is only available in Japan at the current time.

Here’s a quick summary of the specs (translated from Japanese):

Number of keys: 37
Keyboard type: HQ (High Quality) MINI keyboard
Maximum polyphony: Vocaloid (mono), Instruments (48)
Number of voices:
    Vocaloid: Up to 5 libraries, Preset: 1 library (VY-1)
    Instrument: Preset: 13
Effects: Reverb, distortion, chorus, tremolo
Equalizer: Flat, Boost, Bright, Mild
Lyric operation: Loop, phrase return/forward, head search, recover
Skill
    Vocaloid: 2 assignable skills
    Instrument: Skill 1: Sustain, Skill 2: Portamento
Memory slots: Vocaloid: 20, PCM sound source: 20
Main controls Pitch Bend Wheel, Expression Wheel, Effect Knob, 
    Select Knob, Selector Slider, Transpose button, Phrase Button, 
    Memory Button,  Skill Button, Octave Button, Loop Button, 
    Master Volume Knob
USB: USB to HOST, USB to DEVICE
Audio connections
    Headphone out
    AUX in
    Line out
Amplifier output: 0.7W
Internal speaker size: 3.6cm
Power adapter: PA-150B
Battery power: 6 x AA alkaline or rechargeable NiMH batteries
Battery life: About 7 hours when using alkaline batteries
Width x depth x height: 821 mm x 121 mm x 65 mm
Width x depth x height: 32.3 in x 4.8 in x 2.6 in
Weight: 1.5kg
Accessory soft case: SC-KB350 (5,500 Yen)

The keybed is probably the Reface keybed. (Sturdy, slightly clack-y.) What’s that? Instruments? Hmmm…

I don’t want to run through the operational particulars, again. Please see the following pages for background information:

It’s cheap, it straps on, it has a keyboard and wheels. Can it be used as a MIDI controller? As an instrument in it’s own right?

The build quality looks pretty decent and the ergonomics are nice. There are two wheels on the neck: pitch bend and expression. And here we hit the first bump in the road — no modulation. A quick look at the MIDI chart and we find that the VKB-100 sends:

  • Pitch bend
  • Portamento time (CC# 5)
  • Expression (CC# 11)
  • Portamento ON/OFF (CC# 65)
  • Release time (CC# 72)

That’s it. Now, I suppose one could remap CC# 11 to modulation, but it would be better to have modulation generated natively.

The other gotcha. The VKB-100 has two modes: normal and keyboard mode. The VKB-100 only sends MIDI controller/key messages in keyboard mode, not normal mode. The user must select keyboard mode through a menu and this setting is not retained across power off. That means changing to keyboard mode after every shutdown.

The VKB-100 doesn’t receive much of MIDI anything except some undocumented SysEx. Thus, forget about sequencing.

The final gotcha is MIDI over USB only. If you want to drive an old school 5-pin DIN MIDI module or keyboard, you will need to bridge USB to 5-pin.

So, what about those preset instruments? Here’s a list:

  1. Synth 1
  2. Synth 2
  3. Synth 3
  4. Synth 4
  5. E. Guitar
  6. Harmonica
  7. Tenor Sax
  8. Piano
  9. E. Piano
  10. Synth Bass
  11. Slap Bass
  12. Air Choir
  13. Applause

Quality is comparable to an entry-level PSR keyboard. The Tenor Sax voice, for example, sounds like the Sweet! Tenor Sax in a PSR-E443. At least you have four effect types (reverb, distortion, chorus, tremolo) with four effect depth levels each. Kinda basic.

After a few insipid J-Pop YouTube demos, you want to blow your brains out. I watched them, so you don’t have to. Here are a few demos to check out.

Hey, Blake! You got to go to Superbooth? I’m jealous!

Bottom line, I was intrigued until I dove into the (Japanese) manuals and found the VKB-100’s limitations as a controller and stand-alone instrument. Ordering from Japan is no big deal, but the VKB-100 would have to offer some real cool features and sounds to compensate for the labor of translating Japanese to English and dealing with display messages in Japanese.

If you want to get your feet wet with Vocaloid, I recommend the Gakken NSX-36 Pocket Miku module. No keytar action, but you get a multi-timbral MIDI module that does Miku Vocaloid at a very modest price (less than $50 USD).

Copyright © 2018 Paul J. Drongowski