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Yamaha's Tyros with its Mega Voice technology plays great keyboard sounds but incredibly also makes a guitar sound like a guitar with strumming effects and all from the keyboard!

Yamaha has innovated a brand new technology called Mega Voice®, and put it all together in a futuristic keyboard called TYROS and it's light weight and portable at just 27 pounds

Mega Voice Technology - A New Unparalleled Realism

TYROS is the first keyboard from Yamaha to include a brand new technology called Mega Voice.

Mega Voice Technology is a huge step forward over traditional sampling that previously had been used to create instrument sounds on keyboards.

For example, on a guitar, traditional sampling would miss the string and pick noise. Yamaha Mega Voice technology provides open and mute string sounds, dead notes, hammering effects, slide effects, harmonics and a wide range of strum and body noises - putting back the missing elements that take a sampled guitar from sounding like a guitar played on a keyboard to a Mega Voice sampled guitar that sounds like, dare we say, a guitar!

Once you hear the difference, you'll never want to go back.

In short, Mega Voice gives TYROS stunningly realistic sounds.

Make Your Own Kind of Music

The 300 musical Styles found in this digital workstation are best described as having a backup band at your fingertips. Choose a category of music (like Rock, Country or R&B), select a Style and play your favorite song. It's that easy. Musical parts provide drums, bass, guitar, horns, strings and any other musical instrument that suits the genre of music you have selected.

Yamaha has always had great Styles, but with TYROS, they are taken to new heights of realism because of the Mega Voice Technology.

An example is the new Unplugged Styles. Because the Unplugged Styles are guitar-focused, a major amount of time and effort was dedicated to making sure that these Styles "voice" like a guitar would, on both regular and extended chords.

Another Ingenious Innovation - CueTime and Vocal CueTime

CueTime is music (MIDI files) that actually follows you. It speeds up, slows down and will even stop and wait for you to find the next note. It's like having a built-in tutor.

Vocal CueTime takes the technology a step further - the keyboard actually follows your singing! Using Vocal CueTime disks or any MIDI files that include the melody (for example: Tune1000®), you simply sing along to your favorite songs by following the bouncing ball as the lyrics advance.

If the song file contains harmony information, the keyboard will add harmony in appropriate places. It will also stop and wait for you to sing the next note.

But here's the really fascinating part - you don't even have to play the keyboard. Just sing. The keyboard "listens" to you as you sing and advances the music as you sing the notes. Simply amazing!

128 Notes of Polyphony

Polyphony, the number of notes a keyboard is capable of playing simultaneously, is like the horsepower of a car - the more there is, the more power you have. As stated earlier, the TYROS digital workstation is capable of 32 channels of MIDI over USB.

Other Cool Features

If you go and audition a TYROS, check out the demo. There is a two and a half minute overview that explains the Mega Voice Technology with musical examples.

If you would like to learn more, there are submenus that will take you through just about anything you might want to know with A-B examples and explanations.

In all, there is about an hour's worth of demonstrations built into the keyboard. In addition, the demo (and built-in on-board help) is available in six languages.

Other features include the ability to record and play back at tempos from 5-500 bpm, full tuning capability in 0.2 Hz increments, -2 to + 2 octave change on parts, as well as dedicated Upper Octave buttons for quick changes while you play.

Other controls include pitch bend and modulation wheels. And when you're looking for something that will spice up your performance, hit one of the four Multi-pads and TYROS will play an appropriate phrase or loop that matches whatever chord you're playing.

Or, depending on the style of music you're playing, the keyboard may select some drum fills and flams. It's fun and on-the-fly creative. You can also record the Multi-pad parts into your sequences. Very cool.

It also comes with a color VGA screen, music and lyric displays, USB and MIDI, 61 keys with touch response, 16 track sequencer, top-quality effects, audio outputs, an optional foot controller, is readily upgradable and compatible with many software programs.

Click here for more information and to order your very own Tyros.