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Just ordered the CP5 and waiting on delivery. I downloaded the instructions and looked through it. I got lost and confused reviewing the instructions. It looks like it's going to be a nightmear to figure out how to just to play anything.

Tell me anyone, is it really not all that bad to figure out and operate? Are there alternative guide charts somewhere in addition to Yamaha's instruction booklet?

Russ

... one thing to remember, you will receive different results by simply pressing a button or holding the button down for a second or so before releasing.

That was mentioned in the manual but it was not underlined, either literally or figuratively.

It is not an intuitive keyboard but my introductory sentence should help a little.

Thanks Dave,

I remember reading that but I did not catch on nor do I have a clue as to what each did or meant. I assume it's just a function toggle. I don't have it yet so I can't learn by experimentation but let me ask you this:

If I totally screw up the settings and get lost, can I simply "reset" everything and start over? Do you know?

I consider myself very good at working with various software, gadgets, user interfaces, etc (I work as a software engineer) and usually it takes me just few minutes to figure out how to work with a synthesizer, etc without looking at the manual. Not with the CP5. First time I tried it in a shop, I got some pretty hard time realizing what is what. I felt like a granny in front of her email program This is just ridiculous... On the other hand CP5 is arguably among the best stage pianos money can buy.

I think the instructions make for the problem. Too many pages, too drawn-out. Just give me a simple block charted diagram showing samples of some common settings. Did anyone make up somthing like that they would like to sell to me for money? I intend to learn it so I'm not going to let it be dissapointing. I wanted the CP5 and I knew it would be a challange to operate.

The CP5 struck me the same way when I first encountered it at GC - I remember the internal rhythm drum track started playing loudly the minute I touched an ivory, and none of the buttons, switches, LEDs, or displays gave me a clue as to how to stop it, what mode it was in, or what the heck was going on. I felt like a complete idiot. Kind of like every time I tried to do anything other than the very shallowest of dives in our Motif Rack ES: power cycle and pray I didn't change something non-volatile. Everything we buy now I look the UI in the mouth.

The RD-700NX in comparison has only a few secret handshake type things going on, I easily stumbled across most of its features just by poking around with no manual. One of the things they don't tell you in the NX manual is you can save edited sounds by just by mashing and holding its voice button (shades I suppose of the CP5!).

Yes, I recall exactly the same thing happened to me!

The drum rhythm track started playing, and I couldn't find a way to make it stop...so I just did a power cycle.

After that I spent a little time playing around with the interface, and recalled Dave's note about holding certain buttons to access additional features/settings. Eventually I was able to select individual sounds and adjust parameters.

The CP5 is a really great board, and I expect once you find your way around the interface it's reasonably easy to control. However, for the uninitiated, I'm sure it can feel pretty bewildering. I wonder if this is one of the reason some of the larger musical instrument chains have pulled the product from their stores?

Cheers,
James
x

I wonder how long? This has likely become a common complaint about the C1, C5 and C50. If it is, why didn't Yamaha change the design of the user interface, I wonder? From all my research, I do believe the CP5 is one of the best sounding stage DP's on the market and the reason I ordered one. I'm mostly interested in the grand piano sounds layered with strings. We'll see. I can always send it back for a different model but I really don't want that to happen. I'll first search high and low for instructions written from third party sources and perhpas some U-tube instructions as well.

Russ,

It's not as bad as it's made out to be. I recently bought a CP50, read the manuals, and I actually like the user interface quite a bit. It's nowhere as deep as a Motif or something like that with tons of pages of controls. I feel like it's a real nice balance of control and simplicity.

The trick is that it's laid out in what they call "blocks". There's the voice block where you choose a voice (piano, Rhodes, B3, or whatever), then a preamp block, then an effects block, a power amp block, the part block, then a reverb block, and a compressor block. It's as if you had all of these hardware gadgets lined up one after the other - typical signal flow stuff.

Let's say you have a Rhodes sound. The voice block is where you would choose that voice as opposed to a string voice or whatever.

The next block - the preamp block - allows you to adjust the sort of things that would be on the Rhodes itself, like the bass and treble knobs, the vibrato, the gain, and the position of the pickup. (This is not meant to be comprehensive - just an example.)

Then in the effects block you could insert one of a bunch of effects - eqs, compressors, chorus, echo, pitch shift, etc.

Then the power amp block allows you to set up a simulated amp sound appropriate to the voice. There are ones especially made for electric pianos, or you have simulated Fenders and Marshalls, etc. Or - here's the cool thing about the CP5 - you can use this block to insert another effect instead of a simulated amp. So if you chose a chorus effect in the effects block, you could choose an eq or whatever in the power amp block. (The CP50 does not have the power amp block.)

At this point the sound is assigned to a "part". There are 4 parts in the CP5, so that you could set up 4 different sounds as I just described, then layer them or split them across the keyboard. The part block allows you to set parameters like tuning, key range, midi stuff, volume, panning, reverb send, and a whole bunch of synth-like parameters like envelope, resonance, filter cutoff, etc. It's really a lot like an old-school synth in this regard, only starting with samples rather than basic waveforms. So there's lots of power to really mess with the sounds.

The last two blocks - reverb and compressor blocks - work on all 4 sounds together. You choose one type of global reverb and one type of global compressor for the keyboard as a whole.

That's it basically. Of course there are utility pages and common parameter pages for things like naming sounds, but the basic architecture is pretty simple.

There are two things that can be a bit confusing at first:

1) The blocks should have been laid out left to right exactly as they happen internally, and while they're sort of that way, they are not strictly - a couple of them appear visually out of order. Two demerits for the Yamaha UI engineers. What the heck, let's make it 3 demerits for good measure.

2) All of those labels on the right side that say "piano", "strings", "brass", etc. don't really apply when you are choosing a "performance". Oops, I forgot to tell you what a performance is. It's an entire setup of the 4 voices, ready to go for a gig or whatever. When you call up those performance presets at a gig, the brass will not be under the brass button, and so on, unless of course you arrange your own user banks in that fashion. I've thought about doing that, but then at a gig it's usually too dark to read that stuff anyway, and I just like to lay it out in the order I'm most likely to need sounds: piano on the first button, then maybe Rhodes, Wurly, organ, clav, and flute. (Yeah I'm a Beatles head, so I always need to have my simulated Mellotron sound ready to go.)

So now we're up to a half dozen demerits. But I love this keyboard.

Hope this helps. It's a killer ax - you're going to love it.

-Wes

Great explanation Wes!

James
x

Thanks, James. Like I said, it's really not that hard. For anyone who's having a bad day with the UI of a CP5, here's what I suggest as a moral booster. Go online and download the manual for a Motif, for a lesson in contrasts. Take a deep breath and see if you can memorize all of the so-called "modes" on the thing; I mean you need to know the modes, right, because that's how the keyboard architecture is organized. Let's see, there's voice play mode, voice edit mode, voice job mode, voice store mode, performance play mode, performance edit mode, performance job mode, performance store mode, sampling record mode, sampling edit mode, sampling job mode, utility job mode...

Whew! And we're just getting started. There's also song play mode, song edit mode, song record mode, song job mode, song mixing mode, song mixing edit mode, song mixing job mode, song mixing store mode, mixing voice edit mode, mixing voice job mode, mixing voice store mode, pattern play mode, pattern edit mode, and on and on and on. My head starts to spin every time I open the Motif manual.

So now, after spending a few minutes with the Motif manual, read through the CP50 manuals (both of them, plus the data list), and I promise you, it will seem like a piece of cake.

-Wes

If I totally screw up the settings and get lost, can I simply "reset" everything and start over? Do you know?

Yes.

Thanks Wes

I finally got it now, after owning the CP5 more than a year or so...

RTFM...I know LOL

I'm kidding, of course, I think the CP5 is really not that complicated, though it might be a little weird at the beginning for people used to the "Roland-language" and other manufacturers.

You explained it really great. It would have been great, if the CP5 manual had an introduction or summary like yours.

Best,
Manolios

I loved Wes's explanation as well!

Dumb question...what do you press to get to use the category sounds?
All I could muster was selecting performances in the store...

(my CP5 arrives later this week. They ordered me a new one at the local store...they only had a floor model.)

Amazing Price by the way!!!

Hi madAhorn,

there's no such thing like a dumb question: I think you press the "voice" button, to get to the category page. I'm not in front of my CP5 right now but I think that's it.

It's a heck of a live board, BTW. I think you made a great choice. While I was not crazy about some of the factory presets at first, I managed to get great sounds out of it after some tweaking. This board is definitely a keeper. And, may I add, I LOVE the action for live playing.

May I ask how much you did pay for you CP5?

I almost made an entry on the price paid thread, but I would rather not put pressure on the local store to match my price. They were selling a floor model to me for $1900.00 no tax. But they decided to order me a brand new one at the same price! No tax or shipping!

Happy me!

Yes, the keybed is the best for me too.

Do you have any patches you can share?

Thanks!

Wow, good price indeed.

Sent you a PM

Best,
Manolios

You did yourself a big favor with the CP5 :-)

What helped me to get a basic idea were several promo videos online. But with Wes' introduction you should be fine.

Have fun with your CP5!

In the explanation of the CP5 architecture above, I stated that there are 4 "parts", which is not strictly true. I was trying to keep things simple, and while there are 4 keyboard parts for each performance, there are two additional voices: backing track and microphone.

The backing track part can be a wave file or a prefab drum beat. I've seen in several threads where folks were wondering what's up with the drums. They are in fact pretty basic - just 100 prefab rhythms in various styles. There are 14 different "kits", so I guess theoretically that gives you 1400 permutations of kits and beats, but it's unlikely you'll want to use the hip-hop drum kit with the country beat, or whatever. Or maybe you would. Anyway, it's not for programming your own beats, just a glorified old-school rhythm machine. I like it though, for practicing.

-Wes

Hi Wes,

yeah, the styles are great for songwriting too, for jamming around with some ideas.

if you keep it this way, adding information and explanantions, you could rewrite the user manual. Or write a new, better quick guide.

Kind regards,
Manolios