Yamaha YPT 340 Review

The Yamaha YPT 340 is a very good beginner's keyboard. If you're just starting out on keyboard and you want something affordable, this portable keyboard is worth checking out. If you're buying a keyboard for a child, you may want to buy a low-priced model like this one. Later on, if the child stays interested, you can always invest in something more expensive. 

The Yamaha YPT 340 is built with the student in mind. It comes with an incredible feature that Yamaha portable keyboards are known for. This feature is known as the Yamaha Education Suite (Y.E.S.). With this feature you can teach yourself how to play keyboards/piano. It contains step by step lessons that teach you how to play songs and will have you playing the keyboard before too long. All you need is the determination and motivation. There's even a chord dictionary in there so you can learn various chords. Use this feature along with an actual music teacher and you'll be well on your way.

Highly Recommended: Go here for the BEST piano/keyboard course I’ve seen on the Internet.

The Yamaha YPT-340 is a 61-key keyboard. It has 32 notes of polyphony (max). This means that you can hear up to 32 notes at once before notes start cutting out. For an accomplished piano player this is very little, but for one who is just starting out this is enough notes of polyphony. There's a total of 550 voices, consisting of everything from pianos, to organs, strings, woodwinds, brass instruments, drums, and so on. 

You can add effects like reverb, chorus, master EQ, harmony and ultra-wide stereo to the various voices and alter them to your liking.  How about layering two voices together? You can do that with the YPT340. For instance you can layer piano and strings together, which is perhaps one of the most popular dual voices on keyboard. You can even split the keyboard and have one voice in the left part of the keyboard and another voice in the right section. For example you can play bass with the left hand and electric piano with the right.

This portable keyboard comes with a total of 136 accompaniment styles. You can choose from any one of these styles and sound like there's an entire band playing with you. Change chords, and control the particular style with its various style control buttons like acmp on/off, sync start, start/stop and intro/ending. The accompaniment feature is a great way to learn about various styles/genres of music and a lot of fun as well. 

One feature I was really impressed with on this keyboard is the Melody Suppressor. It's truly amazing how one can connect a device like a computer, cell phone or mp3 player to the AUX-in port of the Yamaha YPT 340 and the keyboard will suppress the melody of the song. You can then play along with that song without hearing the lead vocals. 

Another superb feature is the ability to connect the keyboard to an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch and operate the keyboard from any one of these devices. All you have to do is download the appropriate Yamaha app to your device. There's an app that allows you to control pitch bend and modulation from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Amazing!

This is a good beginner's keyboard, perfect for someone on a budget. Check it out. 

Return from Yamaha YPT 340 to home page.