Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Yamaha Disklavier GT-7 Digital Grand Piano Price?

So you think you understand marketing better than they do? If the Helen Blog attracts attention, and if Yamaha marketing wants to tap into that attention, then it makes perfect sense to send her an Avant Grand jacket. Cheap publicity. Simple. How can you not understand that? How is that "hilarious"? How is that an example of "doing it wrong"?

Ha, just read the Helen Blog thing. She doesn't even write a word about its tone (or in fact anything at all about how it sounds). So is this Yamaha's target market for the thing? No wonder they want to send her a jacket. She can probably write a blog about that too...but won't mention a thing about how it looks or fits.

If you are selling your soul to a large multi-national corporation, you should get cold hard cash for it, not some lame AG jacket.

Before things get out of hand, anyone can leave a comment at that blog and sign any name they wish to. We don't know for a fact that the signed comments are from those who actually wrote them, ... though I did write and left two comments.

Wow, you guys seem pretty harsh on somebody who's just simply a piano owner happily blogging about her experience with a new piano purchase. Why? Is it because it's an Avant-Grand that she bought? Would the reaction have been different if she's bought a different brand or model DP or an AP?

She's not a professional writing a review article, so how can you blame her for being technically ignorant? OK, so she didn't say anything about how it sounds, so how did that make her deserving to be called a "stupid cow"? And she's not even asking for a jacket, so how can you say she sold her soul to Yamaha for a lame jacket? Why such hatred on a regular person who's just happily blogging about their piano purchase? Posters here post proudly about their piano purchases all the times, don't they? Why can't we just congratulate her like usual, instead of being so critical on her for no apparent reason?

Two things she wrote:

Some notes are suspect in terms of tuning and can’t be individually changed (as far as I know)
Sometimes will run into the boundary of the max polyphony (256 voices) – rare, but annoying when it does happen

What notes are suspect? I have not come across any notes that are out of tune (unlike my GT1 which did have two 3 note samples that were out of tune with themselves but only when the sustain pedal was depressed). I have come across two Db's below middle C that have a quality that makes them stand out from the notes surrounding them but they're not out of tune. (To be honest, my C3 also had a few notes that had the same gnarly quality.)

256 note polyphony ... boundary, annoying when it does happen .... ?

What the f*** does that mean? Worse case scenario - Yamaha used four mics to sample their flagship piano and there are four 3 way speaker systems in the AvantGrand. Assuming there are 4 sets of samples, we would then have only 64 note polyphony; each single note depressed would count as four note polyphony. If that is in fact the case - and I'm not convinced it is, you would have to play the piano with a two by four to depress that many notes.

I for one hope she has a long and happy life. But the degree to which she's puffing herself up on her blog seems to call for a bit of mockery.

I'm not defending her or anything, but I was just surprised at the negative reactions.

In terms of suspect notes she implies that are out of tune, I agree that I don't hear any myself. But people have different hearings and if she thinks some notes are out of tune and said so, it may be a problem with her hearing or in her head, and it doesn't carry any weight with me. I wouldn't take serious issue with it because it's just a personal opinion. It's not like she said she uses some kind of electronic tuning measuring instrument to prove that some notes are out of tune.

On the 256 note polyphony, again, it's a personal opinion that doesn't carry a lot of weight with me. Just like you said 32 is good enough with you, Dave, or others say they can hear some note dropped. I do agree that it's a tall order to claim to hear dropped notes in a 256 note polyphony. Can your mind really process that kind of detail and be able to tell? It's probably more likely that your fingers manage to drop the notes themselves and your head blames the piano.

But again, I didn't see why a couple of personal observations could have incited such a negative reaction.

As for technically whether it's 256/4=64 note polyphony due to 4 channels, or whether it's actually 256 note polyphony including the 4 channels, I'd be inclined to think that the 4 channels must have already been included because the claim never said 256 note polyphony shared by 4 channels. But I have nothing to back that up and marketing claim can be sneaky.

In terms of using 2x4s to be able to depress that many notes, I don't think it's about the ability to depress so many notes to max out on the polyphony count, but it's about causing all the notes to sustain off a struck note when you keep the sustain pedal held down. So for example, if you hold the sustain pedal down and strike a note, it should technical have triggered the main note, plus all 88 notes on the keyboard as a reaction to that struck note, resulting in 89 notes sounding off. So if you play a 3-note chord on an open sustain, technically you can already trigger more than 256 notes off of that one chord alone.

So I think the higher polyphony note count basically enables better sounding sustain because more notes can be heard in the sustain. The question is whether your brain can decide whether the sustain is adequate or lacking or what...

Well, this kicks off the blog entry:

That’s right, I bought a $15,000 instrument. Because that’s how I roll.

OK... In the next paragraph she tries to establish street cred without veering too deeply into geek territory - always a delicate balance. Next, she tells us how she and the AG were meant for each other after reading a puff piece in Slate (of all things). She finally tries one and - surprise - falls in love with it. She then drives her family and friends crazy buying one but avoiding state tax and moving expenses. After she gets it she says "I wouldn’t call it an acoustic piano killer" which is something of a backtrack IMO. And she ends it all with the following:

Finally, my (former) professor, Dr. Jean Barr, came over for coffee and a little piano playing a few weeks ago and was very impressed by the touch, feel, and pedaling. And that, my friends, is enough to never make me question this purchase, ever.

Which is a bit too close to a Colleen2000 plug for my comfort, even down to the "my friends" phrase no less.

Then Yamaha bursts into the blog and offers her an AG jacket. If you weren't sure before, you definitely know you've written some puffery after that happens.

I think she is fairly attractive FWIW. And she has an MM so she can't be too much of a slouch in the music department. But she's still young, and that's her fault (veiled Cat Stevens reference).

Well, if we're on to Cat Stevens references I would like to tell the world that I love my dog. So despite my scathing attack on the lovely Helen this surely means I'm not all bad.

Do I get a jacket?

Silly. Large multi-nationals don't distribute jackets to people who are merely nice. You have to work harder at being more subservient to their agenda. And be obvious yet cool about it to attract the anti-technorati.

OMG, what have I done? Lawrence, is it too late to stop you? For the the sake of all that is holy, whatever you do, don't click on the Donald Duck in MathMagic Land Link!!!

Heh. Heh. You think you'd get my dry humour, by now!

I received several e-mails from Robert Heller, the National Sales Director for Yamaha's Keyboard Division. Regarding this specific situation he wrote:

Her situation was somewhat unique. In short, the local dealer where she lived refused to order an Avant Grand for [her] unless she paid up front. (We’re reviewing our relationship with that particular dealer) She wanted to try it out. The picture on her website is actually one of the events that Yamaha often attends. Since she had such a difficult time getting an Avant Grand, I wanted to give her a small token of our appreciation, directly from Yamaha.

Dave, may I ask if you sought permission from Mr Heller before pasting the contents of his private email on a public forum?

If you already did, and he was in agreement, then my apologies.
However, I believe we need to exercise a little caution before openly quoting the contents of private emails.

Kind regards,
James
x

I guess I'm confused because in her blog she said her dad went to the dealer to measure the N3 3 separate times to make sure it fits in the minivan. So that means there's a floor model. So why does Robert Heller's email say that the local dealer refused to order one for her to try out unless she paid up front?

No, I did not. I wrote him initially to confirm that he actually wrote at that blog. While I may have committed a faux pas, I felt it answered the issue at hand.

When someone signs their e-mail as a representative of a company, I look at that as being less than personal e-mail - he's representing a company.

For what it's worth, I left out his comments on the 256 note polyphony issue.

Could you give us the gist of his comments re. polyphony?

He and I are in agreement.

So does that mean it's actually 256/4=68 note only due to the 4 channels? Or is it still full 256 note polyphony for real even with the 4 channels included?