Yamaha YPG 535 Review

We rated the Yamaha YPG 535 a 7.8/10. This keyboard seems to be aimed at intermediate players. We think this will serve them extremely well. With over 500 sounds, players will feel inspired to get creative. It has a big LCD screen, performance assist, and a lot of on-board songs and accompaniments. But because of the limited polyphony of the instrument, we had to knock some points off.

Overview

The Yamaha YPG 535 88-key portable grand keyboard is one of the most diverse and value-for-money keyboards in its price range. This keyboard is definitely aimed at the more creative pianist with 500 sounds on board.

The keyboard supports recording up to 5 user songs, each one can contain up to 6 tracks and you have the option of playing them all back at once, meaning you could create a 30-track song if you were so inclined.   

The keyboard itself does not meet the requirements of a serious piano player as it’s not fully weighted hammer-action but rather, semi-weighted. The keys have an internal spring, so there is a sense of resistance and what Yamaha calls “Graded Soft Touch Keyboard”. This is perfect for playing many of the 500 built-in sounds – especially organs and electric pianos. It’s also fine for recording into a computer or playing a song to save to the MIDI recorder and then onto a USB drive. The keyboard itself might not sound very good recorded with an external microphone. The action is graded, meaning the pressure needed on the keys gets less as the notes go higher and more as the notes get lower, like on an acoustic piano.  

Keyboard 

The Yamaha YPG 535 has an 88-key keyboard with semi-weighted “Graded Soft Touch” keys. This is a good keyboard quality for using all the different sounds that come with this model, especially electric keyboards, organs and synths. It wouldn’t be quite so good to use to practice classical piano, although not impossible.

The YPG-535 keyboard comes with a wooden cabinet as standard. This is a minimalistic H stand (self-assembly required) that is built to keep the keyboard steady and at the right height. However, if you want to travel with your YPG 535, the keyboard easily lifts right out and goes into a carrying case. It will easily and safely sit on an X stand when used away from home.    

Sound 

The Yamaha YPG 535 uses AWM (Advanced Wave Memory). The original piano sound is captured from an acoustic piano using high level sampling technology and then passed through filters to create layers of realism. This means that when you play quietly, a quiet sample will sound and when you play loud, a louder sample will sound. All in all this gives you a fairly good scope of expression when you play and mimics a real piano very well. 

The 500 on-board sounds include 12 drum kits, 361 XGlite (these are general MIDI sounds that you find on many keyboards) and 127 panel sounds (these are the sounds that are specific to this model keyboard). Among the sounds are several pianos including electric pianos and organs, synthesizers, strings, horns and woodwinds such as flute. There are several types of each instrument to choose from – for instance, there are 28 different basses! 

Features 

You find your way around the keyboard features with the large LCD screen. You can make selections with dedicated buttons and change the values with the wheel which responds quickly. There are 150 preset drum patterns which, when combined with left hand chords, fill in the whole accompaniment so you can just concentrate on playing the right hand melody. This means you can be playing your favorite songs really quickly and it’ll sound great. 

Instant Grand Piano 

There is a button on the front panel of the keyboard that instantly loads the Portable Grand Piano sound on its own. Every other feature is turned off, so you can very simply get started if you want to practice or improvise. 

Split keyboard 

This divides the keyboard into two different sounds so you can play bass with left hand and piano with right, or any other two instruments of your choice. 

Layer keyboard  

Layer two sounds together across the whole keyboard. The most used layering is piano and strings which makes a lovely sound for a ballad or emotional piano piece. The strings play the exact same notes as the piano. Sometimes you might want to have the strings play different notes than the piano in which case you can use the record function to record the solo piano and add strings on a second track, freeing you to create counterpoint. 

Metronome, Transpose and Fine-tune 

The Yamaha YPG 535 comes with a built-in metronome, as well as a transpose and fine-tune function. These last two functions can be very useful for playing along with another musician or transposing the keyboard to another key to better suit a singer, without the pianist having to transpose the key in real time. 

Easy Song Arranger 

The built-in songs come with a default accompaniment but you can change the style to anything you like and make it sound like a completely different arrangement just at the touch of a button and using left hand chords. 

Performance Assistant Technology (P.A.T.)

The Yamaha YPG 535 P.A.T. allows you to play any song that comes with the keyboard by hitting any key. The correct tone will sound even if you hit the wrong note. This will allow you to experience the sensation of playing along with the accompaniment accurately right from the beginning. You do have to play in time, but as you don’t have to focus so much on playing the correct notes, this is quite a good way to improve your timing skills. 

Easy Performance with Music Notation Display

The Yamaha YPG 535 has 70 songs to choose from and displays the music notes on the LCD screen so you can learn to read notes and play along. This includes lyrics and chords for songs that have them. Piano-only songs will confirm on the screen that there are no lyrics or chords. This can help you to improve your note reading and chord chart reading – both great skills to have! 

There are several classical music pieces to choose from, including Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and Rossini’s “William Tell Overture”. There are quite a few traditional songs like “America the Beautiful” and “Londonderry Air”. For children, there are quite a lot of nursery rhymes such as “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Pop Goes the Weasel”. Also, there are quite a few Christmas songs. There are many more, so something for everyone.  

Yamaha Education Suite (Y.E.S.)

Yamaha Education Suite (Y.E.S.) has three levels of learning. The first lesson level waits for you to play the correct note before advancing.  The notation appears on the LCD screen, but in case you don’t read music the onscreen piano keyboard will also show you what note to press. With the second level lesson, the keyboard will gauge your tempo and match it, slowing when necessary. The third lesson level will play at normal speed and you play along, either with the right hand, left hand or both. This way you can build your skill at your own speed. 

Specifications

• 88 semi-weighted touch-sensitive keys, 32-note polyphony and recording capability of 5 songs, 6 tracks each.  
• 500 different sounds to play with including several pianos, electric pianos, synthesizers and orchestral instruments.  
• 30 on-board songs plus 70 more that come on a CD-ROM.
• 160 different styles of accompaniment to choose from. 
• 6W X 6W speakers deliver a plentiful and quality sound for the home.  
• Connections include USB to Host, USB to Device, 1 Headphone jack, Sustain Pedal jack.
• This keyboard comes with a self-assembly H stand which gives it the look of a modern upright piano.  
• Effects include 4 reverb types and 2 chorus types. 
• This keyboard has a pitch-bend wheel. 

Who Is It Suitable For?

Beginner 

The Yamaha YPG 535 88 key piano keyboard is really versatile. While it’s not the best keyboard to start traditional piano lessons on only because it’s better to have weighted keys, it would certainly do for a while. The main benefit of starting on such a keyboard is that it would surely encourage creativity. Just playing around on this keyboard for a while, a beginner would learn a great deal about sound, recording and could learn to play some songs using the lessons.   

With the range of sounds and variations in accompaniment, it could well appeal to someone who is excited to be able to play just the right hand melody of songs and let the keyboard do the rest of the work.  

Beginner music creator 

The Yamaha YPG 535 might appeal to someone who is looking to create their own tracks. This would be a good keyboard to start with if you have never created tracks before. It has enough sounds, yet a simple enough recording setup that a beginner could get started very quickly and easily. 

Not for experienced creators or serious pianists 

An experienced music creator might run into problems with the YPG 535 as it has a low polyphony of 32. This means that only 32 MIDI notes can play or be sustained at the same time. It’s quite likely that if you used a synthesizer, a piano, strings and a horn, you’d start to run out of notes. There are keyboards far more suited for a heavier track-load that requires a higher polyphony, so this keyboard wouldn’t be the best choice for this reason. 

Also, more serious creators would probably find the instrument samples – particularly strings, horns and woodwinds – too unrealistic for professional tracks. Again, there are better quality sounds for this use and this particular keyboard wouldn’t serve well for that purpose. 

Pros and Cons

Pros 

• 88 keys, graded, semi-weighted keys
• Huge number of different sounds to choose from 
• Good recording capability 
• Large selection of songs to play along with 
• On-board lessons 

Cons 

• 32-note polyphony will limit what you can play
• Not the most realistic sounding instruments 
• Although it’s portable, this probably wouldn’t be the best choice for a gigging keyboard player with a total of 12W output, unless you also had a portable amplifier. 

Quick View 

Conclusion

The Yamaha YPG 535 88 key piano keyboard has a lot going for it. However, it falls a bit in between being a good keyboard for beginners and advanced music creators in that it’s a lot for a beginner and not enough for an advanced player.  

The 500 sounds indicates that this keyboard is made for creatives – especially as it has reasonable recording capability. However, the fact that it only has 32 polyphony rather limits the use of these functions, especially for composers who want to create multi-track songs.  There are many other keyboards that would serve them better for this purpose – or they might be better off with virtual instruments running through a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) using a MIDI device.  

The 88 keys implies that it’s built for people who can really play the piano, but the fact that they’re only semi-weighted means really serious pianists would not be satisfied with these keys. It is, however, a very functional keyboard if you play keyboard, organ or electric piano and your style is more pop, rock or blues. 

So this points this keyboard toward the beginner/intermediate category of keyboard players – and for a beginner, this would be quite a bounty to start off with. It might even be overwhelming with 40 buttons on the front panel to learn about. However, the dedicated piano button at least means you can ignore everything else on the keyboard panel and just play immediately.  

Children who can practice with a choice of different sounds, different drum tracks and make use of the on-board lessons would love this once they learned the basic operation. The semi-weighted keys would be a good starting point for little fingers and the keyboard might spark some great musical creativity. 

7.8Expert Score

We rated the Yamaha YPG a 7.8/10. This keyboard seems to be aimed at intermediate players. We think this will serve them extremely well. With over 500 sounds, players will feel inspired to get creative. It has a big LCD screen, performance assist, and a lot of on-board songs and accompaniments. But because of the limited polyphony of the instrument, we had to knock some points off.

PROS

• 88 keys, graded, semi-weighted keys
• Huge number of different sounds to choose from
• Good recording capability
• Large selection of songs to play along with
• On-board lessons

CONS

• 32-note polyphony will limit what you can play
• Not the most realistic sounding instruments
• Although it’s portable, this probably wouldn’t be the best choice for a gigging keyboard player with a total of 12W output, unless you also had a portable amplifier.