social.noyu.me

(re: https://social.noyu.me/@hikari/statuses/01K3GDBKPSQWX1AZSGNVRTME2S, this is about the Yamaha PSS-A50 again)

seriously just buy one of these, we never shut up about them but for good reason, it's unfathomably versatile and worth twice or three times as much as yamaha somehow charge for it, it will Bring The Music Out Of You one way or another

it is a toy, but it is the best toy keyboard ever, hands down, it's not even a contest, we cannot imagine how you could possibly make a better product in its class and price point, every last compromise is the right compromise, every selling point is unbelievable at this price

it's a USB MIDI controller, it's a pick-up-and-play pleasant-sounding mini piano, it's an I-can't-believe-it's-not-General-MIDI sound module, it's nice jazz guitar tones and bass and all that good stuff, it's a quasi-groovebox, it's an ideas recorder, it's a chord sketchpad, …

it has a better keybed than any commercial MIDI controller or outright synthesiser we've ever tried, and we've probably tried like two or three or four dozen of them at this point; it's the same keybed as the well-regarded and five times as expensive Yamaha Reface series

and yes it only has a mono and tragically quite high-noise-floor audio output (get an in-line volume control cable if you have IEMs, you'll need it), and it has micro-USB, and no sustain pedal input, and no knobs or sliders or wheels, and other compromises, but it's so worth it

this thing brings more creativity and just, joy of living and being able to play music, out of us than almost every other MIDI gadget we own put together. if forced to we'd only keep this and the SC-7. it just has such fantastic, guitar-like immediacy and versatility

also we're not kidding when we say it's basically a groovebox. this thing is not just for the piano sickos and jazz sickos and orchestral sickos, it's also very very synthy, it's so stupidly fucking versatile. okay we'll shut up but please buy one. yamaha aren't paying us

oh one more thing: it's a metronome. very useful when guitaring. it's a great complement to a guitar for all sorts of reasons, but this is the thing we use it for most of all when practicing guitar

it's like the BOSS SD-1 of keyboards or something