Yamaha Corporation of America continues its leadership position in the portable keyboard market with the introduction of the new Yamaha PSR292 – the affordable choice for song learning, recording and playback. The PSR292 has a built-in 6-track sequencer (recorder), boasts over 600 voices and is fully General MIDI (GM) and XG Lite compatible. And because this keyboard has Touch Response, your playing can be as expressive as on an acoustic instrument. Newly designed panel layout includes a blue backlit LCD and panel lights, giving the PSR292 a contemporary look and feel.

Customers have always listed the piano as the most important sound they were looking for in a portable keyboard. In keeping with its piano focus, the Yamaha PSR292 features a stereo-sampled piano voice and dynamic filtering; technology previously reserved for much more expensive, professional keyboards. Playing piano is fast and easy with Yamaha's Portable Grand function. One dedicated button brings up a great sounding piano, stunningly rich and authentic in its sound and exceptionally responsive to your playing touch, as well as setting up the keyboard to play as a piano in full keyboard mode. On top of all this, a wealth of special piano-only "Pianist" styles, like Piano Ballad or Boogie Woogie for example, provide professional-sounding piano accompaniment that changes chords automatically as you do, while you play a piano melody on top!

The PSR292 is a musicians dream come true, giving you the power to sound exactly the way you want. It starts with a new level of instrument realism thanks to a larger sample ROM. And what does that mean? Simply put, a more realistic digital sample of an instrument almost always requires a larger digital sample. So by increasing the size of the sample memory, Yamaha is able to give you even more realistic instrument voices. And you get so many of them on the constantly growing extension of General MIDI (GM) called XG.

Not only do you get full compatibility with GM, you get hundreds of extra XG Lite Voices as well as full MIDI control of voice and effects parameters like Reverb and Chorus, which add an extra dimension of richness. In an effort to give the player maximum flexibility, the PSR292 is capable of layer and split modes. Split mode allows you to have two different sounds on the keyboard at the same time, like piano on the right and bass on the left. Layer mode allows you to combine two sounds across the keyboard range. For example, you could play piano and strings at the same time. You're only limited by your imagination.

The PSR292 offers you state-of-the-art features to help you get started on your musical journey. It comes with 100 built-in songs with Songbook, plus the ability to connect to a computer and download more songs from the Internet into the PSR292 Flash ROM. Once the songs are in Flash ROM, you can use all of the built-in features to help you learn to play them. But if you've never played before, where do you start? Well, if learning to play music is important to you, the Yamaha Education Suite II™, a wonderful set of music training functions, makes learning music incredibly easy. Seven types of lessons are available as well as a convenient chord dictionary.

Yamaha Portable Keyboards are famous for their ease of use. But, even when the keyboard is easy to operate, how does the novice know which settings to make that are appropriate for the song he wants to play? With Yamaha's remarkable new Music Database, you simply choose from over 200 song titles in the database and the entire keyboard will set itself up for that song. It couldn't be easier.

The PSR292 comes with 135 built-in styles, waiting for you to play along with. It's just like having a built-in band. Call up your favorite style of music like Rock, Big Band or Country, press a chord or play Single Finger mode, and the 292 will follow you through a piece of music, providing all of the drums, bass, piano, guitar, horn and string parts for you. And to make it easy and fun, when you select one of the styles, the One Touch Setting function will automatically configure keyboard parameters, such as voice selection and digital effects, to match that selected music style.

For a demonstration of "What is a Style", click here (1.3MB download – requires Macromedia Flash).

What's polyphony, you ask? Simply put, polyphony is how many notes a keyboard can reproduce simultaneously. The PSR292 has 32-note Polyphony allowing you to play intricate arrangements and dense musical passages.

Thinking of connecting a PSR292 to a computer? Yamaha makes it easy with the new Computer function button. Now, instead of wading through function menus and fighting through a maze of selections, one button is your expressway to music on the web and your computer. All Yamaha keyboards have a special MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) port on the back that let you connect your keyboard to a computer (requires a MIDI Interface like the Yamaha UX16 and music software). Once connected, you can play your songs into the computer, edit them if necessary, and e-mail them to your friends and family. And with General MIDI (GM) compatibility, song data always plays back the correct sounds.