The EZ 200 is a fairly new concept from Yamaha that has been designed to help children, beginners and novices to understand music theory and also help them to master keyboard and piano skills.
The EZ 200 is essentially a portable home keyboard with 61 full size keys, on board speakers and a wealth of digital quality voices (375) drum kits (12) and a sound effects kit. It also contains over 100 accompaniment styles for playing along to and learning from.
As the songs are played back, the notes being played are lit up on the keyboard as each key contains a tiny LED. This provides the student with a visual indication of which notes to press in what sequence and helps them to learn how to play a particular melody as well as understanding the timing and rhythm of the sequence.
Songs can be slowed down to help to practice difficult phrases, and the EZ 200 also has a “WAIT” command which stops the song at a certain point until the user restarts playback by pressing the next sequential key. The flash memory within this model allows the stereo recording of up to 5 tunes and will store them for instant recall.
Yamaha includes its own Yamaha Education Suite 5 (Y.E.S. 5) software that has interactive learning facilities that makes practicing fun and never a chore.The voices on the EZ 200 are absolutely stunning and the Portable Grand button instantly recalls Yamaha’s amazing sounding Stereo sampled Grand Piano. There’s also up to 9 different types of Reverb to add concert hall type ambience to your performance.
To view a video demo of the EZ 200 please click here.
