Category: Blog

Well, more fiddling with the Yamaha Clavinova CVP-50 Garbage Picking find has revealed that you can set up a rhythm section with harmony. And the harmony, for some reason only uses the piano 1 setting can be expanded to have two voices by splitting the keyboard and selecting a different voice for voice two. And that second voice doesn’t just play the same progression, from what I can tell. So you end up with a pretty creative sound to which you can add a melody to.

Unfortunately, the sound volume of the rhythm/harmony section is much higher than the melody, so you have to tweak the volumes of each of the sections to level things out. I kinda wish the 30 watt speaker system was a little more powerful, but I’ve purchased RCA patch cables so that I can record to both my Zoom H8 handy dandy recorder and my iOS devices. We’ll see how that goes.

And as a side note, here’s a link to the English section of the owners manual: https://www.manua.ls/yamaha/clavinova-cvp-50/manual

And remember to check out the original post and this one periodically as I add content to them. See ya later.

I go out for a walk evenings when the temperature has dropped, and in this part of Vegas trash day is Friday. I occassionaly find goodies left out as trash to use in my found art creations. But last Thursday night I came across a different kind of find, somebody had tossed a Yamaha Clavinova. a CVP-50 to be exact. So I got my handtruck and proceeded to haul it home. Damn, it weights a ton. I guess Yamaha finally learned how to cut the weight in later models, but I’m guessing its 125-150 pounds. My back still hurts from lifting and hauling it around.

Then I dug up a copy of the manual on the internet to see what was state-of-the-art Clavinova in 1989. Turns out this model is roughly as powerful as Yamaha’s cheapo models now, with one gent basically telling people to spend no more than $200 for one. It does have features that newer models don’t have, like a 30 watt per channel sound system. But basically its a 16 voice polyphony, with a selection of 22 voices and a drum section “synthesizer”.

It also has a rhythm section with 31 selections and a variation button. On top of these 31 selections of popular rhythms, you can also record a maximum of 10 rhythms of your own choosing. I think you store these 10 rhythms to the floppy drive (remember, this is 1989 tech), though it may store them in memory because there’s a warning if you store stuff in the Clavinova, turn it on every couple of days as that’s how long the memory persists without power.

Now for the negatives. Every E key makes no sound, as well as all the A# keys. And one of the black keys sticks, so if I want a fully functioning instrument, it apparently means a teardown.