(Source: Yamaha Europe)

Jools Holland, one of the UK’s most popular pianists, has put his tour piano, a Yamaha GT7 digital piano, on auction. It’ll be auctioned at the Bonhams’ Autumn sale of Fine Pianos without reserve, and all proceeds will go towards the Drake Music Project.

FYI, production of this particular Yamaha GT7 model has been discontinued, so you’ll be getting a potential antique as well. On a related note, Holland has announced that he will be replacing this piano with a “similar upgraded model”.

[News via Yamaha Europe]

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No, this isn’t a competition for the Guitar Hero video game. We’re talking about real guitars in a competition at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco that is to be judged by six celebrity judges, i.e. Joe Satriani, Steve Lukather, Ritchie Kotzen, Rafael Moreira, Shredmistress Rynata and Steve Read.

The 10 finalists are:

• David Powers (Brewster, New York)
• Sergei Roudzinski (Russia)
• Patrick Woods (Winona Lake, Indiana)
• Joe Cefalu (Boise, Idaho)
• Ed DeGenaro (Seattle, Washington)
• Trey Alexander (Lancaster, Pennsylvania)
• Josh Karickhoff (New York, New York)
• Anton Tsygankov (St. Peters, Missouri)
• Ron LoCurto (Kenmore, New York)
• Nathan Hahn, (Waxahachie, Texas)

If you’re interested in watching the event, you might want to book tickets online.

[News via Guitar Player]

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(Source: The Courier Mail)

Some people might consider destroying pianos as art, but we can assure you that we’re not part of them. And apparently, most aren’t either. The Arts Queensland-sponsored (Read: Tax-payer money) chainsawing has received backlash from a variety of music-loving people – from piano teachers to concert organisers.

After all, that’s AU$3000 of public money down the drain – all of which could have been channeled to more productive uses. Heck, there are tons of children from lower-income families who would have loved this particular piano.

Art? Probably. Worth it? No way. But if the artist, Rebecca Cunningham, used her own money, this would be a whole other story altogether.

[News via The Courier Mail]

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(Source: Amazon)

There’s now one, or more accurately, four more reasons to get an Epiphone Les Paul Studio or Les Paul 100 electric guitar. According to a recent news release, Epiphone will give out an Electric Essentials Pack free with any one of the two guitars, from August 1st to September 30th this year.

The pack will contain a premium 20′ cable, a nylon guitar strap, a 12-pack of picks and a Masterbilt acoustic video. Admittedly, these are nothing to die for, but they are free.

P.S.: I wonder whether they’ll be giving out this pack to those who win a Les Paul through their recent sweepstakes.

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(Source: Gibson)

This is the second CP-series Yamaha stage piano / keyboard launched with the Clavinova CLP-240PE digital piano (the first was the CP300). Unlike the CP300, however, the CP33 is targeted at the budget pianist given that its going at “only” ~US$1300 – around half the price of the CP300.

It still isn’t cheap, but you should find more than enough features to justify its purchase. Like the rest of the CP-series keyboards, this 88-key Graded Hammer keyboard comes with AWM tone generation, robust MIDI functions, real-time controllers, and a USB terminal. Specific to it are 28 original voices – though none of these have the degree of customization given to those of the CP300 (which has 50 original voices in total).

All in all, it looks like a good buy for an experienced amateur looking to bring his/her music on stage. But musicians looking for advanced studio-type features may have to look elsewhere.

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(Source: Gibson)

Simultaneously released with the Clavinova CLP-240PE digital piano are two CP-series stage pianos, a.k.a. keyboards. The first one we’ll talk about is the Yamaha CP300 – one of the company’s flagship keyboards.

This 88-key Graded Hammer keyboard replaces the aging P250, and comes with a 16-track sequencer and 50 original voices – inclusive of grand piano voices customized with String Resonance (with harmonic overtones), Stereo Sustain (with open strings and pedaling) and Key-Off Samples (with dampers on piano strings).

The rest are mostly fundamental Yamaha keyboard specs., so we might as well stop here and look at it from “above”. The CP300 is clearly a full-featured keyboard – with all the jing-bangs and what-nots you will need. Of course, this also means that you’ll have to be prepared to pay the US$2000+ price retailers will demand for one of these.

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(Source: Gibson)

Yamaha recently launched the Clavinova CLP-240PE – a mid-level digital piano which few will find particularly striking bar one aspect. It will come with what Yamaha calls “…a high end, polished ebony finish…” – something it claims doesn’t come too often with mid-range models.

While not untrue, I find it rather ludicrous to make it a key selling point of a digital piano (at least, that’s what Yamaha seems to be doing). But let’s forget about that and return to more solid stuff.

The CLP-240PE, like the rest of its CLP-200-series brethren, comes with two key “technologies” (you know, the ones with all the fancy names and acronyms). One: Advanced Wave Memory (AWM) tone generation for instrument realism. Two: Dynamic Stereo Sampling (DSS) piano samples which allow for subtly different sounds when you hit the keys differently.

Overall, Yamaha’s latest Clavinova-series piano looks good, and sounds good specs-wise. But it really isn’t very different from other digital pianos in its class – except for that “high-end ebony-finish”, of course.

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