Yamaha’s latest keyboard action features a broad dynamic range and faithful response to every nuance of touch that puts a wide expanse of tone—from delicate to bold—at the pianist’s fingertips. The highly consistent grand piano hammers replicate the pleasing response felt when the hammers strike the strings, enabling precise control of the tone. Highly absorbent synthetic-ivory white keys and synthetic-ebony black keys prevent slipping even during extended play and feel just like those of a grand piano.

GrandTouch™ keyboard features wooden keys that showcase Yamaha’s expertise with wood for pianos. Just as with grand piano keyboards, the solid wood is cut from the very best parts of well-dried lumber, making the keys more resistant to warping than keyboards made of laminated wood. The wooden texture and structure of the keys create a more grand piano-like feel.

When playing a digital piano, the back area of the keys may prove to be a challenge to full musical expression. This is because the back of the key is closest to the fulcrum of the action. The closer to this pivot point that you strike the key, the less leverage you have and the more strength you need to apply. The greater length of GrandTouch™ keys give the player more leverage, allowing for better expressive control, even at the backs of the keys. This is the same support length found on the Yamaha S3X premium grand piano*, and is the longest support length used on any digital piano.

*As of July 2023

Every single key on a grand piano keyboard is weighted differently. This is because the strings for each note are slightly thinner and shorter in the treble register, becoming thicker and longer towards the bass register. The 88-key Linear Graded Hammers of the Clavinova is the first-of-its-kind to faithfully duplicate this graded touch with differing weights and key return on each one of its keys. This results in a feel and response that is astonishingly like that of a grand piano, and allows players to gain an appreciation of a more authentic touch.

Counterweights are embedded in the keys of a grand piano to balance the weight of the hammers and offer more precise control when playing delicately at low volumes. The Clavinova features carefully adjusted counterweights for improved playability when playing pianissimo with a light touch, and better key return in rapid passages. The keyboard of the Clavinova has been fine-tuned to offer optimal balance, emphasizing its superb playability and grand piano response.

Using the damper pedal subtly alters the nature of a piano’s sound and is essential to providing the pianist with all the necessary expressive tools to convey their musical vision.

Clavinova digital pianos feature a damper pedal that continually detects depression depth and allows halfpedaling, which lets players make minute adjustments to pedal depression and return, changing the depth and character of their piano sound.

The GP Response Damper Pedal offers a grand piano-style resistance curve, starting out light to the touch and growing heavier as the pedal is depressed further. This allows players to become accustomed to the nuances of delicate pedaling.

Clavinova pianos boast excellent playability and versatile functions, along with a refined, authentic design that blends a compact form with modern aesthetics in a manner befitting the instrument that sets the contemporary standard for pianos. At the heart of the Clavinova design concept is the way the player feels when they take their seat in front of a Clavinova piano. Unnecessary elements are removed from the player’s field of vision to create a convincingly natural space that feels just like sitting at an acoustic piano. A Clavinova piano is a part of the player’s everyday life—contemporary accents and color variation are available to mesh with any interior design or lifestyle. The CSP-295 has an elegant design that has both the appearance and feel of an acoustic piano, featuring a rotating lid with a music stand, and the absolute minimum set of controls.

The interaction and interplay of the hammers, dampers, and strings inside a grand piano respond to the subtlest nuances of the pianist’s touch, creating a limitless range of tonal expression. Touch refers to the pianist’s control, not only of intensity (softness/loudness) in playing and releasing the keys, but also of the speed and depth with which the keys are pressed. The Grand Expression Modeling introduced in the CSP-200 Series translates the widely varied input from the pianist’s fingers into the same limitless tonal variation of a grand piano.

This makes it possible to vary the output by playing the keys to different depths and with different speeds, even when using techniques such as trills or legato or emphasizing the melody over the accompaniment. Grand Expression Modeling excels at faithfully reproducing the output expected of these techniques in many well-known songs. In Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” a loose touch creates the faint tone that makes the melody stand out more crisply. In Liszt’s “Un Sospiro,” the accompanying arpeggios accent the melody without overwhelming it, and varied expression of the melody gives it the same quality as vocals. In the last of the Chopin nocturnes, trills, legato, and other delicate techniques where fingers seem to float over the keys deliver the airy, smooth tonal expression required. Playing such pieces on a highly expressive piano helps the pianist learn various techniques and experience the same joy of expression as a painter, but through sound.

Clavinova grand piano sounds are recorded from several world-renowned concert grand pianos. One of them is the CFX, Yamaha’s top-flight concert grand piano. Pianists around the world are enamored with the impressive, dazzling, richly expressive sound of the CFX in concert halls. Another sampled concert grand is the Imperial, the flagship model of Bösendorfer, a time-honored Viennese piano brand with an ardent following. The Imperial is known for its abundance of color and natural, warm feeling. Yamaha faithfully reproduces the idiosyncrasies of these concert grand pianos by carefully recording the entire tonal range of each of the 88 keys, making minute adjustments to capture the most harmonious tones each piano has to offer.

One of the allures of the grand piano is the sympathetic resonance created by the vibration of the entire instrument. Clavinova pianos elaborately reproduce this rich sympathetic resonance through a groundbreaking technology called Virtual Resonance Modeling (VRM). VRM creates a richly varied sound by simulating the complex sympathetic tones created when the vibrations of the strings are propagated to the soundboard and other strings, corresponding to the timing and intensity of key playing and pedaling. CSP-200 Series pianos even replicate the sounds the dampers make when they are raised off the strings, in addition to the resonance of the duplex scaling, strings, soundboard, and case. Clavinova pianos allow you to enjoy the same momentary dynamics and deep sympathetic sounds that are produced by the entire body of a grand piano.

Binaural sampling is a method of sampling in which special microphones are placed on a mannequin’s head in the same positions as the pianist’s ears to capture piano sounds the way that they sound in reality.

We chose this method to create the ambience and full, natural resonance of acoustic pianos in Clavinova pianos. This makes pianists feel as though they are sitting at a grand piano even when they play with headphones on. The experience is so pleasant that they forget they are wearing headphones, no matter how long they continue to play.

On CSP-200 Series pianos, binaural sampling was used for the Bösendorfer Imperial as well as the Yamaha CFX. Yamaha achieves higher-definition binaural sound with a specially developed mannequin head and model ears used for the recording.

We also developed the Stereophonic Optimizer function to achieve the same effect for the piano effects. Stereophonic Optimizer technology replicates the natural diffusion of sound in headphones nearly as closely as binaural sampling for the piano voices other than the CFX and Imperial.

When a pianist plays a grand piano, they cause the entire body of the instrument to reverberate, and become enveloped in the colorful tones created from the combination of various acoustic elements in the air around them. The pianist becomes immersed in the diffusing sound and reverberation. The CSP-295 delivers this pleasant feeling through Grand Acoustic Imaging. The latest acoustic design and measuring technology create the same sound image and sound field of a grand piano despite the compact size of the digital piano. We optimally balanced and placed the bass, mid, and treble speakers to achieve the sound radiation and centroid characteristic of grand pianos so that each and every tone played through the speakers sounds like it was emitted from the proper place on an actual grand piano. The speaker placement and balancing replicates the sensation of the hammers striking the strings in front of the pianist, and the reverberations from the strings dissipating away from them. We also used a Bidirectional Horn to achieve the full reverberation of sounds emitted by the entire grand piano soundboard, replicating the sense of depth experienced when playing an acoustic grand piano.

This powerful 3-way system features mid and treble units, as well as bass speakers, which are available only on the CSP-295—and all units are optimally balanced and placed accordingly in the body to simulate the sound image of a grand piano. Additionally bidirectional horns deliver an abundance of sound, creating a natural sound field akin to the resonance from a grand piano soundboard. And since all speakers are hidden inside the cabinet, the piano-like appearance and sound are perfectly elegant.

Drawing from our experience in building both acoustic pianos and high-end speakers, the CSP-295 speaker cones use pulp from the same spruce wood used to make acoustic piano sound boards. The result is a more natural, piano-like attack to the sound that is more piano-like when you play the keys.

You can play music through the audio system on the CSP-200 Series* by using a Bluetooth-enabled smart device. You can stream audio data such as mp3 files. You can enjoy playing along with your favorite songs on your smart device.

*Availability of Bluetooth audio varies by country.

This convenient wireless connection between the instrument and the Smart Pianist app (on your smart device), lets you fully focus on your playing and enjoy music without worrying about cables.

*Availability of Bluetooth MIDI varies by country.

A USB cable (Type-C to Type-C) is included, and users who have a Smart Device with a Type-C terminal can conveniently connect the instrument to their smart device with a single cable.

*For users with Apple products equipped with a Lightning terminal, please use your genuine Apple USB-C to Lightning cable.

You can enjoy karaoke backing with songs stored in your Clavinova or downloaded. The lyrics are shown on the Smart Pianist app and the words change color as the song advances, so you know exactly when to come in.

Plug in a microphone, and you can sing along with your playing. The Vocal Harmony engine creates advanced sounding harmonies, enriching your voice and is even capable of correcting your pitch!

The recording function featured in Clavinova digital pianos allows you to record your performances* with a single touch, which is useful when you want to review your playing objectively. Additionally, you can record up to 16 tracks for simultaneous playback, so different hands can be recorded separately or overdub parts with different voices.

*Recordings are made in MIDI format, and can also be recorded to Smart Pianist App.