The Yamaha QY10 is a hand-held music workstation produced by the Yamaha Corporation in the early 1990s. Possessing a MIDI sequencer, a tone generator and a tiny single-octave keyboard, the portable and battery-powered QY10 enables a musician to compose music while traveling.
Released by Yamaha in 1990, the QY10 was the first device offering the facilities of a music workstation in a portable package. In response to its design, the music technology press coined the term "walkstation", a portmanteau of the words "Walkman" and "workstation". The QY10 sold well, indicating that there was a market for these devices, so Yamaha followed it up in 1992 with the more powerful QY20 and QY22. [1] Subsequently, both Yamaha (most Yamaha QY sequencers) and Roland (the Roland PMA-5) have produced walkstations, although neither officially use the term for their products.
In 1992, Novation took advantage of the QY10's success by releasing a companion keyboard, the Novation MM10. The top of the keyboard has a slot which securely accommodates a QY10, and short cables connect the two units together. With two octaves of full size velocity-sensitive keys, the MM10 overcomes a significant limitation of the QY10: its lack of a proper keyboard. Combined, they constitute a complete, if basic, music workstation.
During the 1990s, electronic musical equipment became more dependent on large and sophisticated graphical displays. However, the QY10's display is a small LCD panel which accommodates only 16 characters of text. This made it feasible for the Kentucky LCD Interface Project to modify the QY10 with a speech interface as an assistive technology for the blind.
The QY10 was discontinued in the mid-1990s.
The main feature of the QY10 is its eight track sequencer. With its "pattern"-based design, it was more suited to supporting song writing rather than creating full musical compositions.
A pattern is a short sequence of backing music played on bass guitar, percussion and two other instruments. Patterns for various musical styles are built into the QY10, such as European house music, rhythm and blues and bossa nova. Users may also write their own patterns, which must be written in the key of C major. When playing a song, the QY10 automatically rescales patterns to match a selected chord.
The eight tracks of the sequencer are thus divided into two groups: four standard sequencer tracks and four tracks dedicated to pattern playback. The latter are typically programmed as one "backing track" which stores a sequence of pattern numbers and chord changes.
The QY10's sequencer data is maintained by an internal back-up battery, but it may also be stored externally by transferring it to a suitable device, such as a MIDI equipped computer.
The QY10's tone generator is a sample-based synthesizer using Yamaha's 12-bit Advanced Wave Memory synthesis technology. The tone generator is eight part multi-timbral (i.e., eight instruments may sound at once) and 28 note polyphonic (i.e., 28 notes may sound at once), which provides adequate support for sequences written on the unit. In other respects, however, the tone generator is quite limited. Only 30 instruments and one drum kit with 26 sounds are available. Furthermore, instruments must be either centered or panned completely left or right. These limitations can be understood in the context of the QY10's primary role as a composition tool, rather than as a musical instrument.
Although the primary use of the QY10 is as a portable composing tool, it has other applications.
With its pattern-based sequencing system, it is particularly suited for use as an accompaniment device. However, unlike other sequencers in the QY series, the QY10 cannot auto-harmonize its backing tracks to chords played on an external MIDI keyboard.
Another application is as a general purpose MIDI sequencer, controlling instruments with far superior sounds than those available from its own tone generator. However, for this use, it has several disadvantages, including fixed MIDI channel assignments and limited support for MIDI control information. The pattern-based design of its sequencer might also be considered a disadvantage in this context.
The QY10's legacy is the introduction of the walkstation and the QY sequencer. It has also influenced the physical design of many of Yamaha's subsequent devices, for example the MU5 sound module, the RY8 drum machine and the SU10 sampler. The CS1x, CS2x and AN1x have a small lip on the right hand end of the keyboard to accommodate a QY or SU sized module.
An electronic musical instrument or electrophone is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronic circuitry. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical, electronic or digital audio signal that ultimately is plugged into a power amplifier which drives a loudspeaker, creating the sound heard by the performer and listener.
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Digital music technology encompasses digital instruments, computers, electronic effects units, software, or digital audio equipment by a performer, composer, sound engineer, DJ, or record producer to produce, perform or record music. The term refers to electronic devices, instruments, computer hardware, and software used in performance, playback, recording, composition, mixing, analysis, and editing of music.
A music sequencer is a device or application software that can record, edit, or play back music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically CV/Gate, MIDI, or Open Sound Control (OSC), and possibly audio and automation data for DAWs and plug-ins.
A digital piano is a type of electronic keyboard instrument designed to serve primarily as an alternative to the traditional acoustic piano, both in the way it feels to play and in the sound produced. Digital pianos use either synthesized emulation or recorded samples of an acoustic piano, which are sounded through an internal loudspeaker. They also incorporate weighted keys, which recreate the feel of an acoustic piano. Some digital pianos are designed to also look like an upright or grand piano.
A music workstation is an electronic musical instrument providing the facilities of:
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Novation Digital Music Systems Ltd. is a British musical equipment manufacturer, founded in 1992 by Ian Jannaway and Mark Thompson as Novation Electronic Music Systems. Today the company specializes in MIDI controllers with and without keyboards, both analog and virtual analog performance synthesizers, grid-based performance controllers, and audio interfaces. At present, Novation products are primarily manufactured in China.
Yamaha XG is an extension to the General MIDI standard, created by Yamaha. It is similar in purpose to the Roland GS standard.
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A wind controller, sometimes referred to as a wind synthesizer, is an electronic wind instrument and usually in the form of a MIDI controller associated with one or more music synthesizers. Wind controllers are most commonly played and fingered like a woodwind instrument, usually the saxophone, with the next most common being brass fingering, particularly the trumpet. Models have been produced that play and finger like other acoustic instruments such as the recorder or the tin whistle. The most common form of wind controller uses electronic sensors to convert fingering, breath pressure, bite pressure, finger pressure, and other gesture or action information into control signals that affect musical sounds. The control signals or MIDI messages generated by the wind controller are used to control internal or external devices such as analog synthesizers or MIDI-compatible synthesizers, synth modules, softsynths, sequencers, or even non-instruments such as lighting systems.
A walkstation is an electronic music device which provides musicians with the facilities of a music workstation in a portable package. The term was introduced as part of the marketing for the Yamaha QY10, presumably as a portmanteau of Walkman and workstation. Its usage is typically limited to the portable members of Yamaha's QY sequencer family.
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[The QY10, a] video cassette-size keyboard with rubber keys[,] doesn't exactly sound like an inspiring new piece of kit. But inspiring it was to a great many people and it went on to become one of Yamaha's most popular products for 1991. [So] it will come as no surprise to learn that the QY10 has been overhauled, revamped and re-jigged into the shape of the QY20.
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