These Clavinovas are just packed with easy-play features to help everybody, especially complete beginners, play beautiful music right from the time they first sit down at the keyboard. Of course, accomplished players will love the stunningly realistic sound and piano touch that make the Clavinova the world's favorite. Best of all, the whole family can enjoy the magnificent beauty of music together.

AWM (Advanced Wave Memory) tone generation is widely acknowledged as the industry leader for total instrument realism. The story starts with CD-quality samples of the actual instrument - the piano voices are sampled in stereo for even greater realism - which are then digitally filtered according to how you play. As you play harder, the sound not only gets louder, its entire tonality changes just like the original instrument to give you a full range of artistic expression. With 133 panel voices plus a further 480 XG voices to choose from, the only limit on your artistic expression is your imagination.

Play a fast, densely orchestrated passage with lots of sustain, and a conventional digital piano quickly runs out of notes. And when that happens, the instrument has to cut off a sustained note every time you play a new one. But the new CVP Clavinovas have extended polyphony to help assure you always have the notes you need. The CVP98 has an unprecedented maximum 128-note polyphony.

The Organ combination voice lets you build your own custom organ sounds. Drawbars appear in the large LCD, just like on a classic organ. So you can quickly and intuitively adjust the flute volume, attack/chiff, length and percussive key click to create exactly the organ sound you want.

Built-in digital reverb allows you to add the sonic ambience of a wide variety of venues, from concert halls to intimate jazz clubs, bringing an extra dimension of realism to everything you play. And you can use the chorus to make any of the voices thicker and richer, letting you enhance your sound even more.

Further fine-tune your overall sound with the built-in digital equalization. Four presents - Jazz, Pop, Rock, and Classic - give you "that sound" you hear so often on professional recordings. Plus you can create custom equalization to exactly suit your taste and music, and store them in the registration memory.

The freely assignable split point lets you play one instrument with your left hand, and a different one with your right. For example, you could play bass with your left hand and vibes with your right and sound like a jazz duo all by yourself. What's more, dual mode lets you combine any two voices and play them in unison for rich, unique sounds.

Twelve full drum kits, all playable from the keyboard, let you get the authentic rhythm sounds you want for your music. Choose from standard, electronic, jazz, brush and many, many more.

Yamaha's GH (Graded Hammer effect) keyboard brings even more acoustic piano realism to the Clavinova. Naturally, it has all the subtle touch response that makes the Clavinova the world's favorite. Now, just like an acoustic, the weighting of the keys gets heavier from the higher registers to the lower. You get a satisfyingly weighty feel in the bass - perfect for adding real bottom to whatever you play. The treble keys are light and fast, helping your fingers to dance over quick melody notes.

The large display is your assurance of easy no-miss operation, with attractive graphics and helpful messages to keep you clearly in the picture every step of the way. Better yet, there's also a dedicated help function that allows you to call up an explanation at any time. So you can spend your time making music instead of studying manuals.

You can even make the CVP 98/96 the center of family sing-along fun. That's because lyrics from karaoke floppy disks can be shown in the display, offering yet another source of musical entertainment for all the family.

Yet one more amazing function available through the LCD is Yamaha's new Guide Control. With Guide Control, a miniature keyboard shows in the display, with a piano roll above it. As your playback software progresses, the notes in the piano roll scroll down the screen to show you when to play a note, while guide lamps over the keyboard show you which note to play. It's great training for anticipating fingering and rough hand positioning on the keyboard.

Three Guide methods let you select the best practice method for your skill level. Easy Play is the key to playing your favorite playback software songs in as little as 10 minutes. You simply play any key on the keyboard: as long as you have the correct timing, the music advances. When you've got the timing down, you can move on to Next Note mode which shows you where to play on the keyboard. If you need intensive practice of a difficult passage, Sound Repeat plays a short phrase over and over until you've got it down. Then finally, you can try a music-minus-one performance, where everything is there except the melody - the part you play.

The handy PC interface gives you convenient, direct connection to your Windows® or Macintosh® personal computer. And that opens the door to an almost infinite world of music. You can use your favorite sequencing software to drive the Clavinova. Download the Clavinova's midi data into your PC for use with an editing program. Enjoy the incredible variety of music playback software now available. Or even take a course of self-instruction in music.

In Single Finger mode, playing the keyboard with as little as just one finger to create a complete rhythm, bass and chord accompaniment. The Fingered mode allows more advanced players to play the entire chord manually. The Multi Finger mode lets you use either Single Finger or Fingered mode to generate the automatic acompaniment, while Full Keyboard mode responds to whatever you play across the entire keyboard.

100 built-in accompaniment styles, plus hundreds more on Yamaha Style Disks, cover just about any musical genre you can think of. What's more, you have intros, endings, fills and fade in/fade out available at the touch of a button, so you can avoid that cold mechanical feel so common with drum machines.

If you wish, you can also create your own custom rhythm and accompaniment styles. Start from scratch and build something totally original, or modify one of the existing styles - the choice is yours. When you're done, you can save your custom style internally (CVP98/96: 12 locations) or on floppy disk for recall at any time.

Want a stylish auto accompaniment that consists only of beautiful acoustic piano? You've got it with the new CVP Clavinovas. Offering all the sophistication and fingering ease of Yamaha's famous auto accompaniment but arranged for piano only, Pianist allows even beginners to give polished solo piano performances.

With Virtual Arranger, you can play simple chords and let the Clavinova do the rest: your chords are automatically embellished and a melodic accompaniment is generated automatically.

Each of the built-in styles features pre-programmed voice and effects setups available at the touch of a button. This means you can enjoy instruments and effects specially chosen by professionals to suit every accompaniment style you select. The CVP98 has 4 for a total of 400.

The registration memory lets you store 20 complete control panel setups for instant recall, allowing you to completely change the instrument's sound at the touch of a button. Better yet, the CVP96/98 even have a naming function, so you can save individual setups by the name of the song you use them with. It's a truly handy feature for live performance.

Whenever you're ready to record, the CVP Clavinovas are ready too. With 16 digital tracks to let you build up complicated, multipart arrangements and take full advantage of the hundreds of instrument voices available. Of course, you can save your performances to floppy disk for instant playback at any time. The only limit is your imagination.

To deliver the new CVP Clavinovas' stunning sound with real power and authority, all four instruments feature high power amplification. The CVP98 has an astonishing 60W x 4 output for the ultimate in dynamic range. The CVP98 is also equipped with a Power Bass function for truly roomshaking low end response.