What is the Yamaha Education Suite Y.E.S.5 (YES5)

Yamaha Education Suite 5 (Y.E.S. 5)
The Yamaha Education Suite—a set of learning tools that utilize the latest technology to make studying and practicing music on Yamaha Electronic Keyboards more fun and fulfilling than ever before!

The Yamaha Education Suite includes:

1. Lesson
The convenient and easy-to-use Lesson feature, guides you through the parts of a song—just like a patient teacher! Select from any one of many songs , and learn the left- and right hand parts independently at first, then together. Lesson features three easy steps that help you master each song: Listen and Learn, Timing and Waiting.
Lesson 1 (Listen & Learn) ....... Listen and learn the melody or rhythm of a selected Song.
Lesson 2 (Timing) .........Learn to play the notes at the correct timing along with the Song.
Lesson 3 (Waiting) .................... Learn to play the correct notes.

2. Built-in lighted Key Guide
When you are using the Lesson feature or the Dictionary, the key indicators tell you which keys
to play. Also, during song playback, they show the keys that are playing. When Light Guide is on, each key (of the notes in the Song) lights in succession showing you which keys to play and when.

3. Fingering Guide
The Fingering guide is shown on the display and shows you how to play the keyboard. When the Song is started, the fingering guide appears on the display and shows you which fingers you should use while playing.

4. Dictionary
Dictionary is a built-in “chord encyclopedia” that teaches you how to play specific chords by
showing lighting keyboards—perfect for when you know the name of a chord and want to quickly learn how to play it! The Dictionary function is essentially a built-in “chord dictionary” that shows you the individual notes of chords. It is ideal when you know the name of a certain chord and want to quickly learn how to play it.

5. Notice your Grade
The keyboards also has the Grade feature. Grade is a virtual “teacher,” evaluating your practice sessions and rating your performance over four levels. When the lesson Song has played all the way through in Lesson 2 or 3, your performance will be evaluated in four levels: OK, Good, Very Good, or Excellent.

Mind map through online Visual Thesaurus

I have often wondered how we think and innovate. How incredible human mind is for its capacity and capability which can cut through barriers of learning and knowledge. As fascinated as we are with the workings of the brain, so have there been efforts to replicate the innards of the human mind through artificial intelligence. We definitely have achieved some progress on this front. For the common folk, one may not have the benefit of twiddling with technologies or use artificial intelligence or gadgets, but some are available at hand to just explore how one's thought processes work. One such interesting tool I found on the net was the Visual Thesaurus.

Just as an example, I have the images here of what was in my mind when I was thinking of a title and a punchline for my blog. I just keyed in these words into the visual thesaurus and to my surprise I found that this is exactly the words that were going through my mind. The analogy of the human mind map is well represented through the Visual Thesaurus.

Give it a try to check what your visual thinking is upto!

Choosing Piano Keyboard for a child beginner

Not until recently did my little son had the craze for music until he found a Grand piano at his friend's home. He started playing on it and got hooked on to it so fast that he came back home with his newest demand - A Piano!

Well, while I was considering his request, his friend's dad happened to chat up with me and commended about my little son that he had a natural ability for the keyboard. So, with double confirmation, I started looking for a piano. Now was the question, Should I buy a real piano, or an electronic keyboard. After various considerations, I realised that keyboard was what I wanted. OK. now, which keyboard.

Look around and there are quite a couple of keyboards. With rapidly improvin technology, keyboards have become much sophisticated than ever is what I realised comparing to a 48 key Casio keyboard I had a couple of years ago..

So what are the considerations for buying this keyboard and how should I search it ? This was my shortlist.

1. The instrument should be able to teach a child all the chords in a friendly, phased manner.
2. Teaching alone is not sufficient, it should be able to analyse whether the child is learning.
3. The keyboard should have great features that would be good for years to come.
4. It should be close to a real piano.
5. Maximum budget of 200$


I didn't have much choices other than Casio and Yamaha. Both have a great number of choices and fabulous keyboards but I didn't need convincing that the lighted keyboards are the most appropriate ones for faster learning.

The lighted keyboards actually light up the keys that are to be pressed next to get the tune going.

Two great, most advanced keyboards I found were the Casio LK100 and Yamaha EZ200.

Both these are 61 Key Keyboards and after reading several blogs, articles, I realized that a minimum 61 key keyboard is required to start learning a piano although an 88 Key board is great. I didn't want too big a board either. Looked like these were great keyboards to start with.

There began my hunt for comparing the products.

Both these keyboards are perfect keyboards and are priced right for the great features they are offering. Casio LK 100 costs a third less than the EZ200 at the time of this article.

Great common features about Casio LK 100 and Yamaha EZ200

• 61 Keys, Over 100 songs, 100 instument types.
• 3 Step Lessons, Lighted keys..
• Headphone Compatible, so that learner can learn without disturbing others.
• MIDI compatible, can connect to a comuter to store any compositions etc.

Additional features that Yamaha keyboard has for the additional price you pay:

• Has a Chord Dictionary , Has a Grading system to provide feedback to the learner
• 32 note Polyphony ( Casio has 16). This means one can have
• Metronome ( produces beats at intervals for timing)
• Grand Piano Sound ( at a press of a button, the keyboard transforms to a Grand Piano)
• Real Stereo ( not just 2 speakers)
• Connects to a pedal so that learner can practice as if on a Real Piano.
• More Voices ( 367 in total)

Well, finally I settled for the Yamaha Piano for its features. Though slightly expensive, it is great for the money I spent on it.


My son's already learning !

Lightning from Clouds : Answer for our energy needs ?

Aaah the storm ! strike.. thunder..  what was that i missed ?  A tera million volts of electricity just zipped through and I just saw it disappear right in front of my own eyes.. and I didn't see it coming. and another one just a few miles across.. they are just all over.. so much charge, just gone in a moment ? well how much was lost ? a tera million volts or more ? What did we even lose ? what we lost was what we didn't capture.. wel how could I .. It is so immense and momentary and how could I reach to it and where could I store that all ? i just don't know. This is exactly whats going on every scientist's mind when the lightning strikes.. Alas I wished an idea flashed as well to bring this dream to fruition..

All that we need is a reservoir that could store this energy or an energy in converted form. Some of the ideas are to use the energy to create a hydrolysis of water and separate hydrogen and oxygen , store them for use later. Another possibility is to store this energy in large capacitors.

If that cant be done,  use the energy to melt a metal resorvoir with hi specifc latent heat and use the hot molten metal to produce steam; in a way thermal power..

Whatever the solution, the chances of beign able to use the power for a cleaner energy is definitely tue.

The cost of travelling through time

Is traveling through time a possibility ? Given the technologies and understanding of the limitations, how can we even get through the wrappers of time, experience it and come back to tell the tale ?

If it were possible, how would we estimate the cost to get there ? Is travelling farther in time going to cost more ? If travelling back by a day same going to cost the same to travel back several years ?

Is a Paperless economy really 'Green' ?

With Global warming fears increasing, 'save-the-earth' proponents are rapidly embracing e-mail storage as the 'go-green' option in place of using paper.

I sometimes wonder if this affinity for e-storage really amounts to saving trees and is an environment friendly step. Give it a serious thought and it looks like it is not really true.
Besides the benefit of being able to search for the information we need from these archives of data, they are causing more harm than benefit sitting there in the massive servers of corporates and the free e-mail service providers and your own personal PCs and Macs.

Well lets see how. More than 90% of the data we accumulate and stash away is never used. Think about it. All your e-mails are just lying there from several years. Is there a reason why you should continue to store it when you are sure that you wont need it again ?

Most of the electricity that we use comes from thermal power plants. It requires over a tonne of coal to provide enough electricity for 10 homes a day. Server farms where the data is housed have huge electricity requirements to be able to run the servers adn continue to store the data, run the air conditioners etc. And again these servers are doing nothing much but guarding the trash of e-mails and fies that would never be required by us. Statistics show that to store an MB of data for an year, an lb of coal is required. and all this leads to burning more coal and more greenhouse gases being let into the environment.

As much as we reduce the consumption of paper, one must make an honest effort to clean up all the trash email and just delete them all.

If you truly care for the environment, do it today, do it now.

Clean up those trash emails from your mail box !