Guide lights on the Clavinova, does it really help?

[zeeshan]

Hi,

I am geting ready to purchase my first Clavinova! The only thing that I am not sure is that if the guide light system on the clavinova is helpful in learning to play the piano.
Can one learn to play a moderate difficult piano peice by just using the guide light system?

I play piano as a hobby but I have not played much in the last ten years, due to some personal reasons. But now I want to get back into this hobby. I had been using my old Yamaha PSR-70 to practice for sometimes now. The biggest difficulty I am facing is the ability to read music. So I am wondering if the guide light system will help me learn to play piano.

Thanks
Zeeshan

[danielsanderson]

Personally, I've only found the guide lights useful for follow-along play situations where I thought I had hit the right key at the right time and continued on with the piece, but later noticed it wasn't following along. In general, the Score display is better at keeping track of where you are in a piece (assuming the music file you're playing renders well in Score mode). But it can get difficult to tell what keys it's waiting for at what times, even with the Score turned on. But other than that, the lights themselves do not provide a good way to learn a piece, or at least I haven't figured out a method for which they'd be useful.

I can imagine that they might be useful for someone just learning how to read music, playing along with simple pieces. It's nice to have a visual association between the notes on the page and the keys on the keyboard, before real head-ear-eye coordination is developed. I would hope that beginning students don't spend too much time on the lights, however; I can just as easily imagine them being a crutch, or even a hinderance. I actually think they're quite distracting under most circumstances.

The Guide Lights should most certainly not be the deciding factor in a purchasing decision, IMHO.

-- Dan

[Midi Magic]

Hi

To be perfectly honest, if you can't read music and you have'nt got a good ear then the lights are the only option left.

Everybody that has played with my piano has spent hours playing with the guide lights.

My daughter has learnt many pieces of music by using the lights.

Good Luck with your new piano.

[steve_d_howard]

I find the guidlights usefull for seeing if my daughters playing the right notes as her music reading skills are now better than mine, also if she gets the timing right then the lights don't light..

have fun
steve

[wally]

I've played the piano for more than 25 years, and can play pretty well. But I have dyslexia, which makes it very difficult to sight read from the score -- I've always had to memorize. I have to say that the guide lights on the CVP was my dream come true.

Yes, you can learn to play by using the guide lights alone. You'll want to use the lights along with the repeat function so that you break the piece into phrases and practice each phrase individually -- just like you should practice from the score. For a difficult piece, you can slow down the tempo to a crawl so that the lights don't all come on at once and confuse you.

I do miss the piano roll feature that Yamaha had on the CVP-9x and CVP-10x series. Yamaha replaced it in the newer models with the Score View which lets you read the notes just like it was on paper. With my challenge, the piano roll was much more valuable, which is why I kept my CVP-96 after I got my CVP-209.

Nevertheless, it's my opinion that the guide lights are worth the price of the piano!