Yamaha Party Trick

[sk-1]

Here's a nice little trick that should work with all Yamaha PSS and VSS models.  It's not really a bend, but it should offer some practical use with expanding the bending possibilities of most Yamaha keyboards.

It's pretty simple really... and some of you might already know this one.

All you do is hold down the top two piano keys with your fingers while switching on the keyboard. When the keyboard has turned on, just wait a couple of seconds and then let go.  Now you will find that every single button and control on the keyboard will play a tone when you press it or slide it.  Even the volume and selection sliders will play notes.  And if you press all the buttons one-by-one in sequence, from left-to-right or right-to-left across the control panel, you will notice that it follows some kind of arpeggio, creating a scalar-like tune.

I'm pretty sure this must be an undocumented easter egg, because it works on all of my Yamaha boards.  And it always seems to use the default tone, which is piano on most boards... but it'd be cool to discover how to select other instruments by switching on with other keys selected, etc.

Let me know if anyone here discovers other goodies and features while fiddling around!  

ENJOY!  

* Edit:  Sliders that select different functions or act as level selectors (like the digital synthesizer on the PSS-380) seem to work the best.  Volume sliders don't always do much of anything.

[SineHacker]

its known as the "engineering mode" i think, it would have been used at the end of a production line or when a keyboard was being repaired to test interface functions

[sk-1]

It's surprising how relatively few people know about this trick.  I'd say about 1 in 20 people I've told said they already knew about it.  It's good to spread these things around as it promotes experimentation, just like any cool bending trick or easter egg that gets discovered

[Nixot]

I discovered that on my PSS-280 when I was around seven. I held down as many keys as I could and turned it on. I eventually narrowed it down to all the white keys in the top octave. I thought it was a bug until I posted about it on Youtube.