The Yamaha DJX a Ground-Breaking Hip-Hop Keyboard

 The Yamaha DJX a Ground-Breaking Hip-Hop Keyboard

Jazz gig, pop music, sampling, drum beats, sound effects, sequencing, midi, all instrument sounds, Hip-Hop scratch, play with no electrical cord just batteries, is there a keyboard that can do all this?  Yes there is, and it is named the Yamaha DJX or more technically the Yamaha PSRD1-DJX Digital Keyboard.  This ground breaking keyboard was introduced by the Yamaha Corporation in 1998.  It was designed to be a relatively inexpensive portable keyboard with an emphasis on Hip-op or Rap sounds with DJ functionality.  But what made this keyboard so unique was the Hip-Hop sampled sounds, scratch board and high quality instrument voicing all wrapped up in a cordless (power AC adapter cord could be used) battery powered digital keyboard for a price of about $150. 

            The Yamaha DJX Keyboard or DJX for short, had functions that were new and innovative at the time. For example, on the middle top area of the keyboard there is a “scratch strip.”  The scratch strip is an electronic device that allows you to run your finger along a rubber membrane to reproduce the sound of a DJ “scratching” records.  To compliment this, the DJX has a bank of sampled sounds like a record with scratches playing in the beginning part where there is no music playing just scratch on a record.  Other samples include a wide variety of actual human voices saying catchy dance or pop phrases.  You could combine keystrokes to create whole sentences or clips of words.  Hitting the proper keys in the sample section could produce the phrase with a female voice saying “Oh Baby, Baby!”  or a male voice saying “Let’s get down…” and many other phrases.  This is a very impressive keyboard.  If you weren’t satisfied with the samples that came pre-loaded on the keyboard you could sample your own.  About 8 different instrumental or vocal samples lasting up to 8 seconds each can be loaded into the keyboard by the user. 

            Yamaha chose to include its state of the art Yamaha 4-operator FM sound chip (YM2164) to augment this 61 key keyboard.  This sound chip accurately reproduces the sound of most any instrument like brass horns, string instruments, bass and drums.  23 different drum kits are included.  This sound chip also has the capability of producing electronic synthesizer modulations.  There is a pitch bend/modulation wheel on the left side of the DJX that allows you to shift the pitch or modulation of a sound in real time.  And to top it off, the DJX comes with programmable MIDI and sequencing functions.  You can create a whole song and store it in the keyboard or control other digital sound devices using the MIDI functions.  The keyboard is polyphonic and is capable of playing multiple sounds at the same time.  There are more costly and complicated keyboards that do the same things a DJX can do, they may have more memory to store stuff, but that is about it.  Most of them, if not all of the expensive keyboards are not cordless.  Think of the possibilities.  To find out more about the DJX go to http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical-instruments/keyboards/digitalkeyboards/djx/?mode=model  online.

If you are new to digital keyboards, search for tutorials with the keywords MIDI and Sequencer.  For DJs, beginner and experienced musicians, the Yamaha DJX might be just what you are looking for.