Switching to a Yamaha P-121 Keyboard

Octover 1st, 2024
ech, music, piano
The keyboard is a bit of an awkward instrument to travel with. It's quite large, to the point that you have to give up at least one seat in a typical car. What makes this especially frustrating is that I don't actually use the whole 88 keys:

The very lowest notes tend to be boomy, while the higher notes are just not very useful in playing the kind of music I play. I use a bit over five octaves (B0-D6, 31-1175 Hz).

At the same time I've been wanting to have a separate keyboard for taking to gigs. The ideal, really, would be to have an entire duplicate rig, which would halve the amount of setup and teardown involved, since I would only need to set up and pack away at gigs. This is enough extra effort and expense, however, that for now I'm just duplicating the keyboard (and stand).

I decided to get a Yamaha P-121:

It is the discontinued 73-key version of the P-125, which is the ~current version of my P-85. [1] Which made it a bit hard to find one, but there was one new-in-box shipping from Japan on eBay. I was a bit nervous, but it worked out fine.

The P-121 turns out to be very close to what I want: sounds and action very similar to my preferences, Yamaha's build quality and reliability, better condition than my P-85. The main downside is they didn't pick exactly the right keys to drop:

After telling it to transpose down an octave I still do have all the keys I need, but the keys below B0 are really pretty useless while I might very occasionally use keys higher than E6 if I had them.

I strongly considered telling it to transpose down a fourth and lying to myself about what key I'm playing in. In some ways this isn't too different from teaching myself to play trumpet in standard pitch, but I think it would be likely enough to cause trouble when playing other people's pianos that I shouldn't.

This is not an especially careful packing job, but it's really nice being able to put all my gear in back without folding down any seats:

I put a lot of stuff on my keyboard, and I need a way to keep it all from falling off. Because this keyboard is narrower, though, not everything fit. I made a holder for the computer keyboard I use for buttons:

Everything else just velcros on:

The box on the left is a box I made a few months ago that combines my custom switch box and my embedded whistle synth.

Here are the current p121 settings I use:

  • Piano + lowest F: transpose down one octave
  • Piano + third lowest E: disable reverb
  • Metronome + rhythm + highest D: internal speakers off
  • Metronome + rhythm + lowest A: disable automatic power off

For a case, I ordered a cheap 76-key fabric case on Amazon. It's a bit floppy because it's designed for a fatter keyboard, but there are velcro straps inside that hold it securely. I did have to tie a pair of knots in each strap to keep it from flopping around.


[1] Technically, the P-125a is the current version, but all the "a" means is that they removed USB audio support.

Referenced in:

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Effective Altruism: Importance, Tractability, Neglectedness

One of the most distinctive features of effective altruism is the use of the importance, tractability, and neglectedness framework for evaluating charities.

via Thing of Things April 23, 2025

Impact, agency, and taste

understand + work backwards from the root goal • don’t rely too much on permission or encouragement • make success inevitable • find your angle • think real hard • reflect on your thinking

via benkuhn.net April 19, 2025

Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

When I thought about this question it was really hard to figure out because the way it's phrased it's essentially either a chicken just pops into existence, or an egg just pops into existence, without any parent animals involved. I thought about t…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts April 13, 2025

more     (via openring)