Yamaha Genos | Keyboard Workstation

Genos surpasses everything we've done before with its unmatched sound quality, unparalleled realism and its host of powerful workstation features.

The result is a keyboard that you can relax and unwind with at home, try out new songs with in the project studio, record with in the commercial studio and perform with on stage.

Genos is the ultimate keyboard.

Welcome to the new world of Digital Workstations. Genos is the new benchmark in Digital Workstation sound, design and user experience. Whether you are in a recording studio or on stage, Genos will inspire and intensify your musical creation and performance.

The best sound quality ever on a Digital Workstation

Powered by specially developed Yamaha technology, the sonic quality of every Voice in Genos is beyond any other Digital Workstation you've ever played. Everything you hear, whether it be the beautiful CFX piano, the lush Kino Strings or the punchy Revo Drums, just blows you away!

AEM (Articulation Element Modelling)  

AEM technology simulates the characteristics of musical instruments. During a performance the technology sounds appropriate samples, in real time, according to what and how you play. Samples are smoothly joined and articulated – as would naturally occur on an actual acoustic instrument.

Content

Whether you create or perform music, you need great content. Genos features a diverse range of content, including 1,710 instrument sounds, 550 backing patterns, 216 arpeggios and more.

Expand your music

Continually expand the onboard content of your Genos by creating and installing your own custom or purchased packs. The scope of possibilities for new sounds and styles is virtually unlimited.

Yamaha Expansion Manager

YEM is a software app for Mac and Windows computers designed to manage the Expansion contents for Yamaha keyboards, and even enables you to create your own new sounds and loops.

Integrated flash memory

Genos includes 1.8GB of user ash memory with high speed reading/writing for your own Voices.

Revo! Drum & SFX Kits

Revo! Drum Kits recreate the most authentic sound of drums. Even when playing the same key multiple times, the sound is always of a different nuance, making it incredibly natural and realistic.

Vocal Harmony & Synth Vocoder

You can automatically apply various Vocal Harmony effects to your voice as you sing, or you can use the Synth Vocoder to craft the unique characteristics of your voice onto synthesizer and other sounds.

Effects

From Reverb to Distortion, Rotary Speaker to Compressor, Genos boasts unprecedented DSP power. Using the same VCM technology as Yamaha's professional high-end mixing consoles, Genos has the tools to create the perfect sound. Not only do the effects sound great, they look great too – with a stunning graphical user interface. 

Control Your Music

Control your music with new Live Controllers

A wide variety of functions can be assigned to the 6 knobs and 9 sliders to control your music through Genos.

The Live Control view provides instant visual confirmation of your adjustments of knobs and sliders without interrupting the main display.

Intuitive and fast control

Genos features an intuitive interface for music making and sound creation. Select and change parameters directly with the new 9" colour touch screen. While performing, you often need to act fast to access certain features. Choose from a range of functions to set to the 6 assignable panel buttons and with just a single touch, you can instantly recall your desired function.

Style Engine

Genos features a variety of rhythmic backing patterns and accompaniments (called 'Styles') in a variety of di erent musical genres. Styles feature sophisticated patterns to inspire your creativity. You give the idea and Genos will react to you.

Registration Memory

The Registration Memory function allows you to save (or 'register') virtually all panel settings to a Registration Memory button, and then instantly recall your custom panel settings by simply pressing a single button.

Shaping Your Idea

Recording function (MIDI/Audio)

Quickly record your performance as an audio (WAV) or Standard MIDI File (SMF) with the Quick Recording feature. For more complex arrangements, Multi Recording features a fully functional 16-track MIDI sequencer with realtime and steptime functionality. When you're happy with your recording, it can be stored to the internal User Drive or saved to USB Memory for easy sharing.

Digital output

The new S/PDIF Digital output can be connected to compatible studio equipment or home theatre to output audio from Genos without any loss in quality.

Turn great ideas into reality

Start with the original idea of a song, pick an instrument Voice and Style of your choice. Play and work out the arrangement and capture it as a MIDI song. Then, overdub some sounds and create your demo or even your nished track.

Arpeggio

Genos has 216 Arpeggios to enhance your performance. There are a variety of arpeggio types, some are straight forward instrument arpeggios, others recreate strumming guitar effects and controller arpeggios automate Live Control by adjusting sound filters in realtime as you perform.

High quality keyboard action

The FSX keyboard features a premium action with aftertouch. The keys are created in a high-precision manufacturing process for
an incredibly durable keybed, enhanced key stability and fast action. The 76-key professional keyboard features enhanced touch response allowing for highly expressive and dynamic performances.

Direct Access

The Direct Access feature provides a shortcut to a wide variety of Genos functions. Simply press the Direct Access button followed by another panel button or footswitch to jump directly to relevant controls in the display.

Deliver Your Best Performance

Enhance your performance

Whatever genre of music you wish to perform, Genos is ready to accompany you with 550 world- class arrangements, punchy drums and powerful DSP. Never has there been a more perfect personal backing band.

Seamless performance and never ending music

Playlist is a new function which can quickly setup Genos, no matter how large your repertoire is. Organise your Registration Memories into convenient Playlists for instant access during your performance.

Whilst performing, you can cross fade between two audio les with the new Dual Player. The Dual Player can playback two Audio Songs (or one Audio Song and one MIDI Song) simultaneously and make smooth transitions between them.

Design

Every curve of Genos is designed to focus attention on the performer. From the back, audiences will admire the dynamic design of Genos. From the front, the performer sees an inviting and reliable place for creating music.

Add some flavour to your performance

The Multi Pads can be used to play a number of short pre-recorded rhythmic and melodic sequences that allow you to add impact and variety to your keyboard performance.

Audio Link Multi Pad

Multi Pads do not only work with MIDI data, they also allow you to create unique, new pad content with your own audio (WAV) data for playing back during your performance.

High quality output

The audio output of Genos is a completely new design, delivering professional quality sound from your keyboard.

New output circuit

The new 32bit Digital Audio Converter (DAC) provides high quality de ned sound across a wide frequency range, ensuring Genos always cuts through the mix.

Sub out

Genos features four Sub line-out connections that you can use to adapt your sound to various situations.

Apps and More

Yamaha Expansion Manager

Yamaha Expansion Manager (YEM) is mission control for managing Expansion content on your keyboard. Reorganise and install Expansion Packs comprising of Voices, Styles, Registrations and more. With support for WAV, AIFF, SoundFont and REX formats, you can even create your own original Voices and Drum Kits and install on your keyboard.

SongBook+

SongBook+ is the fit-for-stage app for iPad that allows you to have your songs with lyrics, music notation and more on hand when performing. With Genos it's very easy to link the selection of a song on iPad to the corresponding registration on the keyboard and vice versa. SongBook+ has received many positive reviews from enthusiastic musicians.

MEGAEnhancer

MEGAEnhancer is a software program that converts XG/GM song data (Standard MIDI File) to song data specially enhanced to be played back using an instrument or tone generator containing MegaVoices. MEGAEnhancer automatically makes conventional song files with instruement parts such as guitars and bass sound much more realistic and authentic. The converted song data can be used only on the model which you selected before converting.

Premium Pack

Premium Packs will expand your music library by adding new Voices, Styles, and more. It gives you a new instrument sound at the same or even higher quality than the factory preset sounds.

Cubase

Cubase is one of the most popular digital audio workstations of our time. With Cubase, you can record your performance into separate MIDI tracks then arrange and edit the playing data after you recorded into Cubase.

Behind the Scenes

Product Planning

Before development could start, we needed to make a plan. We visited many Digital Workstation players to gather their ideas and opinions about a new product and discovered they wanted something which would beat their expectations, something surprising and exciting. So, we went back to the drawing board and made plans not just for a new flagship but for an entirely new generation of Yamaha Digital Workstation. We call it 'Genos'.

Hardware Engineering

For Genos, we focused on delivering a great sound and making an easy to use yet performance focused user interface.
We re-designed the circuitry at component level to achieve a crystal clear sound output and a high performance microphone input. By adding the knobs, sliders and sub-display, we have created an intuitive interface for performers to be able to shape their sound in real-time.

Mechanical Engineering

As you can see, for a keyboard instrument, Genos has a very unique shape. It was a big challenge to transfer the designer's idea into reality, but we made it! The rounded bottom shape of Genos was probably most challenging part to realise. We had to ensure the absolute stability of Genos on keyboard stands whilst also achieving our designer's wish for a rounded arc shape.

Software Engineering

In the software engineering team, we took time to carefully consider and understand the users and how they want to use this product. As a result, we decided to make the software completely new. Although challenging, we always strived to create the best tool for our users and we are proud of the engine we have developed for Genos. With the intuitive Home Screen interface, Live Control with context aware Sub-Display, Playlist with search functionality and Assignable Buttons providing quick access to features in the main display.

Sound Designing

In the sound design team, we wanted to break through previous constraints to create the best sounding Yamaha keyboard. We are confident you'll hear the Genos difference. For the first time in any Yamaha keyboard, the Genos features our newly sampled C7 Grand Piano Voice. We're sure this, along with the huge variety of high quality preset content inside Genos, will be the perfect material for making your music.

Product Design

To design Genos we needed to understand how the instrument will be used in real life. So we travelled to many venues and experienced Digital Workstations being played live at a variety of music events. From the performers view a clean, unobtrusive shape is preferred, allowing them to concentrate on delivering their performance. As an audience member, we noticed we mostly saw the bulky and boxy backside of keyboards, which created a barrier between the audience and performer. We imagined a design with a Static shape for the performer and a Dynamic shape for the audience. We wanted to emphasise the performer, to make them stand out on stage, to allow for connection between musician and audience. To do this we used an arc shape, which is a reflection of the musician's arms, introducing dynamics and movement to the design, synchronizing musician, Genos and audience.