CLP-800 Series

Our focus in developing digital pianos is to create instruments capable of the musical expression needed to play a broad range of classical pieces. This involves using digital technology to replicate the behavior of the hammers, strings, dampers, and other grand piano components, which depends on how the pianist plays, and the resulting tonal variation, which is essentially limitless. When we succeed in doing that, we enrich the piano’s capacity for musical expression to the level required to play classical pieces.

Toward this end, we carefully research how composers in each era played the instruments they played, the playing styles modern pianists use to play these classical songs on modern pianos, how that sounds, and ultimately the nature of the musical expression required to achieve that sound. Based on this knowledge, we digitally simulate subtle changes in the behavior of the strings and hammers and the resulting tonal variation caused by differences in players’ touch, each time coming one step closer to the grand piano experience.

For example, the type of musical expression required to play a classical song depends on the type of piano and context of the time when it was written. Mozart was a court musician—his songs were meant to be played indoors as background music so as not to disturb nobles as they dined. Also, he played a harpsichord—not the piano—so both the keys and sound were lighter. This is why when a modern pianist plays Mozart and his contemporaries on a modern grand piano, they play with a light touch rather than with heavy or full keystrokes to create an airy, harpsichord-like tone.

Clavinova CLP Series digital pianos are digital instruments with modern grand piano capacity for a broad range of musical expression. With the right combination of dynamics and articulation—from forte and piano to staccato, legato, tenuto, and more—you have the complex sensitivity required to play classical music, and can play Mozart’s music the way Mozart would.

Another area of focus in our development of digital pianos is the dialogue between the player and the instrument. For the player, the sounds the piano emits as they play are critical feedback for subsequent notes. The quality of this feedback is crucial for musical expression; thus, solving the mysteries of this feedback is the key to creating the sound of a digital piano.

The player plays, the piano responds, and the player continues to play. The player conveys the feelings they want to express, and the piano responds, in an ongoing exchange that forges a dialogue between the two. Music is a way to express human emotions and everything that exists in the world, and grand pianos have the range of tones, sounds, and volume needed to make music. The rich dialogue between the piano and the player is one in which the sound of the piano envelops the player, whose entire body receives it, and whose mind creates a vision of what to play next. To make this possible on digital pianos—which are shaped and produce sounds quite differently than grand pianos—we must create textured, clear sound spaces that allow a variety of sounds to spread and resonate in the same way as grand pianos while giving players the same feelings throughout their bodies.

For over a century, we have continuously studied the sound-producing mechanism of the grand piano—that is, how the strings vibrate, how their vibrations are transmitted to the soundboard and case, and how the sound radiates into the surrounding space and creates a distinct resonance that fills it. In developing the Clavinova, we use these principles and the latest tone generators and acoustic technologies to simulate in real time the full resonance created by the vibration of the entire instrument and replicate the sound image and sound field produced by grand pianos. We aim to create pianos that inspire excitement in players immediately when they start playing.

Achieving outstanding responsiveness of both keys and pedals—the interface between player and instrument—and sound that matches what the player feels as they play, is also key to Yamaha’s digital piano design philosophy.

Pianos should be responsive enough to maximize players’ ranges of expression. The key to enhancing the harmony of each instrument as a whole is properly matching the player’s input—the way they play the keys and control the pedals to produce the desired sound—with the resulting sound output.

When pianists tell us what they want in terms of touch, they speak metaphorically, saying they want the initial touch to feel like breaking through thin ice or that they want to be able to produce a “golden brown” sound. The fact that we have been able to translate these descriptions of artistic expression into digital technologies can perhaps be attributed to the wealth of knowledge and experience that generations of Yamaha developers have built up over more than 120 years of dialogue with pianists.

To accommodate players’ sensitivities, we must not only enhance the performance of the keys, pedals, and other elements of the piano, but also make every aspect of the experience of playing the instrument natural and musical and allow pianists to experience the sound and resonance they expect from their input. We will continue to update Clavinova pianos to ensure that they always accommodate players’ inherent artistic sensitivities.

One of the allures of the grand piano is the sympathetic resonance created by the vibration of the entire instrument. CLP-800 Series pianos reproduce a richer, more natural resonance than ever before, featuring a new tone generator chip paired with a groundbreaking technology called Virtual Resonance Modeling (VRM). VRM creates a richly varied sound by simulating the complex sympathetic tones created when the vibrations of the strings are propagated to the soundboard and other strings, corresponding to the timing and intensity of key playing and pedaling. This technology even replicates the sounds the dampers make when they are raised off the strings, in addition to the resonance of the duplex scaling, strings, soundboard, and case. CLP-800 Series pianos allow you to enjoy the same momentary dynamics and deep sympathetic sounds that are produced by the entire body of a grand piano.

Grand Expression Modeling is a groundbreaking technology that enables richly varied, textured musical expression in comparison to conventional digital pianos, which tend to offer little tonal variation, inevitably resulting in a rather flat output.

The interaction and interplay of the hammers, dampers, and strings inside a grand piano respond to the intensity, speed, depth, and other subtle nuances of the pianist's touch, creating a limitless range of tonal expression. This range comes from both types of tonal variation, the type controlled by the player and the type that occurs naturally as a result of physical phenomena happening inside the piano when it is played. When playing a grand piano, the pianist infuses their performance with different types of expression, from the force they apply when depressing the keys to what they decide to do with sustained notes in terms of releasing the keys to cut them or layering them with subsequent notes.

Simple tone generator algorithms on conventional digital pianos are not capable of this level of expression. On CLP-800 Series pianos, Grand Expression Modeling now senses the depth of the player's touch on every key in addition to the intensity and speed to precisely calculate how a grand piano would respond physically to the nuances of the player's input. As a result, players now have access to more capacity for musical expression than ever before on a digital piano.

This technology is the result of our advanced digital technology for sound as well as our extensive knowledge of the piano, which we owe to our many years of manufacturing grand pianos.

A grand piano is an instrument that amplifies sound throughout its large soundboard and case so that it resonates in the surrounding space. In contrast, digital pianos have a structural limitation—they can only produce sound through speakers. This results in the player and listeners hearing sounds differently depending on where they are in relation to the instrument, and the differences are more pronounced with digital pianos than grand pianos.

To overcome this structural limitation to the extent possible, Yamaha has applied a combination of knowledge and techniques gained from over 120 years of acoustic piano manufacturing and advanced acoustic design technology for concert halls, theaters, and other commercial venues to the acoustic design of the CLP-800 Series. Specifically, we optimized the placement, orientation, and volume balance of the speakers in the low, mid, and high frequency ranges of the CLP-800 Series based on our analysis of the sounds emitted by the components of grand pianos and where and how they radiate away from their sources. We also installed diffusers, waveguides, and Bidirectional Horns to take advantage of the indirect sound reflected from the walls to enhance the reverberation of the sound. These design features reproduce the reverberation and depth of natural sound in the surrounding space, creating a sound field close to that of a grand piano.

Another important aspect in the acoustic design of digital pianos is offering acoustic characteristics that are as close to perfect as possible in any room where users might play them. That requires an ideal development environment that is unaffected by room acoustics such as sonic reflections from the wall or floors, and Yamaha headquarters is home to one of the largest anechoic chambers in the world. In this chamber, we measure the acoustic characteristics of speakers and make the adjustments necessary to account for the many different environments in which musical instruments are used. Yamaha possesses numerous research and development facilities that allow us to develop higher-quality instruments.

Yamaha developed GrandTouch/GrandTouch-S keyboards based on the concept of keys that convey the feel of a grand piano action. This does not mean that we take the approach of giving each key the same weight as its equivalent on a grand piano keyboard, or replicating the action of a grand piano. Rather, this keyboard mechanism is notable for how the loads applied to the fingertips and the way they change during performance is similar to that of a grand piano.

When playing grand pianos, pianists make minute adjustments to their input in response to whether the hammers at the ends of the keys are striking the strings in such a way that the piano produces the desired sound. In other words, players create sound by sensing the smallest changes in the resistance they feel in their fingertips within strokes measuring only 10 mm. We focused on this essence of sound creation from the player's perspective and the changes in resistance they feel in their fingertips. Thanks to this unique approach to development, GrandTouch/GrandTouch-S keyboards provide an outstanding level of control to players so that they feel the same sensations as they would on a grand piano keyboard.

When playing a grand piano, the player feels two types of resistance in their fingertips. What makes players feel as though a grand piano action is behind the keys? In our view, it comes down to two key points: First, the resistance that players feel in their fingertips from the moment they press the keys to the moment the hammers spring upward to strike the strings. Second, the response that players feel in their fingertips when the hammers strike the strings. To make GrandTouch/GrandTouch-S keys simulate this resistance—a challenge given the compact size of the digital piano keyboard unit compared to the larger grand piano action—we do things like adjust the weight of the hammer weights and alter the shape, materials, and movement of the internal parts to bring the absolute resistance perceived in the fingertips as close as possible to that of a grand piano action. We also change the materials used, and reposition and refashion the stoppers in the GrandTouch and GrandTouch-S keyboard units to arrest the impact of the hammers, simulating the feeling of pressing grand piano keys to the bottom of the stroke. Of course, the resistance depends on the intensity of the player's input. However, our innovations allow GrandTouch and GrandTouch-S keys to simulate a wide range of resistance from that felt when playing a powerful passage to the lightest, most delicate of keystrokes.

As mentioned previously, binaural sampling is a method of sampling in which special microphones are placed on a mannequin's head in the same positions as the pianist's ears to capture piano sounds the way that they sound in reality.

Yamaha has developed a mannequin head specifically for binaural sampling. We also measured the ear shapes of nearly 100 people to create an “average ear” model and carefully examined the types and positioning of microphones to use with it to ensure that everyone can enjoy the same effects. As of 2024, Yamaha makes the only digital pianos with binaural sampling-based piano sound* for headphones.

*Yamaha research as of June 2024

One of the best reasons to choose a Clavinova CLP-800 Series piano is access to multiple pianos on a single instrument, from world-class concert grand pianos to fortepianos for a more authentic classical music experience. The CLP-800 Series is equipped with a new tone generator chip developed by Yamaha that deliver our highest-quality, most beautiful piano voices to date.

Clavinova pianos feature voices of two world-renowned concert grand pianos. One of them is the CFX, Yamaha’s top-flight concert grand piano. Pianists around the world are enamored with the impressive, dazzling, richly expressive sound of the CFX in concert halls. Another sampled concert grand is the Imperial, the flagship model of Bösendorfer, a time-honored Viennese piano brand with an ardent following. The Imperial is known for its abundance of color and natural, warm feeling. Yamaha faithfully reproduces the idiosyncrasies of these concert grand pianos by carefully recording the entire tonal range of each of the 88 keys, making minute adjustments to capture the most harmonious tones each piano has to offer.

CLP-800 Series pianos are also equipped with the voices of the fortepiano, the predecessor to the modern piano. The sounds emitted by a fortepiano are simpler than those of a modern piano, and decay much more rapidly. Hearing the sounds of the instruments played when the likes of Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin were composing their songs should illuminate the original intent behind the notes on the page. Here is a novel opportunity to communicate with historical composers by playing these period instruments.

The list of keyed instrument voices goes on to include electric pianos, organs, and more. A single CLP-800 Series piano is all you need to enjoy music from different eras and genres, from jazz and pop to healing music and 1980s classic rock.

The fortepianos shown in the picture are from the collections of at the Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments.

The true pleasure of playing a grand piano is when the player can add expression to each and every note with total control over their touch and have the entire instrument respond by ringing out in full splendor.

Such a playing experience is created by the complex interaction of the 8,000 parts that make up the instrument; Clavinova CLP Series pianos replicate these physical phenomena with the help of Grand Expression Modeling and Virtual Resonance Modeling (VRM), two of Yamaha’s proprietary digital technologies to be explained later.

Players can experience the effects of Grand Expression Modeling by playing a song on a CLP-800 Series piano. For example, playing the many fast passages in Mozart’s “Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major”—a piece familiar to piano students—with the same light touch as you would on a grand piano results in a rolling, light-hearted tone, yet each note is clearly distinct from the others. When the same note is played repeatedly with the damper pedal down to sustain the sound, these pianos replicate the natural tonal variation produced by the physical phenomena in grand pianos by simulating the way the hammers strike strings that are already vibrating. This allows the player to add expression to repeated notes as if they were practicing on a grand piano, a useful option in places like the development of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”

Pianists can vary the output by playing the keys to different depths and with different speeds, even when using techniques such as trills or legato or emphasizing the melody over the accompaniment. Grand Expression Modeling excels at faithfully reproducing the output expected of these techniques in many well-known songs. In Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” a loose touch creates the faint tone that makes the melody stand out more crisply. In Liszt’s “Un Sospiro,” the accompanying arpeggios accent the melody without overwhelming it, and varied expression of the melody gives it the same quality as vocals. In the last of the Chopin nocturnes, trills, legato, and other delicate techniques where fingers seem to float over the keys deliver the airy, smooth tonal expression required. Playing such pieces on a highly expressive piano helps the pianist learn various techniques and experience the same joy of expression as a painter, but through sound.

In CLP Series pianos, VRM also replicates the momentary dynamics and deep resonance that are produced by the entire body of a grand piano. With CLP Series pianos, we invite you to enjoy a lush playing experience that is as close as it gets to a grand piano.

When a pianist plays a grand piano, they cause the entire body of the instrument to reverberate, and become enveloped in the colorful tones created from the combination of various acoustic elements in the air around them. The pianist becomes immersed in the diffusing sound and reverberation. CLP-800 Series pianos deliver this pleasant feeling through Grand Acoustic Imaging (to be explained later) and other distinct acoustic technologies. Moreover, a new tone generator chip allows fine-tuning and control of the sonic elements of each frequency band, dramatically improving the precision of sound design.

The concept behind the acoustic design of the CLP-800 Series is to cause sound to radiate into the surrounding space as widely as it does from grand pianos. For example, the CLP-865GP/845/835/825 feature diffusers—a special mechanism for diffusing sound. The higher-end CLP-895GP/885/875 models replicate the rich grand piano sound with diffusers in addition to waveguides, Bidirectional Horns and cleverly placed and oriented speakers. These design features allow players to feel the sensations of the sound filling the entire space, the hammers striking the strings in front of them, and the reverberation dissipating into the edges of the space (Grand Acoustic Imaging).

Each model in the CLP-800 Series features the best acoustic design for its case—no matter which model you play, you will be enveloped by a natural, pleasant sound with harmonic balance from bass to treble.

The keys and pedals are the interface between player and instrument. The keys and pedals of CLP Series pianos are designed to feel as similar to their grand piano counterparts as possible, so that the way they behave in response to input from the fingers and toes perfectly matches the resulting sound output.

GrandTouch/GrandTouch-S keys

The GrandTouch and GrandTouch-S keyboards were designed around the concept of “a keyboard with the feel of a grand piano action,” with the goal of allowing pianists to feel the keyboard with their fingertips in the same way as they would when playing a grand piano, and from there to create exactly the sound that they are looking for. Specifically, these keyboards are notable for their responsiveness, offering everything from light, delicately nuanced tones to boldly powerful notes in answer to the strength with which the pianist plays the keys. They replicate the pleasing response felt when the grand piano hammers strike the string, and are free of any wobble when pressed to their fullest extent. Highly absorbent synthetic-ivory white keys and synthetic-ebony black keys prevent slipping even during extended play and feel just like those of a grand piano.

The GrandTouch keyboards equipping the top models in the CLP Series feature the longest-ever pivot length on a Yamaha digital piano, ensuring that the keys are easy to play from the edge to the back. Finally, Yamaha’s 88-key Linear Graded Hammers are the only* digital piano technology that provide a distinct touch for each key with the same weight and return for the corresponding key on a grand piano.

The GrandTouch-S keyboards on CLP-800 Series pianos are even more responsive than ever thanks to further optimization of the weights of the hammers.

*Yamaha research as of June 2024

GrandTouch pedals

The pianist controls the pedals to add expression to the music, and makes frequent fine adjustments to how deeply they depress them in order to create the envisioned sound.

On a grand piano, pedaling requires more force when depressing the pedal, with the pedal feeling lighter on the return. This is because lifting a heavy damper requires more power than lowering it. GrandTouch pedals differ significantly from those in previous CLP Series pianos in that they replicate not only the resistance on the toes when the pedals are depressed, but also how that resistance lessens as the pianist returns the pedals to their original positions, a telltale physical property of grand piano pedals. This enables more precise pedaling and subtler changes in tonal expression, not only when depressing the pedals, but also by making it easier to hold the pedals in mid-stroke and control them as they slowly return to their original positions.

The higher-end models also feature a GP Response Damper that starts out light to the touch and grows heavier as it is depressed and the pedaling begins to take effect, just like on a grand piano. This gives players the physical feedback they need to master the delicate art of half-pedaling.

Among the myriad other design considerations, we have also deeply examined the relationship between the piano playing experience and the design of the instrument. Specifically, while our top-end Clavinova CLP-800 Series of digital pianos is modeled after grand pianos in terms of appearance, the playing experience is also designed so that players unquestioningly feel the natural sensations of playing grand pianos from the moment they sit down at the piano to the moment they finish playing and stand up.

This iteration of the CLP-800 Series features many gentle curves in the shape of the body to give the pianos a feeling of warmth and openness. Sitting in between the sweeping curves of the side arms of a CLP-875, for example, gives you the strong impression that you are playing a grand piano. The wide music stand integrated into the instrument is not only unobtrusive to the player’s dialogue with the music, but also highly functional, capable of holding several sheets spread out.

The LED display of the control panel of the higher-end models is designed to turn off except when the player is changing settings so that it looks like an unassuming keyblock in the player’s field of vision while they are playing. Simply eliminating unnecessary elements from the player’s field of vision allows them to become immersed in piano playing.

We hope you take the opportunity to experience the immersion of sitting in front of a CLP-800 Series piano on your next visit to a store where Yamaha pianos are sold.