Casio Celviano AP220 Digital Piano

The Casio Celviano AP220 piano made by Casio is quickly becoming the choice of many people because of all the great things it will do for an incredibly low price. Listed below are all of the features on this piano.

16 Built-in Tones

There are 16 built-in tones on the Casio Celviano AP220 - 3 grand pianos, 3 electric pianos, harpsichord, vibraphone, pipe organ, jazz organ, 2 other electric organs, 2 string sounds, and 2 bass string sounds. Each of the sounds may be played with one other sound, so for instance, you could play piano and strings together, or electric piano and harpsichord. When you select either of the two Bass string sounds it will divide the keyboard into two parts so you can play string bass with your left hand and any other sound with your right hand such as vibraphone.

You can change the brilliance of a tone to make the sounds more mellow or softer, or brighter and harder and you can also control the breadth of the notes.

Transposition

Sometimes it is easier for a singer to sing a song lower than it is written on the music. Using this function you can lower or raise the sound of the piano and still read the same music.

Keyboard Tuning

With this function you can raise or lower the pitch in 1 cent increments (100 cents = 1 semitone) from the standard pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. This means that if you are playing with another instrument such as an oboe that can not be tuned, and the oboe is 20 cents flat, you can adjust the piano down to this pitch and be in tune with the oboe.

Headphones

The Casio Celviano AP220 has two headphone jacks for listening without anyone else hearing - great for apartments or even just in a busy household. One set for the pianist, another for either someone to play duets, or for Mom/Dad to listen in while the practicing goes on.

Pedals

There are 3 pedals on this piano - just like on a good size grand. Upright pianos and even baby grand pianos usually do not come with a sostenuto pedal (the middle one), but this piano has this feature. A sostenuto pedal is important to an advanced pianist because it allows you to play some notes, put the pedal down, and then all notes after that don't hold. this is especially useful when playing pieces from say Liszt or Chopin. The left pedal will make everything softer without actually pressing the keys lighter, and the right pedal is for sustaining all of the notes that are played when it is down.

Metronome

A metronome is like the ticking of a clock, but you can adjust it to go faster or slower. The purpose of it is to help you keep from speeding up or slowing down and is used when practicing to make sure you are playing the music at the correct speed. These tend to cost anywhere from $35 to $200 if purchased separately.

Duet Mode

When this function is used on the Celviano AP220 the piano keyboard is split in the center so two people can play a duet that uses the same range of keys on each section. Each person can also use the left and right pedals for sustaining the sounds they are playing. This is like having two small pianos to play on at the same time. Note that you cannot use this function while recording.

You can also change the ranges of the left and right keyboards in octave units to cover the range of the music to be played.

Library Songs

60 tunes come in the music library. You can play any one of these back separately or play them all in sequence. But the real advantage of this library is being able to turn off either the left hand part or the right hand part so you can play with just one hand with the piano playing the other. This library also includes a number of duets which you can perform with yourself.

Recording and Play Back

The Casio Celviano AP220 comes with a 2 track recorder. A track is a container of recorded data, and a song consists of two tracks. You can record each track separately and then combine them so they play back together as a single song. The recorder on this piano will hold approximately 5,000 notes in its memory, but if you make another recording, it will delete the first. As well, if power should fail during recording, the data is lost. This is why the USB MIDI connection is important. (see below)

USB MIDI Connection

You can connect this piano to your computer and exchange MIDI data between them by using the USB connection. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface.Using this connection you can store as many piano pieces as you want or load a song from your computer.

Temperament

Temperament is the tuning system that a piano is tuned to. For instance you may want to listen to how a piano was tuned during Bach's time, or Chopin's. The music will sound slightly different, but you will hear it the way it was originally meant to be heard. By indicating which of the 16 different temperaments you will find whichever temperament may be more suitable.

Touch Response

This specifies the relative touch of the keyboard keys. You may set it so that it requires a lighter touch to produce a more powerful sound.

As you can see, the Casio Celviano AP220 comes with a lot of features that can make your piano playing very enjoyable as well as provide incentives for students to practice more.

If you would like to order this piano and you are in the United States I would suggest that you visit the

Casio Celviano AP220 page at Amazon.

If you are in Canada, do not order this from the United States. Digital pianos have their warranty voided when they cross from Canada to the United States or vice versa.

To purchase in Canada email us at plumbpianos@gmail.com and we think we can beat anyone's price.

SBI!