The Yamaha SHS-10, known in

Yamaha Yamaha may refer to: * Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services, established in 1887. The company is the largest shareholder of Yamaha Motor Company (below). ** Yamaha Music Foundation, an organization estab ...

's native country, Japan, as the Yamaha Sholky, Sholky being derived from "Shoulder Keyboard", is a keytar (a

musical keyboard A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, sh ...

that can be held like a

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

) manufactured by Yamaha and released in 1987. It has a small-sized keyboard with 32 minikeys and a pitch-bend wheel, vibrato and sustain buttons, an internal

Frequency modulation Frequency modulation (FM) is the encoding of information in a carrier wave by varying the instantaneous frequency of the wave. The technology is used in telecommunications, radio broadcasting, signal processing, and computing. In analog fre ...

(usually referred to as FM) synthesizer offering 25 different voices with 6-note

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, ...

, two operators, and a very basic chord sequencer. It also has a

loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or ...

. It supports

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

, having a MIDI Out connector which allows the keyboard to control external MIDI equipment. It does not have a MIDI In connector. Although originally made for the consumer market, this keytar's MIDI out features are very powerful. Its drum rhythms and accompaniment are transmitted on separate MIDI channels, so that an external drum machine, sampler, or other MIDI equipment can be programmed to play the backing parts. Drums are transmitted on channel 16; Bass on 15; and three chord harmonies on channels 12-14. MIDI start/stop and tempo sync are also transmitted so an external sequencer may be utilized as well. It was manufactured in three colors: grey, red, and black. Its

demo Demo, usually short for demonstration, may refer to: Music and film *Demo (music), a song typically recorded for reference rather than release * ''Demo'' (Behind Crimson Eyes), a 2004 recording by the band Behind Crimson Eyes * ''Demo'' (Deafhea ...

is an arrangement of

Wham! Wham! (briefly known in the US as Wham! U.K.) were an English pop duo formed in Bushey in 1981. The duo consisted of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. They became one of the most commercially successful pop acts of the 1980s, selling mor ...

's hit "

Last Christmas "Last Christmas" is a song by British pop duo Wham!, originally released in December 1984 on CBS Records International, CBS Records internationally and as a double A-side and B-side, A-side on Epic Records with "Everything She Wants" in the UK ...

." The Voices are the following: The numbering scheme reflects the fact that the selection is done with buttons numbered 0-4. A larger model, the Yamaha SHS-200, was released the following year, and came with 49 keys and dual stereo speakers.Yamaha
SHS-200
Retrieved on 20 March 2022

External links

at SynthMania (featuring MP3 samples of the demo, instruments, and styles available)

reviews at Harmony Central

References

{{Yamaha Keytars SHS-10 Polyphonic synthesizers Digital synthesizers Products introduced in 1987