ABOUT YAMAHA

HISTORY

Yamaha was established in 1887 as a piano and reed organmanufacturer by Torakusu Yamaha as Nippon Gakki Company, Limited  inHamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture and was incorporated on October 12, 1897. The company's origins as a musical instrument manufacturer is still reflected today in the group's logo—a trio of interlocking tuning forks.^[3]

After World War II, company president Genichi Kawakami repurposed the remains of the company's war-time production machinery and the company's expertise in metallurgical technologies to the manufacture ofmotorcycles. The YA-1 (AKA Akatombo, the "Red Dragonfly"), of which 125 were built in the first year of production (1954), was named in honour of the founder. It was a 125cc, single cylinder, two-stroke, street bike patterned after the German DKW RT125 (which the Britishmunitions firm, BSA, had also copied in the post-war era and manufactured as the Bantam and Harley-Davidson as the Hummer. In 1955,^[4] the success of the YA-1 resulted in the founding of Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.

Yamaha has grown to become the world's largest manufacturer ofmusical instruments (including pianos, "silent" pianos, drums, guitars,brass instruments, woodwinds, violins, violas, celli, and vibraphones), as well as a leading manufacturer of semiconductors, audio/visual, computer related products, sporting goods, home appliances, specialtymetals and industrial robots.^[5]

In 1989, Yamaha shipped the world's first CD recorder.^{[chronology citation needed]} Yamaha purchased Sequential Circuitsin 1988.^[6] It bought a majority stake (51%) of competitor Korg in 1987, which was bought out by Korg in 1993.^[7]

In 2002, Yamaha closed down its archery product business that was started in 1959. Six archers in five different Olympic Games won gold medals using their products.^[8]

It acquired German audio software manufacturers Steinberg in January 2005, from Pinnacle Systems.

In July, 2007, Yamaha bought out the minority shareholding of the Kemble family in Yamaha-Kemble Music (UK) Ltd, Yamaha's UK import and musical instrument and professional audio equipment sales arm, the company being renamed Yamaha Music U.K. Ltd in autumn 2007.^[9] Kemble & Co. Ltd, the UK piano sales & manufacturing arm was unaffected.^[10]

On December 20, 2007, Yamaha made an agreement with the Austrian Bank BAWAG P.S.K. Group BAWAG to purchase all the shares of Bösendorfer,^[11] intended to take place in early 2008. Yamaha intends to continue manufacturing at the Bösendorfer facilities in Austria.^[12] The acquisition of Bösendorfer was announced after the NAMM Show in Los Angeles, on January 28, 2008. As of February 1, 2008, Bösendorfer Klavierfabrik GmbH operates as a subsidiary of Yamaha Corp.^[13]

Yamaha Corporation is also widely known for their music teaching programme that began in the 1950s.

Yamaha electronic have proven to be successful, popular, and respected products. For example, the Yamaha YPG-625was given the award "Keyboard of the Year" and "Product of the Year" in 2007 from The Music and Sound Retailermagazine.^[14] Other noteworthy Yamaha electronics include the SHS-10 Keytar, a consumer-priced keytar which offered MIDI output features normally found on much more expensive keyboards.

Other companies in the Yamaha group include:

• Bösendorfer Klavierfabrik GmbH, Vienna, Austria.
• Yamaha Motor Company
• Yamaha Fine Technologies Co., Ltd.
• Yamaha Golf Cart Company
• Yamaha Livingtec Corporation
• Yamaha Metanix Corporation
• Yamaha Music Communications Co., Ltd.
• Yamaha Pro Audio

Musical keyboard

This article is about keyboards on musical instruments. For instruments referred to as "keyboards", see Keyboard instrument.

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, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of an octave. Depressing a key on the keyboard causes the instrument to produce sounds, either by causing a hammer to mechanically strike a string or tine (piano, electric piano, clavichord); pluck a string (harpsichord); open a valve to let air flow through a pipe (pipe organ or accordion); or strike a bell (carillon in a church tower). On electric and electronic keyboards, depressing a key connects one or several circuits (Hammond organ, digital piano,synthesizer, MIDI controller keyboard) which causes sounds to be produced. Apedal keyboard is a keyboard used with a pipe organ or theatre organ which is played with the feet. Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often referred to as the "piano keyboard".

Musical keyboards can have as few as 12 keys, as in the case of the pedal keyboards used with spinet organs, 25 keys with 2010-era MIDI controller keyboards, 61 keys for many home keyboards, and 88 keys for an acoustic piano. Some keyboards have two ranks of keyboards, one above the other, with the two keyboards referred to as the lower and upper manual, such as the Hammond organ, pipe organs and some harpsichords. Some pipe organs and theatre organs may have three keyboards. Pedal keyboards have from 12 keys (home spinet organs) to 32 or more (pipe organs in churches

source from wikipedia