Yamaha CVP-204 Manual Do Proprietário

Let’s consider an acoustic piano and a classical guitar as 
representative acoustic instruments. With the piano, you 
strike a key, and a hammer inside hits some strings and 
plays a note. With the guitar, you directly pluck a string 
and the note sounds.
But how does a digital instrument go about playing a 
note?

As shown in the illustration above, in an electronic 
instrument, the sampled note (previously recorded note) 
stored in the tone generator section (electronic circuit) is 
played based on information received from the keyboard, 
and output through the speakers.

Now let’s examine what happens when we play back a 
recording. When you playback a music CD (for example, 
a solo piano recording), you’re hearing the actual sound 
(vibrations in air) of the acoustic instrument. This is called 
audio data, to distinguish it from MIDI data.

In the above example, the actual acoustic sounds of the 
pianist’s performance are captured in the recording as 
audio data, and this is recorded to CD. When you play 
back that CD on your audio system, you can hear the 
actual piano performance. The piano itself is not 
necessary, since the recording contains the actual sounds 
of the piano, and your speakers reproduce them.

Pluck a string and the body 
resonates the sound.

Based on playing information 
from the keyboard, a 
sampled note stored in the 
tone generator is played 
through the speakers.

Acoustic guitar note 
production

Digital instrument note 
production

Recording and playing back the performance of an acoustic 
instrument (audio data)

Recording

Playback

FD

FD

Recording and playing back the performance of a digital 
instrument (MIDI data)

Controller (keyboard, etc.)

Recording

Playback

In the case of digital instruments, the audio signals are sent 
through output jacks (such as AUX OUT) on the instrument.