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March 2009 - Q&A:
22/03/09
What settings do Keane use on their Yamaha CP-70 when playing live?

I recently got a Yamaha CP70 electric piano and I'm interested to know what would be suitable settings for live performances. What settings and effects do Keane use (e.g reverb, chorus)?

  - Angel Palomares

There's a lot of gear that goes into making the Keane piano sound, but if you're just after a straightforward, punchy piano sound, things should be a bit straightforward.

For Keane, the CP-70's controls have typically been set-up as follows:

  • Nothing connected to PATCH IN or OUT
  • VOLUME set to approximately 7
  • BASS set to between 3 and 4
  • MIDDLE AND TREBLE set to 5
  • TREMOLO switched off, SPEED AND DEPTH set to zero
I haven't actually checked whether or not they still use those settings in the Perfect Symmetry era, but I'm pretty certain it'll be something along those lines - they used to have the settings indicated on the CP-70 harp section controls with a white marker (presumably for easy set-up at gigs). I'd only use those as a guide though - experiment with it to see what gives the best sound in your own set-up.

In terms of effects, there's probably not very much you need. In the days of Hopes And Fears touring, one of the channel outputs from the piano went straight to the sound desk, just like microphones do (i.e. direct inject, or DI'ing) and I believe they still do this - another channel was run through a Line 6 Pod XT (which was later replaced by an XT Pro rackmounted effects unit) for its amp simulation. This would give a little bit more drive and "grunt" to the sound, with the output of the Pod then being mixed with the clean sound at the desk. As far as I'm aware, there were no other effects of any note used at that time - as a personal preference, I'd shy away from putting chorus on the CP-70 sound!

Hope that is of some use to you - note that I haven't actually tried any of it myself though, having only ever played my CP-70 in the comfort of my own home!

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