Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Yamaha Superstar - Koichi Oki

Yamaha Superstar - Koichi Oki
Liner Notes:
Koichi Oki The tracks on this album “Yamaha Superstar” were specially created for the Yamaha EX42 by Koichi Oki, the world’s leading Yamaha Electone player.
On this album Koichi Oki uses many of the sounds which are exclusive to the Yamaha Electone and which are revolutionizing the field of electronic organ sounds.
The first Yamaha organs—seventy-eight reed organs—to be exported to Britain were shipped in 1892 only five years after Torakusu Yamaha built Japan’s very first prototype. Since that time the company, renamed Nippon Gakki Co. Ltd., has gone from strength to strength and while its musical instruments have steadily improved in range and excellence, it has also diversified into many other fields. Not so long ago, after all, the name “Yamaha” in Britain meant motor cycles and not musical instruments at all. Had our climate been other than it is we should know the name for its sno-cats and and skis made of the revolutionary new Fibreglass Reinforced Plastic, while boats and archery equipment of the same material obviously have a great future here.
It is, however, in the sphere of music that the Company’s greatest efforts have been expended and here is to he found its greatest achievement.
In the organ field Yamaha have scored many “firsts”, most notable being their revolutionary flat speaker based on the principle of a piano soundboard. It is to this speaker which enables the sound of the organ to travel across its surface that the Yamaha “Natural Sound” must be attributed.
Turning to the EX42, the scope of the organ is such that it gives ample expression to any type of playing from popular melodies, so ably demonstrated by Koichi Oki, to classical.
No other organ in the world has Yamaha’s exclusive “Touch Response” combined with the again exclusive “Touch Vibrato” which, for the first time, enables an organist fully to express mood and to translate the force in his fingers into volume and tone colour.
Koichi Oki recorded for AD-RHYTHM Records, London by courtesy of YAMAHA FOUNDATION FOR MUSIC EDUCATION, Japan.