Kawai ES120 88-key Digital Piano with Speakers Demo

Weighing only 26.5 pounds, Kawai‘s ES120 digital piano makes an ideal stage instrument with 25 amazing sounds onboard. The ES120 features the manufacturer‘s highly respected Responsive Hammer Compact (RHC) action, which gives you the feel of a real acoustic grand, complete with graded hammers. As for the sound? Harmonic Imaging technology and 192-note polyphony deliver impeccable grand piano tones. Your ears will revel in gloriously detailed, state-of-the-art samples of Kawai‘s flagship Shigeru Kawai SK-EX concert grand piano, along with a selection of authentic electric piano, bass, string, and upright piano sounds. Check it out!

#Sweetwater #Kawai

0:00 - 0:59 The Kawai ES120
0:59 - 1:33 Overview
1:33 - 4:26 Acoustic Pianos
4:26 - 6:04 Electric Pianos
6:04 - 7:30 Organs
7:30 - 8:34 Strings
8:34 - 9:38 Choir & Synth
9:38 - 10:21 Bass
10:21 - 10:42 Everybody Needs Harpischord!
10:42 - 13:39 Features
13:39 - 15:34 Thanks for watching! 😊

[SnowAngelfish]

Absolutely love this piano! We bought it and instead of buying the 100$+ boring stand just bought a used solid wood antique piano for 80$ and pulled out the old keyboard and this fit in perfectly! Honestly, i didn't know it would fit so perfectly ahead of doing it, , but this key seems perfect for this. I cut out the table to fit the es120 down in and the sound plays out the open bottom. It looks like a real piano but sounds much better because its the sound of a grand and it always has perfect tune! I might do a video showing this off.

[ronaldhenry]

I just bought one and love it. Mostly a beginner pianist that can grow into this very nice instrument.

[winterheat]

one advice: since a portion of your customers will be playing classical music, when you demo, at least be able to demo first 10 seconds of some famous or good to the ears classical music... learn 2, or 3, for only the first 10 seconds. If you play some cocktail or improvised songs likes these, customers cannot really get a feel to compare to what they have heard before

[archiebeatz]

Fantastic playing Jacob. The Kawai ES120 sounds great.

[Jellybeantiger]

I love your playing, lots of progressive rock and jazz and classical vibes.

[saurabhzajam]

Great playing Jacob! Could you list down all the upgraded features in ES120 which are not present in ES110? If you can make a comparison video between ES110 & ES120, that would be great.

[decastring]

Woah! I thought my ES110 was great, but it's nothing like this new ES120. Wish I could justify upgrading.

[abath]

SK-EX Piano 1:44 Ballad Piano 3:27 Rhodes EP 4:27

[MahyarJavadi]

I really wish the new 120 still came with the F10h Pedal, they've increased the cost about 25% and removed the pedal here in Australia.

[abath]

Please turn Off the internal “Speaker EQ” in order to hear the actual full-bodied piano sound. Kawai chose to have a bright EQ speaker boost set to "On" in default when powered On, to help the piano sound brighter, and unfortunately thinner, in a noisy sales showroom. The first thing I do is turn the weird “Speaker EQ” setting to Off and save that setting to Off. I am also a huge Fender Rhodes fan and believe Kawai’s Rhodes becomes more authentic and “vintage clean tone” when the Touch setting is changed too Heavy Touch. It responds too aggressively with Kawai’s default Touch and sounds like it is being pounded. I also turn off the Rhodes tremolo and it becomes even more authentic-sounding, IMO. I guess it was set in an over hyped manner for the sales rooms.

[bodiddly]

I ordered a white ES-120 months ago (from Sweetwater), and finally got it a few days ago. I wish I had known about the gray option. Sounds wonderful through my music system. Not so great using built-in speakers - kind of tinny I think. I wish it had standard bass and treble controls, because its seriously lacking in the bass when using the built in speakers. That may be because I have it on a slide out drawer with a solid bottom, so that may be blocking the sound. Setting the EQ for "on a table" setting seems to help a bit, but not enough. Also the old ES-110 came with a good solid damper pedal, but this comes with a plastic piece of junk. But my biggest complaint is the bluetooth functionality. The phone app works great and is the best way to control the keyboard, but it does lack some functions, like being able to disable or enable the on-board speakers. That's just a weird omission. But the big problem is that when using the app, it's using bluetooth. So as soon as you do that (enable bluetooth) it disables the USB midi functionality. But in order to choose a midi channel to output on, it would be easiest to use the app, but obviously you can't, unless you pair it with bluetooth, make the selection, then unpair it again. You can also set the midi channel on the device itself but you will need to refer to the manual every time, because there are no menus or anything like that. You can also use it as a a bluetooth midi controller. But again, you have to unpair the app to do that, because it can only pair with one thing at a time. So that's a pretty major dissapointment. I know there are way better midi controllers out there, I was just hoping that this could do double duty.

I bought this on the strength of some reviews of the ES-110. I figured I'd wait for the ES-120. Currently I have a Roland DP-90, which sounds and feels amazing, but is way too big and heavy to bring to gigs. I also have a Roland RD-88. It is fantastic as a MIDI controller, and has a good feel, but the piano sound itself is modeled, and not good IMHO. I have a Roland half-pedal capable damper pedal (DP10) which is the wrong polarity for the Kawai, and can't be easily switched. I don't think I ever really used half-pedaling anyway, so I won't be buying Kauai's version (F-10H), which is $70.. I'll probably just keep the RD-88 as my controller, and gig with the ES-120.

One final comment on the ES-120: the headphone jacks are on the front, and come in both sizes, which is a very nice touch. Headphone jacks on the back of keyboards is kind of stupid, IMHO. But the other jacks are on the back and inset very deeply, and very poorly marked. You will have to basically either go around the back with a flashlight, or pick the piano up and tilt it on its edge to find them.

[Katsumix]

Always thought this was a good keyboard, never fails to exceed my expectations

[drindy]

I have a KORG Triton workstation... however your skilled playing makes me want this lol. Killer job with the demo of this 88key beast. Really a huge fan of the organ sounds. 👊🧡👍

[SaberTooth_TFG]

How do I know if the Speaker EQ is off on this keyboard? 🤷

[PhoenixWave]

Thank you, really nice review. I love the sound of it! <3

[Zoco]

Thanks for the interesting review, and nice playing too. Are you using much compression? The bass end sounds a bit woolly.

This pianos looks to be an important upgrade to the ES110, and (reluctantly accepting the trend to eliminate built-in screens) I agree that it has everything you should wish for on an entry level DP.

You mentioned how a piano like this can be used for simple gigs (and I would add rehearsals too) so portability is a big issue.

Actually, it's a very big issue. A lot of us have trouble squeezing 88-key pianos into cars, motor homes, hotel rooms, boats and so on. Only yesterday, I used an unweighted 73-key piano in a rehearsal because that was what fitted in the car. Like myself, an increasing numbers of viewers on these channels are asking for smaller versions of portable DPs with proper weighted actions. There are a few 73-key stage pianos (with many extras and no speakers) but the Yamaha P-121 is the only 73-key "portable piano" available. No other manufacturer is listening.

[AutismRocksOfficial]

Great playing, Jacob! You got some good chops there ✌

[dbfsdailybeatfreestyle]

That triad glissando i knew there was a reason besides Duprees playing i clicked on the link when im not in the market for another board.

[ronineditor]

This was supposed to be available in August. It's almost October and still pre-order only (every store). Any word when it's going to be released by Kawai? I've been trying to get my daughter one but I don't want to get the 110.

*Edit, I just paid-up for the ES520, super impressive.

[Persun_McPersonson]

This is a good demo, but you forgot to put a chapter for the vibraphone that comes after the harpsichord and is before the features chapter.