It's interesting how your style of playing can change as you try the different piano voices. Even if you're not into rock, it's hard to resist trying some riffs when playing the hard-edged Rock Piano voices. And switching to Honky Tonk has a tendency to bring out your Old West barroom pianist. All of these carefully crafted variations make perfect sense for instruments designed for professional use--professional players need to be equipped for any musical contingency. But even the home player, in the privacy of his own headphones, can get more into the moment by matching the piano sound to the musical style, be it classical, jazz, Fats Waller, or Little Richard.

In addition to the acoustic piano voices, each instrument has a substantial selection of voices in other categories, as detailed in Table 2. Among my favorites were Harpsichord on the Kawai, GX Choir 1 on the Roland, and Nylon Guitar on the Yamaha. Also listed in Table 2 is the number of simultaneous sounds, or Polyphony, each instrument can produce. (Some of the voice types, such as GM2 and XG, are discussed in "Digital Piano Basics, Part 2: Beyond the Acoustic Piano.")