About

This mini-site is designed to provide an online resource for Yamaha EZ-AG and EZ-EG MIDI guitars.

The EZ-AG and EZ-EG:

The EZ as a Learning Guitar

They were originally marketed as "learning" guitars. I do not think this is a very good purpose for them - without at very least using them in tandem with a real guitar. While they do perform tasks which might be helpful in learning the guitar - such as displaying the frets for chords (the fingerings are in the manual!) - any learner who gets one of these will ultimately have their progress stunted if they want to play a real guitar one day. The following is from an amazon review, which I think sums it up nicely:

  • Playing guitar, even at a beginning level, requires more than simply learning fret positions. Guitar is a highly nuanced instrument. To play well, you need to learn how to perform a variety of articulations, such as slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, taps, mutings, vibrato, and more. Also, such skills need to be learned at the same time one learns basic fingering.
  • Arguably the most difficult part of articulation for beginners is learning to put one's fingers in the right spot near the frets. This toy has you press a button instead. Thus, if you were to learn on this and then switch to a real guitar, you very likely won't be able to play it.
  • Most guitars have (at least some) metal strings, often at high tensions, depending on what type of guitar you are playing. Beginners normally say that the strings make their fingers hurt. An important part of the learning process is to practice until one develops calluses, so that one can slide one's fingers on the strings all day without pain.
  • An additional part of learning the guitar is learning to care for the instrument. A beginner needs to learn to tune strings, perform adjustments to the bridge, neck, and nut, and so on. Beginners frequently break strings, since they pick too hard, and it's important for them to learn proper right hand technique in reference to real strings. Tuning is especially important, because it helps the beginner learn what is known as relative pitch.

Overall, then, learning to play using this toy in isolation is potentially highly counterproductive. A beginner will learn bad technique that must be unlearned when s/he switches to a real instrument.

But... what if you can already play the guitar? Well then you are who this instrument was accidentally designed for.

The EZ as a MIDI Controller

In a nutshell, the EZ family allow you to plug into MIDI devices and control them (like you would with a MIDI keyboard). That is basically what this site is about!

MIDI is its true calling. Why Yamaha didn't promote this is beyond me. If someone told them MIDI guitar is unpopular then I would like to know if it was the same person who told them that "cool" kids would buy and play a plastic box filled with red LEDs that spews out horrible MIDI versions of even more horrible Eric Clapton ballads at the (accidental) touch of a button.

It's a shame that Yamaha didn't capitalise on the good bits and make it a straight MIDI controller, add some features and market it as such.

But - for better or worse - you CAN get a functioning MIDI guitar controller for about $300 / £150. Or at least you COULD. As I understand the current situation the EZ-AG is discontinued until March 2008, and the EZ-EG is simply discontinued. eBay is your best bet - they come up quite regularly - mainly because people bought them as learning guitars!