Yamaha Teaches Tunes

The new Yamaha Mark III Disklavier is a digital piano, but that's just scratching the surface (which is something you want to try and avoid doing seeing as how these babies cost upwards of $19,000). You can play it just like a standard piano, but the Yamaha can also teach beginners to play by lighting up the keys in a given chord, and actually wiggling the keys in the order they're meant to be played.

New this year is a feature called PianoSoft PlusAudio and Yamaha's first built-in CD player, which together let the Disklavier synchronize recorded vocals and instrumentals with its own live piano performance, bringing to life holiday classics such as Deck the Halls and Winter Wonderland-along with tunes from Frank Sinatra, Christopher Cross and other year-round favorites-while the keys move up and down right in front of your eyes.

What's that, you say? You don't have 19 big ones but you still want a teaching piano? Yamaha's new EZ-250i digital keyboard has some of the same teaching features as the Disklavier but only retails for $299. www.yamaha.com