The Yamaha Portasound PS and PSS electronic keyboards were manufactured in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1980, the low-cost PS-1, PS-2 and PS-3 were launched in a first series. The second series followed in 1981 with the PS-10, PS-20 and PS-30. The name Portasound refers to the portability of the instruments, which are battery-operated. The PortaSound synthesisers were originally designed for children and beginners and often had small keys and simple preset functions suitable for teaching. In 1982, a card-reading system was introduced that allowed players to learn and play along with sequenced songs. Some of the higher-end keyboards have advanced features such as programmable synthesiser controls, midi capability and sampler functions.
The PS-10 is a 8-voice polyphonic synthesiser with a keyboard of 49 keys over 4 octaves from C to C. The ROM contains 6 sounds and 4 rhythms, and there is a sustain effect. Sound generation via PASS technology. The Orchestra section offers the basic voicings. The rhythms include March, Disco, Waltz, Rock, Tango, Swing, Rhumba and Samba. A special feature of this section is the 8-bar variation function, which introduces a fill every eight bars. The arpeggiator consists of an automatic chord generator that can generate a major chord, a rhythmic finger chord, a memory chord and a multi-bass chord.
