12-30-200911:11 AM - last edited on 12-30-200911:16 AM
This is a decision I have pondered over quite a bit in my trek as a musician. Despite my mom’s persistence to put me through piano lessons as a child, I held firm on my point that they were child torture… only to find myself wishing I had stuck with it years later when my brother’s band needed a keyboardist. Needless to say, I filled the position and have been playing ever since. As a result, I have gathered a general understanding of the various keyboard brands out there and the extensive gamut of features that are offered.
To me, the first big decision you need to get out of the way is whether you want to buy a digital piano or workstation/synth keyboard. While there certainly are keyboards that combine the best of both these worlds, they tend to be on the more expensive end. It really all depends on what you intend to use the keyboard for. For me, I was playing in a rock band and I needed the real piano sounds as well as the synth tones to add lead lines so a workstation/snyth was my best choice. I’ll explain more of the differences and show some videos of each. Feel free to click the images which link to each of the keyboards featured in the video on BestBuy.com.
I think of digital pianos as keyboards with weighted keys that give you the feel that you are playing an actual piano where the hammers are striking strings to produce sound. These digital pianos aren’t necessarily limited to just piano sounds because they do typically include other patches such as strings or electric pianos but they mainly focus on getting the most authentic piano feel/sound replication as possible.
Workstations are somewhat of an all-in-one keyboard that can be used for many purposes. They have a wide range of sounds from synths to drums sets and often include a lot of patch editing possibilities such as EQ (equalizer), effects modeling (delays, chorus, distortion, reverb, phase, etc), ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, and release) controls, and more. Many of them also have recording capabilities and can even record multiple tracks within the keyboard’s internal software. Much of the workstations I’ve played around with do not have weighted keys so you are not getting the authentic piano feel, but some prefer that.
I have seen synth focused keyboards becoming more and more popular as of recently. These are usually really small keyboards (only around 3 octaves) which are mainly meant to generate synthesized tones. They aren’t going to have your natural acoustic sounds like a piano, orchestral instruments, or guitars, but they have a ton of other crazy sounding patches from basses to screaming leads. I’ve seen that a lot of them include vocoders as well, which essentially models the tones you are playing based upon what you are singing/saying into the attached microphone; kind of a cool effect.
That’s my brief take on the options out there for keyboards. You can find some more opinions and preferences by checking out more videos of our Musical Instrument Associates at www.bestbuyMIvideos.com or visit your local Best Buy® Musical Instruments store.
Oh yeah, and I used to play an older model of the Roland AX! Long live the keytar!
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