My Piano Adventure.

This thread has me thinkin about selling my Yamaha M08 as I never use the workstation aspect of it. I like 2 of the acoustic voices but dont' care for much else in there. Primarily for my hobby studio use and maybe a midi keyboard controller is what I should do. Around $1000 any suggestions? or pretty much what was mentioned above? I like 88 keys but could shorten it a bit and def want weighted keys

Thought about supplementing it with rackmount gear perhaps but it would have to be significantly better sounding than the tech my Yamaha has on board
 
Funny that you bumped this. I was about to give an update.

I had bought the Roland DS88, and been playing it for a week. I kept scrolling through preset piano sounds and could never find anything that fit perfectly with the songs I was playing. There was a 'muffled' feel to many of them, and the bass always seemed too overpowering. Some were very good, but couldn't bond with it. On the plus side, I loved the keyboard feel...it felt easier to play than the Korg. Some of the other electric pianos, synth things were very good.

So the Korg is staring at me over my shoulder, so I fired it up to have a bit of a comparison. Bottom line, the Korg is LIGHTYEARS better tonally than the Roland. I was shocked. So much that it was obvious in the 1st run through a riff. Decision made in about 3 seconds.

So Korg DID respond to my query, and gave me a few instructions...initialize, test, reload FW, test. The initialize did nothing. The FW reload made it MUCH better. It still did show up, but much less than it did before. I may still run it out to a service center here, but the Korg stays.

The Roland goes back. Will cost me $50 to return it, but oh well.
 
I've had a fantom or two- one rack and one keyboard
It wasn't "bad"
but didn't have sounds that beat out korg or yamaha and nothing worth keeping

I have in the shop getting fixed a roland u220 rack- so it's good for the 80's stuff

I did pick up a nice motif and that thing has all the sounds from the old yamahas that makes it worth keeping

But the plan was to have one of the big 3 and i can't say the roland had anything worth keeping
 
electronpirate said:
Funny that you bumped this. I was about to give an update.

I had bought the Roland DS88, and been playing it for a week. I kept scrolling through preset piano sounds and could never find anything that fit perfectly with the songs I was playing. There was a 'muffled' feel to many of them, and the bass always seemed too overpowering. Some were very good, but couldn't bond with it. On the plus side, I loved the keyboard feel...it felt easier to play than the Korg. Some of the other electric pianos, synth things were very good.

So the Korg is staring at me over my shoulder, so I fired it up to have a bit of a comparison. Bottom line, the Korg is LIGHTYEARS better tonally than the Roland. I was shocked. So much that it was obvious in the 1st run through a riff. Decision made in about 3 seconds.

So Korg DID respond to my query, and gave me a few instructions...initialize, test, reload FW, test. The initialize did nothing. The FW reload made it MUCH better. It still did show up, but much less than it did before. I may still run it out to a service center here, but the Korg stays.

The Roland goes back. Will cost me $50 to return it, but oh well.
Click to expand...
Good to know re: the Roland and also nice when your existing equipment works out in the end. You got me interested in the Yamaha MX88 actually. I quite like the demos i've been hearing on youtube and the feature set. I may go down this road...
 
electronpirate said:
Funny that you bumped this. I was about to give an update.

I had bought the Roland DS88, and been playing it for a week. I kept scrolling through preset piano sounds and could never find anything that fit perfectly with the songs I was playing. There was a 'muffled' feel to many of them, and the bass always seemed too overpowering. Some were very good, but couldn't bond with it. On the plus side, I loved the keyboard feel...it felt easier to play than the Korg. Some of the other electric pianos, synth things were very good.

So the Korg is staring at me over my shoulder, so I fired it up to have a bit of a comparison. Bottom line, the Korg is LIGHTYEARS better tonally than the Roland. I was shocked. So much that it was obvious in the 1st run through a riff. Decision made in about 3 seconds.

So Korg DID respond to my query, and gave me a few instructions...initialize, test, reload FW, test. The initialize did nothing. The FW reload made it MUCH better. It still did show up, but much less than it did before. I may still run it out to a service center here, but the Korg stays.

The Roland goes back. Will cost me $50 to return it, but oh well.
Click to expand...

Some of this was kinda what I was getting at... :)
The keyboard feel is great and the "Roland" sound is fantastic, the effects super, etc.
But if you are a piano player and want a realistic piano sound, that's a different story.

But I still think the Yamaha CP4 wins. ;)
It's extremely light, simple interface,great keyboard action/feel, no frilly garbagey presets/sounds...it is designed for a piano player. Remarkable product.
They cut the difference between modelling and sampling with their SCM processing....check it out...
 
Hey ladies and gentleman, what do you think about a really good VST plugin? Rather than sell my keyboard and upgrade I'm wondering if the more practical route is just spend a bit on a good plug in? can anyone comment on the quality of piano sounds with plugins? any great ones out there?
 
Native Instruments Komplete has great pianos. "The Maverick" is great for more jazzy types of Piano. If you want the typical big Pop music Grand Piano there are also "The Grandeur" or "The Giant".
What I like about them is the good tone (obviously) and the fact that they even sample the sounds the pedal makes, the Hammers hitting the strings and so on...
They are definetely better than the stuff I heard out of Yamahas Motif or Korgs Kronos. But in the end it's personal taste
 
I'm back to using Logic as there's a 3 week turnaround to fix my ailing Korg. I feel like 3 weeks is an 'estimate', so I'll be on a search and destroy for a piano weight midi thing to tide me over.

This is what Guitar Center is good for...a loaner with a 30 day return policy.
 
I am a keyboard neophyte, but I bought a Yamaha MX49 a few months ago to try to learn again and to have our singer play a few simple parts on songs. I like it a lot except it's very hard to program sounds.
 
This is harder than I thought. I played guitar for 3 hours last night, but missed being able to alternate to a keyboard. Guitar Center had crap keyboards in the cheaper range...for such a large selection, 95% of it sucked badly.

I may go with the Yamaha MX61 to flesh out the keyboard herd. I heartily suck at anything other than weighted keys, so this is my opportunity to figure that part out. I've had good luck with Yamaha. Although I think my real motive is to play all the synth stuff from Kansas.

To round out my Roland adventure, I sent it back, but they nicked me for $55 return costs (and they fooking UPS store said 'we'll charge you $20 for tape to tighten up the return shipping box, but you can buy $5 worth of tape over there and do it yourself.) I'm okay with that, but have learned my lesson on Rolands. I will have to say that they demo's sounded nothing at all like the actual product.

Another aside: Why are the demo's for most keyboards focused on sounds played over backing tracks? It's annoying that you want to hear what it sounds like, but have to plow through a 'sick beat' that they carve a jazz riff over?
 
I know what you mean about listening to demos. I've been listening to lots lately and just want to hear the raw natural sound of each model without it being in a mix or heavily processed to sound great. I'm the same when it comes to weighted keys. I grew up playing on an upright piano. I'm still eyeing the Yamaha MX88 so curious to see what you think of the MX61 if you go with that. I've also just downloaded the demo of Addictive keys and Pianoteq VST's last night
 
Update. I picked up the Korg a little early (after only 1 1/2 weeks.) The word was a bad Micro SD card (funny...the one I replaced it with was brand new...but I didn't say that.) Either way, I've played it constantly for 3 days, and the damn thing just sounds glorious. Actually DIFFERENT than it sounded before, but more of the presets are usable.

The tech mentioned that it's a problem with these things. That the SD card can't keep up with the samples. Bad engineering. He even said 'so when it happens again, come back and it's an easy fix.' Fook.

I still may sell it now that it runs like a clock, but for now, I'm a happy camper.

Damn, organ playing is a whole new world. You just don't need to play many notes to get the vibe. Learning.

But my guitars are a little pissed that I'm tickling ivories...
 
Coda on this. I ended up buying a craigslist Yamaha MX61. I actually love the damn thing. The Korg is working perfectly (so far), and I'm having a ball playing the synth, organ, strings in the Yamaha. The transition to the light keys was not as shocking as I thought it might be (practice, practice, practice). I'm still steps away from programming to get certain sounds...the built in presets for synth are all about club mix stuff with very little 'old skool' sounds; I get closer with the more esoteric string ensemble sounds oddly. It was huge fun to run through 'Blue Collar Man' tonight playing the distorted organ to open up, then rip it up with a smallbox preset for the rest of the song.

To tidy this up, the Korg sounds GREAT when it works. The electric piano's are getting a workout there too. Funny how many of the songs I play on guitar have so many key backgrounds that I just recognizing.

On to the Violin and Sax that are waiting for my tender attentions.
 
When I venture out to the music stores, I try a lot of gear, but I always try the keys. I have discovered that I like the weighted keys (like my Motif) and dislike the non-weighted keys. It just does not feel like there is anything under my bony fingers. The sounds I am liking come with a pretty hefty price tag, so I just walk away.
 
I was watching this thread as I was looking for a new keyboard. I had a Casio Privia which I used almost solely for piano sounds for the last 6 years or so. Key action was fairly decent for a lower end keyboard. Was looking at getting something like the motif rack unit or some kind of roland rack and using the privia as a midi controller.

Ended up going the total opposite direction after trying a Kawai MP-7. I LOVE it. The sounds and capabilities of it are great. The key action is pretty stellar for the price, and a great all around keyboard. It is, however, a stage piano...and holy hell is it bulky and heavy.

Dear Rock and roller cart, thank you for being the 2nd best investment I've ever made as a musician.....right behind earplugs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom