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A good keyboard with effects for a reasonable price?

descendent22

descendent22

Jul 29, 2015
1,543
924
39
Connecticut
#1
When it comes to instruments or music, melody, whatever my true passion is the bass guitar. It's my favorite instrument and I enjoy playing bass more then other instruments. Anyway I also play guitar and I'm currently looking to learn some basic keyboard skills.

The reason for the keyboard is for my songwriting, my home studio I'm currently creating/developing, and I always wanted to learn how to play the keyboard. Mainly it's for my music I am writing and creating. I am looking for a keyboard that has various instruments selection, MOST IMPORTANTLY EFFECTS AND DRUM BEATS. I like having effects, like sound samples that doesn't necessarily have to be music. You get the point. I am roughly in the $500$ range. What's would be a good model keyboard ?
 
#2
For that kind of dough you might get more for your money out of a keyboard midi controller hooked up to a computer. Lots of great keys libraries you can tap into...possibilities are endless for recording.

Downside is you might not get great keys action or pedals on a controller, but for $500, you aren't getting much in a stand alone keyboard, either....

I'm using this...does the job for compositions, beat making, etc. Using a variety of libraries in Logic, I can get the holy triumvirate of piano, Hammond B3 and Fender Rhodes...plus the ability to create drum beats. Yamaha KX49
 
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#5
DirtDog said:
For that kind of dough you might get more for your money out of a keyboard midi controller hooked up to a computer. Lots of great keys libraries you can tap into...possibilities are endless for recording.
Click to expand...
This. Get a MIDI controller (semi weighted for a more piano-like feel, or unweighted for a synth feel) and have it control any number of sounds inside your DAW. Endless possibilities.
 
#7
citizenchris099 said:
My problem with most midi keyboards is the feel of the keys themselves. I've not found too many mainstream midi keyboard models that have hammer action
Click to expand...
There aren't many hammer weighted controllers out there. I've been perfectly happy with a semi-weighted controller for a few years. A full hammer weighted controller would be awful for synth and drum parts. Even organ parts are all wrong on one.

I suppose it matters most for what you're playing. If I was doing nothing but piano or electric piano stuff I'd want a hammer weighted board. For literally everything else a semi weighted board (which is readily available from a variety of manufacturers in multiple sizes and at a range of price points) is a solid choice.
 
#8
I think the Casio PX digital pianos are one of the better deals for a genuinely decent hammer action at a low price point (well, apart from a few older things one might find on eBay). I picked up a Casio PX-160 a few months back and it's a good controller for sampled pianos. Action is probably more on the heavy end of the scale (like the CME UF8 I used previously), but to me it feels pretty good. I might still eventually move up to the Roland RD800 or Kawai VPC-1 I was looking at when I opted to "go cheap," but for the $400 I paid for it, it sure won't owe me anything when I retire it.

It's too bad most modern non-hammer-action controllers have such poor-feeling keybeds. Manufacturers are fussing too much over all the knobs and sliders and drum pads and pretty-colored LED's and not enough over how the keybed actually feels. Which is why I'm using an ancient Yamaha KX-76 for recording parts other than piano. That old Yamaha FS keybed was good...light and fast. The interface is uber-primitive and it basically doesn't generate MIDI velocities higher than 100, but I'd rather use a velocity scaling plugin in the DAW and live with it than go back to my M-Audio Axiom which has a keybed that feels cheap by comparison.
 
#9
I've got a run-of-the-mill M-Audio controller, and the semi-weighted keys feel fine to me. I'm no extraordinary keys player, but I'm okay, and have no complaints about it. I can readily achieve MIDI velocities in the 20-127 range (anything below 20 is difficult to consistently achieve on ANY keyboard regardless of weighting in my experience). I said it earlier, but I'll repeat myself: The only time I actually want full hammer weighted keys is when playing piano parts. Everything else is better served with semi-weighted, and then synth playing is best with non-weighted.
 
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#10
There must be a Murphy's Law to the effect that if you say something negative about a particular piece of gear, somebody in the group you're talking to is all but guaranteed to be using it, LOL. I shouldn't rag on the Axiom too much, because they don't rate that badly on the scale to me - I've played a lot worse. Actually the Axiom's take on "semi-weighted" isn't bad - at least it's not overly stiff. I used it for a year and it got the job done. And really, keyboard feel is another individual taste thing like neck profile and nut width on a bass - it if feels good under your fingers, that's what matters.

The semi-weighted keyboards I really detest are the ones where, in an attempt to make the keys feel more substantial, they've been made really stiff and resistant to key presses in a way that feels uncomfortable, is nothing at all like a piano, and is probably apt to contribute to tendonitis in the long run. The semi-weighted CME UF6 was like that. Took more force to press keys than it should and you could really feel the keys pushing up against your fingers while holding notes down. It was harder to play that thing than any full hammer-action keyboard I've played. I got rid of it pretty fast. I've seen several guys complain about the same thing with Akai MPK's.
 
#11
One thing that coming back to MIDI is Polyphonic aftertouch. This is probably cooler for non-keyboard players that haven't spent years on a piano. Aftertouch can control, pitch, modulation, filters, ...
For guitars it pretty common to hit a chord or two notes and then bend one of them up. Polyphonic after touch can do this, hit both notes but push down on the lower note to bend it. Or play a chord with the left, and melody in the right and shake your finger to add vibrato to the melody.
We'll have to see if it caches on and stick around this time.
All the keyboards with Polyphonic aftertouch seem to not be hammer action.
Some examples and a couple radically different than a regular keyboard
CME XKeys
ROLI Seaboard
Linnstrument
 
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#13
If you want a serious keybed at a low price, nothing beats the casio privia series at that price range. I bought the px-150 a while ago, this looks like that same keyboard with an updated model number Casio Privia PX-160 Digital Piano & Stand Bundle - Black

If u have a mac I'd buy Logic X, for $200 it has the best sound package out of any daw, is an excellent songwriting daw, and the casio has midi to trigger those sounds. That will put you at around $750 total, but thats a hard to beat combo.
 
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#15
I like the Roland JD-XI and it is exact 500,-. But it depends so much on your priorities and the sounds you like. If you want a good keyboard and some traditional sounds or more modern and synth sounds, filters etc.
"It is basically a drum machine, analogue monosynth, digital polysynth and step sequencer in one small unit you can sit on your lap." as someone else discribed it in another forum.
 
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#16
descendent22 said:
When it comes to instruments or music, melody, whatever my true passion is the bass guitar. It's my favorite instrument and I enjoy playing bass more then other instruments. Anyway I also play guitar and I'm currently looking to learn some basic keyboard skills.

The reason for the keyboard is for my songwriting, my home studio I'm currently creating/developing, and I always wanted to learn how to play the keyboard. Mainly it's for my music I am writing and creating. I am looking for a keyboard that has various instruments selection, MOST IMPORTANTLY EFFECTS AND DRUM BEATS. I like having effects, like sound samples that doesn't necessarily have to be music. You get the point. I am roughly in the $500$ range. What's would be a good model keyboard ?
Click to expand...

I have a Korg tr rack controlled by an Alesis midi controller, and a laptop with virtual instruments controlled by an m audio midi controller. Outside of the computer I have less than $500 in all of it. I only use keys for writing and recording , they only leave the house to go to the studio once every other year or so so effects aren't a big deal to me as I can always add effects with pedals or plug ins. For live performances I sample anything i record with my keyboard setup into a jamman stereo which I use as a foot controlled sampler live. Jamman is not in my bass signal chain. Just have it running to a radial pro DI for its own channel to foh.

Really depends on what you want. I like the tr rack because it has some sample based sounds and a lot of the classic korg pad sounds that have been in the triton and trinity boards.
There are several classes of keyboards. Sample based keyboards have by far the best realistic sounds IMO . By that I mean like acoustic piano and string type sounds. Synths for example the korg micro synth xl+ Are good for synth tones but The piano sound in it is totally unusable IMO. But the other side of that is the micro synth family is pretty popular for electronic music. So it just depends on what you want. I'm personally not into dub step and techno and stuff stuff the sample based stuff works for me.

As for the tr rack. It does what I need it to do. I would say the cons of it is I think it would be a nightmare to use it live if I needed to quickly switch from one sound to another. But as I mentioned I never do that. It's usually more like during pre production the guys in the band will say stuff like I think it would be cool to have an acoustic piano here or a cello there, a synth pad on ending of that one and so on.
 

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