keyboardists/pianists

[wintermadness]

to all u musicians out there, since i was young i played piano which now i know basic melodies but still pretty rusty. i wanna buy a keyboard to learn with and just wondering whats a good start? i wanna sample effects and get a good decent sound out of it.
im looking at $100-200 AUD range. ill have no idea whats a good price for keyboards :P
also, what are some books i should check out to help me on the way? i prefer to be self taught

[SILVERWOLF]

You'll probably get some good responses if you ask in the designated "Remixing" forum.

[V___]

Icant talk about a range of keyboards (others here can help heaps more) But i'd recomend the following site if your wanting a fulllength, hammeraction electric paino and dnt have a massive chunk to spend at once: www.rolandrentals.com.au I'm renting from them, theyr excelent, and its slowly bought.

[Yoozer]

i wanna buy a keyboard to learn with and just wondering whats a good start?
A Yamaha PSR might help you for a while.

i wanna sample effects and get a good decent sound out of it.
Forget sampling for your budget. Really, you will not get this in the keyboard itself.
im looking at $100-200 AUD range. ill have no idea whats a good price for keyboards :P
Much more than that ;).

200 AUD is 124 euros. You can barely get a controller keyboard for that here (no sounds, USB hookup), and Australia is much more expensive if you want new gear.

As I said, a PSR, and then get some secondhand MIDI interface, and try to make do with what's available as free software out there.

also, what are some books i should check out to help me on the way? i prefer to be self taught

What genre? Do keep in mind that you'll have to do a lot of repetitions to clean up the rust.

[OverCoat]

Yoozer you can get GREAT older keyboards for $100-200 :)

eBayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

How many times do I have to pound this into everyone's head?

however I am unsure if you can find a keyboard with a sampler for that price?!?!?!

[tgfoo]

Yeah, you can get some decent used keyboards. Though, I would advise not to buy a keyboard that you can't play before you buy. Sure plenty of people will be honest about telling you if there is a stuck key somewhere or other problems that it may have, but if you're going to drop a substantial amount of cash on it, it's best to try it out first hand first.

[Yoozer]

Yoozer you can get GREAT older keyboards for $100-200 :)

Aussie dollars != US dollars. Import costs. *poof* and gone is the advantage. A PSR with a decent polyphony count is going to help this guy more than an Alpha Juno or a cheapo Ensoniq, especially for piano.

[OverCoat]

What about a PSR on eBay?

[wintermadness]

whats a PSR?!

[chokst~1.bat]

Yoozer you can get GREAT older keyboards for $100-200 :)

eBayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Yeah. I bought my keyboard at Radio Shack for $299 around 1998, and I still use it for just about everything.

Now it's selling for $50 on Ebay (http://cgi.ebay.com/Optimus-MD-1200-Electronic-Keyboard-Synthesizer_W0QQitemZ7390512899QQcategoryZ29552QQs sPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem). Interesting. I think it's pretty fun.

If you want to hear how it sounds, I guess you could check out some of my PRC entries (http://remixcompetition.doulifee.com/mixerid.php?mixerid=Chokster37) (PRCv2-7, ORC32, PRCv2-28, ORC19), or just PM me for some samples.

[OmegaDonut]

whats a PSR?!

It's a Yamaha series of keyboards.

[chokst~1.bat]

Yeah. I bought my keyboard at Radio Shack for $299 around 1998, and I still use it for just about everything.
Woah, I just found the old keyboard my parents bought for me in 1989 on Ebay too...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7375568546&category=47081
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-39166758-teclado-casio-ct-638-58-otimooo-_JM

Haha, I wouldn't recommend buying this one, but here's a sample (http://www.canadianphilatelics.com/choksta/classic.mp3) of what the instruments sound like (I always loved the twinkly SynthEnds ones). :lol:

[wintermadness]

Yeah. I bought my keyboard at Radio Shack for $299 around 1998, and I still use it for just about everything.
Woah, I just found the old keyboard my parents bought for me in 1989 on Ebay too...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7375568546&category=47081
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-39166758-teclado-casio-ct-638-58-otimooo-_JM

Haha, I wouldn't recommend buying this one, but here's a sample (http://www.canadianphilatelics.com/choksta/classic.mp3) of what the instruments sound like (I always loved the twinkly SynthEnds ones). :lol:


sounds sound pretty awesome in it :)

i guess i'll go for some yamaha PSR than for around my budget price.
do most keyboards have imputs for the PC to record?

[Yoozer]

i'm looking for keyboards in a similar price range (well, in USD)
I'm also currently looking at PSRs.

Yeah, but what's your goal? What do you want to do with it?

though, question: does 2-track recording come in handy?
If you use a sequencer on your computer it's completely superfluous. Pretty much every computer-based sequencer beats what's on a keyboard into a pulp. That said, the sequencers on keyboards and workstations are much more 'direct' in operation; no shortcuts, no menus, no distracting stuff.

and can it send multiple tracks to my computer seperatly? (looking at the PSRE303)
It's probably the best to see "sending" on a computer and "sending" on a keyboard as different terms :). If you store what you have played on the keyboard (as a MIDI file, because all song formats used for keyboards are pretty obscure) and then open it again on the computer, you will have 'sent' what you have played.

If you don't do it like that, the keyboard will happily pump out MIDI information, and since your sequencer program will most likely record only a single MIDI track at a time, it'll receive all the stuff. So you will have to do it part by part.

[quote]Easy to Use 2-Track Recorder
Yamaha makes it one-button simple to record your performance. Simply press the Record button and start playing. It doesn't get any easier than that!
If you know what hoops you had to jump through on earlier sequencers (determine tempo, quantizing, beat count, length, start, stop - that's the worst case scenario by the way), that's indeed easy :).

Dual and split will not make much difference when sending, but much more with receiving and playing on the keyboard itself. "Split" simply means "ignore the MIDI notes if they are below the middle C" (or above the middle C, where middle C can be an arbitrarily chosen split point). "Layer" means that 2 presets "listen" to the same information. The information is only sent once, though, and the only discrimination is made on the side of the receiver.

Also, yes, for $200 you can get quite a number of older synthesizers on the secondhand market, it just depends on what you want to do with it.

[Yoozer]

You don't have to apologize for that ;).