Keyboard Gear--Learn how to Use It

[ProfD]

The reason that [insert KB here] sounds better than your KB has little or nothing to do with the sounds in it. 

 

Many musicians spend thousands of dollars chasing better sounding gear when the real problem lies in 1) their expectations and 2) how they use it.

 

For example, I often read that Yamaha has the worst ROMpler organ sounds.  Yet, there are KB players all over the globe who have no problems getting through their gigs on with it.

 

Some folks buy the infamous RED KB made in Sweden.  Then, they jump through hoops trying to make it sound better on gigs.

 

Because the RED one does cost as much as a used car, naturally some would expect it to sound great upon power up.  Not the case.

 

KBs should be auditioned prior to walking out the music store with it in tow and/or having a big azz box show up on the doorstep. 

 

Regardless of how [insert KB here] comes into your possession…take the time to learn how to use every aspect of it (sounds, synth parameters, EQ, FX, etc.).

 

Beyond calling up random patches and playing the same old songs and tired licks, explore the sounds from a musical perspective.  Think outside the box. 

 

A piano sound doesn’t have to be relegated to Classical, Jazz and Honky Tonk.  Manipulate the ADSR.  Apply an EG (envelope generator).  Adjust filter cutoff.  Add effects.  It could become a very cool ‘prepared’ or pad sound.  Same applies to every other sound.

 

I can only imagine a bad feeling upon hearing someone else play some cool or amazing sh8t on the KB you already own and making the comment “I didn’t know my KB could sound like that”.  Sure it does.

 

The feeling has to be worse upon hearing an ultra-bad azz musician shred on an ancient KB by today’s standards or a cheap KB.  Again, “I didn’t know that garbage KB could sound like that”.  Why not...same old samples in the newer KBs.

 

See, it really has little or nothing to do with the KB at all.  Regardless of manufacturer, every KB has a similar standard soundset.  Especially under the General MIDI category.

 

As musicians, we prefer a particular KB(s) for various reasons.  The reality is that every KB you touch will sound the same in your hands.

 

The proficiency of the musician using a particular KB and/or how they approach sound design makes the instrument sound better or worse.

 

Take the time to learn your gear.  This is especially important prior to buying a new KB from the same manufacturer. 

 

The new KB only sounds better than your old KB because the manufacturer has already tweaked it for the lazy.🤣😎

[analogika]

"Piece of gear sounds as good as person operating it." 

[CEB]

I like Motif organs. They make great Pop pad under layers. 

[Docbop]

In my bass days I hung out on Marcus Miller's (MM) website a lot and someone would say MM's old JBass is the perfect bass that's why MM sounds so good.  MM would post and say his bass is good, but not perfect.  MM said I've taken the time to learn all the good sounds the instrument is capable of, but more importantly I've learn all the bad thing about the bass and figure out how to use those to my advantage as well.    

 

One of the advantages I think coming up musically when I did most only had there one instrument, but you play in Top 40 band playing all the hot songs of the day that used a variety of instruments.    The result was people worked more on the playing of the part and then worked on their one instrument to find a sound close enough or a modify the part a bit to fit what instrument they had.  You learned your gear and how to dial it in for whatever situation.     

 

In 60's and 70's music was booming and lots of people getting into music and gear sales were soaring.   Then late 70's gear sales started to plateau and gear companies were sad so they started pushing via ads and media people need more gear,  one guitar or keyboard isn't enough you need two or more, you need affects you need more and more gear.   To play song X you need the same gear as whoever played on song X and people bought more gear and still are.    I think that a lot of what drives this thing with Tribute bands versus Top 40 or cover bands whatever term is used today.   When doing tributes players become obsessed with buying all the gear the played in band X had.   But funny you see band X on TV or a Youtube and they are playing song X and using totally different gear and maybe even a different arrangement, but viewers are still happy to hear band X again.   

 

People are too gear obsessed these days and only ones happy are the gear makers on their way to the bank. 

 

Aw I need more coffee after that let me pull out my $$$ coffee beans and $$$ coffee maker and $$$ cup or else it will suck. 

 

 

[DaveMcM]

Back in my MI retail days many moons ago, I can't tell you how many keyboards that would come in for repair still had only the original programs. Why would you by a Prophet 5, with all those tasty knobs, and not do something with them? Crazy.

 

As the OP eluded too, It's what you do with the instrument under your hands that makes the greatest difference to how it sounds.

[ProfD]

6 minutes ago, Docbop said:

One of the advantages I think coming up musically when I did most only had there one instrument...The result was people worked more on the playing of the part and then worked on their one instrument to find a sound close enough or a modify the part a bit to fit what instrument they had.  You learned your gear and how to dial it in for whatever situation.   

Being poor, er, underfunded forces a musician to focus on the instrument(s) within reach too. 

 

I'm reminded of being in the music store many years ago.  A 12-year old kid's dad put a KB workstation in layaway for him.  Coming back and forth to the store to make payments, the kid played the KB so much that he already knew how to use every feature of that KB.  I'd imagine there was nothing that kid couldn't do with that KB once he finally got it home. 

 

An embarrassment of riches or a healthy dose of disposable income or something in between allows for a form of ADD among musicians who can afford to buy everything everywhere all at once. 🤣 

 

No need to learn anything when any real or perceived shortcomings of an instrument can be overcome with just buying another one.😁😎

[EricBarker]

45 minutes ago, ProfD said:

An embarrassment of riches or a healthy dose of disposable income or something in between allows for a form of ADD among musicians who can afford to buy everything everywhere all at once. 🤣 

Ah! I see what you did there, clever!

 

I only buy new boards when I’ve completely hit a wall after hundreds/thousands of hours use. More often than not, it’s not feature limitations but workflow.  I did a lot of great things with my old AlesisQS8, but as I was trying to do more complex live shows, it was a nightmare to coordinate. Plus it was heavy AF. That’s why I switched to a laptop setup. But after years of doing that and loving it, I started realizing I wanted to be in a more organic space than I was before. I had an awkward middle period with a lot of different boards and an increasingly complex setup time. Then I finally got the RED board, and am now very much at peace.

 

The Nord Stage is the worst sounding rig I’ve had in years, and I love it. It’s still extremely feasible and good. It can’t compete with a laptop loaded with an array high-end sample models. But that’s also what makes it great, it does a lot with very little. And the control surface really gels with how I like to play. I’m never going to use it in the studio, but that’s okay, I’ve got that covered! But it’s great live.

[MathOfInsects]

We are the instrument. The hardware is just the interface.

[ProfD]

Just now, MathOfInsects said:

We are the instrument. The hardware is just the interface.

D8mnit bro....you just consolidated my whole post.🤣😎

[Al Quinn]

4 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

We are the instrument. The hardware is just the interface.

 

 

[David Emm]

I may be the instrument, but sweet Hari Jebus, don't look inside my spit valve. Just don't. 🤮

[KuruPrionz]

It is a universal truth. 

Your cousin plays a Fender Stratocaster. So did Jeff Beck. Your cousin does not sound like Jeff Beck.

[DeltaJockey]

I mostly find it's my effects and EQ which determine how happy I am with a particular piece of gear/sound relative to the demo's I've heard beforehand.

Mostly though, I tend to explore my own gear over time and discover new stuff which blows me away, as I've not heard it demo'd anywhere else.

 

In a related comment,

I've always believed that most synths etc, can be made to closely replicate most other synths etc with enough creativity. It's amazing how the individual architecture of a particular technology (and how it's presented in the interface), is the biggest determiner of how easy it is to achieve this with a worthwhile amount of effort.

[JamPro]

My $0.02: it is easier and faster to pay for a new keyboard than to learn how to play a keyboard instrument well.

 

We see the same thing with the guitar crowd.  The guy who shows up with a new expensive guitar, new amp, fully kittted-out new pedal-board (and swanky fedora), and who plays cowboy chords.  An archetype of the open-mic scene.

 

Learning to play keys well is difficult; much more difficult that learning to play an "in-the-box" guitar lead.  I spent the first 30 years of my keyboard life listening to guitarist play blues leads and thinking I needed a big improvement right away.  So I bought new keyboard gear.

 

A big improvement did come, and it came because I started working on blues scales, and then major and minor scales, and practicing 2-5-1s, and learning shell voicings and LH bass lines, and playing those under the scales I was working on, and then learning the head, etc.  It took a long time, and I'm nowhere near the "keyboard superstar" finish line.  But it did not come because I bought another keyboard.

 

 

[o0Ampy0o]

19 hours ago, Docbop said:

In my bass days I hung out on Marcus Miller's (MM) website a lot and someone would say MM's old JBass is the perfect bass that's why MM sounds so good.  MM would post and say his bass is good, but not perfect.  MM said I've taken the time to learn all the good sounds the instrument is capable of, but more importantly I've learn all the bad thing about the bass and figure out how to use those to my advantage as well.    

 

One of the advantages I think coming up musically when I did most only had there one instrument, but you play in Top 40 band playing all the hot songs of the day that used a variety of instruments.    The result was people worked more on the playing of the part and then worked on their one instrument to find a sound close enough or a modify the part a bit to fit what instrument they had.  You learned your gear and how to dial it in for whatever situation.     

 

In 60's and 70's music was booming and lots of people getting into music and gear sales were soaring.   Then late 70's gear sales started to plateau and gear companies were sad so they started pushing via ads and media people need more gear,  one guitar or keyboard isn't enough you need two or more, you need affects you need more and more gear.   To play song X you need the same gear as whoever played on song X and people bought more gear and still are.    I think that a lot of what drives this thing with Tribute bands versus Top 40 or cover bands whatever term is used today.   When doing tributes players become obsessed with buying all the gear the played in band X had.   But funny you see band X on TV or a Youtube and they are playing song X and using totally different gear and maybe even a different arrangement, but viewers are still happy to hear band X again.   

 

People are too gear obsessed these days and only ones happy are the gear makers on their way to the bank. 

 

Aw I need more coffee after that let me pull out my $$$ coffee beans and $$$ coffee maker and $$$ cup or else it will suck. 

 

 

This fits many things up until Covid. The consequential chain of events which have followed and are still unfolding are changing everything.
 

Several years ago I watched Wall Street with Michael Douglas again years after it came out. There is a scene where Charlie Sheen and Daryl Hannah are outfitting his kitchen with luxurious accessories. At the time that was something reserved for wealthy people. The scene was designed to illustrate that Sheen’s character had become successful. However, since then it became a thing that everyone acquires all those gadgets. No longer exclusive, they are considered standard household items. There has been a campaign to sell the idea on everyone through cooking shows, books, commercials, magazines, cooking segments on morning shows and late night shows, and in store displays. Chances are if you want to cook after watching a show or reading a magazine you are going to want all of the gadgets used in the demonstrations. A new category of store appeared offering affordable luxuries to the not-so-wealthy. The concept sold to people is “obtainable luxuries.” Instead of acquiring what is needed you get something because it is within your reach to have the extras.

 

Consumerism has been driving everything. For decades more and more people have had unprecedented money to burn. Whatever you are into (music, woodworking, visual art, dance, athletics, cars, traveling, reading, gardening, etc.) chances are you have more tools and accessories that go with it than you need and rarely ever use.

 

But that has all been changing most significantly as a result of Covid-19’s worldwide impact on every aspect of the process.

[CEB]

I’ve been learning to play my instrument since I was six years old. I want some toys. 

[allan_evett]

20 hours ago, EricBarker said:

 

 More often than not, it’s not feature limitations but workflow... Then I finally got the RED board, and am now very much at peace.

 

The Nord Stage is the worst sounding rig I’ve had in years, and I love it. It’s still extremely feasible and good. It can’t compete with a laptop loaded with an array high-end sample models. But that’s also what makes it great, it does a lot with very little. And the control surface really gels with how I like to play. I’m never going to use it in the studio, but that’s okay, I’ve got that covered! But it’s great live.

Similar experience here. My Stage covers a lot of territory live, with a highly intuitive and quick workflow.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, my Nautilus 61 has sounds and layering galore beyond the Stage 3. But it lacks the intuitive immediacy that Nord and the new Yamaha stage keyboards have. So it's great for recording or 2nd-tier live (over my Stage 3, 76 or RD88).  I've been slowly changing out a couple instruments over the past five years; not to get the 'latest and greatest' but to take advantage of improved front panel design and quick access to functions.  

[CEB]

My last purchase that was Sound driven was a Roland RD-500.  No rig has really been more audibly satisfying than the rigs from 87 thru mid 90s. Mostly due to ridiculous stage amplification. The rigs were huge. Nothing was mult-timbral. Rack of synths. Big 3 way cabs. Real Leslie.  Real Analog.  
 

New stuff does sound better/cleaner but the driving motivations has been various other things, work flow, patch control, footprint. My last two purchases have been motivated by a hernia and neuropathy.   

[K K]

Another common mistake about buying new keyboards is to evaluate them according to their factory "programs". There are countless videos comparing factory piano, organ, etc programs on different machines with near definitive conclusions given right away. "The ABC machine pianos sound much better than the ones on the DEF". Well, good recent keyboards allow you to greatly modify preset sounds, which makes those comparisons not very useful. Of course, not everyone has the time to tweak sounds to their liking, so many just buy a keyboard and end up playing the factory programs with few adjustments.

[Al Quinn]

On 3/31/2023 at 10:15 AM, ProfD said:

Regardless of how [insert KB here] comes into your possession…take the time to learn how to use every aspect of it (sounds, synth parameters, EQ, FX, etc.).

I have to do this. It’s just how I am. The amount of time I recently spent exploring / learning the YC73 in prep for the first time using it as a single board rig was nuts! But once on the gig I was able to get around and tweak things to my liking with ease; didn’t even need to put my glasses on.
 

But, learning a new keyboard is so darn time consuming that a part of me dreads getting new gear. In recent years most new gear motivation has be driven by the desire to reduce the weight / schlep.

[ElmerJFudd]

Hmmm.  Without a doubt patch development is the single most important task prior to release of a new instrument.  If potential buyers don’t turn it on and hear something magical - the board isn’t going to sell well.  Realistically speaking, full sounding, harmonically rich, heavily reverberated, echo filled,  modulated, motion packed patches sound great when playing alone.  Or as a feature in a song that’s written to have space for a unique sonic tattoo that grabs attention.  
 

So many prospective owners have bought workstations because they  are “the best”. Best sounds, most features, etc.  But it takes years to really learn to get the most out of these machines and that’s time we aren’t just playing and making music.   I’ve actually never owned a flagship workstation for as often as I’ve sat at them in the shops to give them a go.  More typically choosing bread and butter boards with basic split and layer capabilities, decent patch save/recall with a good action, done. 
 

Now for gigs that require a lot of unique patch development, a long setlist of patch changes, Im more likely to use a board I own and MainStage.  $5k workstations have big competition from general use computing devices and that genie is not going back in the box.  
 

It took Nord slashing features for ease of use to get a behemoth like Yamaha to release something like the current CP/YC.  I think that’s just the start. 
 

 

[The Real MC]

I'm not a fan of the upgrade treadmill because I don't like to re-learn new interfaces.  Most of my weapons of mass composition are analog synths with a panel full of knobs and switches, the interfaces are largely the same from model to model.  For ROMplers I settled on the Kurzweil 1000 series a long time ago and they have served me well.  No they don't have DSP effects or filters, no I don't care.  Hammond clonewheels, same reasoning.  For delay processing I settled on a set of Korg SDD-3300s.  None of my digital reverbs have any menus - my Eventide 2016s has knobs, Lexicon model 200 has knobs, Lexicon PCM-60 has buttons.  Once I knew what parameters like RT60, predelay, diffusion, position, etc create reverbs I can operate any of my reverbs.

That way I'm focused on playing and not on reading user manuals.

[DeltaJockey]

6 hours ago, K K said:

Another common mistake about buying new keyboards is to evaluate them according to their factory "programs". There are countless videos comparing factory piano, organ, etc programs on different machines with near definitive conclusions given right away. "The ABC machine pianos sound much better than the ones on the DEF". Well, good recent keyboards allow you to greatly modify preset sounds, which makes those comparisons not very useful. Of course, not everyone has the time to tweak sounds to their liking, so many just buy a keyboard and end up playing the factory programs with few adjustments.

I agree with not evaluating using just the factory presets. But a big annoyance for me is, a new keyboard comes out which is touted to be the latest best ever, and different to it predecessors. When it comes to stage pianos or workstations, the order of the patches in the Youtube demo-ing is painfully repetitive. ie Piano - Elec Piano - Organ etc. I can pretty much drag the progress bar on the clip and land on the exact sound.

It's been like this for years and years. I watch the demos, because I'm interested in what it can do that's groundbreaking. On a recorded media you can't hear that those basic patches are any better than the previous model. Most of the time I skip past the sameness, to try and discover what the more obscure stuff is. I'm not saying every demonstration is like this, but it certainly feels like it sometimes.

Are they pitching this stuff to new musicians who don't already have prerequisite pianos, organs etc? As they talk about every new product as though we've not experienced the likes of this previously.

 

...end of rant....

[felis]

What you can do with a keyboard depends in part on the capabilities that are built into it.

 

IMO - most are sadly lacking.

[time4jazz]

I can see OP’s point completely, especially with respect to gigs.  Assuming the audience can even hear the keys, the exact nature of the sounds is usually not critical. 
 

Still… at home, I enjoy playing the Rhodes sound on my CP73 a lot more than on many other DPs I’ve tried. 🙂

[ProfD]

Many years ago, there were no factory presets. Sounds could not be saved either. 

 

Cell phones didn't exist so taking a pic or video wasn't an option. I guess someone could have used a Polaroid.

 

Otherwise, one had to memorize and/or write down the settings for a favorite sound.

 

Learning synthesis and muscle memory made it easier to get back to sounds quickly. 

 

Presets are examples of what a KB can do. There's nothing in the manual or on the buyer's receipt indicating that sounds cannot be altered. It is encouraged.

 

Most of the folks doing product demos and reviews on YouTube are either paid to some degree or they are enthusiasts.

 

Regardless of who's demoing, most of the product specialists will run through factory patches.

 

Sound designers sell their handiwork. Somw folks don't have enough time to learn their own KBs. 😎

[CowboyNQ]

The bloke with the Korg Krome in his profile pic agrees with you.  Not that he’s any great shakes as a player, but a new ‘board ain’t gonna make him any better.

[Ibarch]

19 hours ago, felis said:

What you can do with a keyboard depends in part on the capabilities that are built into it.

 

IMO - most are sadly lacking.

 

In what ways do you think they are lacking? 

 

There seems to be plenty of variation in the market. Some tailored for live performance, others  more for studio use or sound design. 25 note controllers to 88 note weighed beds. Less than £100 to £5000+. Newest digital tech or 50 year old vintage analogues. 

 

I would say your comment applies more to us players than the boards we use. 

[analogika]

2 hours ago, Ibarch said:

 

In what ways do you think they are lacking? 

 

There seems to be plenty of variation in the market. Some tailored for live performance, others  more for studio use or sound design. 25 note controllers to 88 note weighed beds. Less than £100 to £5000+. Newest digital tech or 50 year old vintage analogues. 

 

I would say your comment applies more to us players than the boards we use. 

 

Even a 200,000€ Fazioli comes without such basic features as pitch bend or simple portamento. 

 

I mean, WTF. It's 2023, not 1860! 

[Docbop]

5 minutes ago, analogika said:

 

Even a 200,000€ Fazioli comes without such basic features as pitch bend or simple portamento. 

 

I mean, WTF. It's 2023, not 1860! 

 

and what was they told us growing up...  It's a poor craftsman (or artist) who blames his tools.   

 

I never figured out if it was just an excuse not to buy me good gear, or that I really do need to practice more, and more, and more, and more.