What To Look
For When Buying A New Or Used Electronic Keyboard
Get Your
Kids An Electronic Piano Keyboard
If you are a beginner or you are going to get a keyboard for your
children, then you don’t need to spend a a lot of money to
pick up a first-rate quality, seriously featured electronic piano
keyboard. For a used beginner's music keyboard, anything up to fifty
pounds will do and if you wish for a new midi keyboard then one hundred
pounds will do it.
Useful
Features Your Keyboard Should Have
These days musical keyboards at a price range of up to a hundred pounds
have lots of functions and if you are in the market for a new keyboard,
you will almost certainly get what you require as a beginner. If on the
other hand you are buying a second-hand keyboard then you should check
out some useful features your keyboard should have. I have listed a
some of these features below and they can make the learning process a
little bit easier.
Velocity
Sensitive Keyboard
Using a velocity sensitive keyboard means you can add a bit of light
and shade to your playing. By adjusting the force you apply to the keys
will control whether the sound is loud or soft. Press down hard and the
sound is loud, press delicately and the sound is soft.
Full Size
Keys
Again, most contemporary piano keyboards today possess full size piano
keys. Some older electronic piano keyboards may have half size keys.
These were introduced to aid young children with smaller fingers to
play the musical keyboard more effectively. This of course is more
marketing than fact and having half size or mini keys offer no useful
assistance to learning whatsoever and I recommend you avoid these types
of keyboards if you are serious about learning to play.
Adjustable
Keyboard Stand
If you purchase a secondhand portable keyboard, you might be lucky and
get a keyboard stand with it. When buying a new keyboard, stands are
classed as an optional extra. Still, it's worth the additional expence
to get one and if you have youngsters of various ages and sizes, the
fact that it's adjustable comes in very handy.
Online Piano Lessons For Beginners
Of course, there are lots and lots of features available on new digital
keyboards, some you will find useful some you probably will never use.
The great thing is that portable keyboards in the hundred-pound range
are specifically designed for the novice and if you take some private
or online piano keyboard lessons, you will get a good start.
Buying
Second Hand Casio Electronic Keyboards
If you want to buy an electronic keyboard for yourself, how do you
decide which brand to choose. You need to consider the price
of the keyboard, obviously its got to suit your budget and you also
want a good make, not a toy and its got to be easy to use, so you don't
want a workstation keyboard or a synthesizer.
The ideal solution, especially if you are a beginner is to opt for a
used Casio Keyboard. You can easily pick one up for less than a hundred
pounds; they are a respected brand and are very easy to use.
61 And 76
Note Casio Keyboards
You should be looking for a minimum of 61 keys on the Casio keyboard of
your choice; in fact some of the older WK Casio's have a 76 key
keyboard. All Casio's have a generous amount of sound presets including
Piano, Brass, Organ and String sounds. They also come with over a
hundred Drum Styles and an automatic chord recognition computer built
in.
eBay is probably the best place to buy Casio keyboards, there are lots
of listing and lots of bargains. Just set your budget, make sure you
get a power supply and a stand with the deal and you're all set to go.
Make your new keyboard skills come alive with these hit songs! This
repertoire book of classic hits is specially arranged for easy
keyboard, ideal for progression from the Absolute Beginners Keyboard
songbook. Each song comes complete with professional quality backing
tracks on the CD. The songs are arranged in both treble and bass clefs.
Songlist
(Everything I
Do) I Do It For You
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Candle In The Wind
Eternal Flame
Every Breath You Take
Hey Jude
Imagine
Money Money Money
Mull Of Kintyre
Forty-six hit songs in easy melody line arrangements for all electronic
keyboards. Ideal for the beginner, each song has chord symbols, lyrics,
suggested registration, rhythm and tempo. Easy-to-follow keyboard
diagrams are grouped together at the start of each song and show all
the left-hand chord voicings used. Includes songs from Westlife,
Anastacia, Coldplay, Travis, Hear'Say, Britney, Atomic Kitten plus many
more.
Songlist
A Design For Life [Manic Street Preachers]
A Little Respect [Wheatus]
A Woman Is A Sometime Thing
Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) [Carey, Mariah] [Westlife]
Black Coffee [All Saints]
Dancing In The Moonlight [Toploader]
Deeper Shade Of Blue (Steps)
Don't Stop Movin' [S Club 7]
Eternity [Williams, Robbie]
Give Me A Reason (The Corrs)
Go Let It Out [Oasis]
I Want It That Way [Backstreet Boys]
I'm Outta Love [Anastacia]
Keep On Movin' (Five)
Kids [Williams, Robbie] [Minogue, Kylie]
Lift Me Up (Geri Halliwell)
Mr Writer (Stereophonics)
My Love [Westlife]
No Matter What [Boyzone]
Nobody Wants To Be Lonely (Ricky Martin)
One For Sorrow (Steps)
Oops!...I Did It Again [Spears, Britney]
Out Of Reach [Gabrielle]
Praise You [Fatboy Slim]
Pure And Simple [Hear'say]
Rise (Gabrielle)
Run For Cover [Sugababes]
Shining Light (Ash)
Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely [Backstreet Boys]
Sing [Travis]
Sing It Back [Moloko]
So Why So Sad (Manic Street Preachers)
Stronger [Spears, Britney]
Supreme (Robbie Williams)
Survivor (Destiny's Child)
That Don't Impress Me Much [Twain, Shania]
The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh) (Mbube)
The Road To Mandalay (Robbie Williams)
This Year's Love [Gray, David]
Trouble [Coldplay]
Turn [Travis]
Walking Away [David, Craig]
What It Feels Like For A Girl [Madonna]
What Makes A Man [Westlife]
What Took You So Long? [Bunton, Emma]
Whole Again [Atomic Kitten]
Electronic
Pianos | Synthesizers | Fender Rhodes Piano
Vintage
Fender Rhodes Mark I Stage Piano
Electric
Pianos And Electronic Pianos
Electric pianos such as the Fender Rhodes Stage Piano should not be
confused with electronic pianos of today. The only similarities between
the two types are that they are both powered by electricity and they
both have a piano keyboard.
1970 Was The
Decade For The Electric Piano
It was from the late sixties that the popularity of electric pianos
witnessed а surge and that popularity reached its heydays in the
seventies, when people went crazy about these instruments.
All those heavy, old, vintage and imposing Looking UN amplified stage
pianos were replaced by the electric piano and the Latter was mainly
designed and targeted for either school use or home use. Many of these
electric pianos were used in school piano labs and college piano labs
where several students who use headphones could learn playing the piano
simultaneously.
Synthesizer
Are Electronic, Electric Piano Are Electro Acoustic
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument. But an electric piano is
different, it is electro mechanical. The sounds are produced
mechanically and there are pick ups, which convert sounds into
electronic signals. It was in the late twenties that the earliest
versions of electric piano wee created and launched on the market.
One of the first was the NeoBechstein electric grand piano that was
manufactured in 1929. Vivi Tone Clavier created by LloydLoar was
perhaps the earliest of the string less models.
These kinds of electric pianos were regularly manufactured until the
middle of the eighties and then were gradually discontinued. But an
announcement for revival of the electric piano has been declared By
Rhodes in 2008.
A Brief
History Of The Synthesiser
The beginning of the synthesiser can be traced back the late 19th
century but it wasn’t until the 1960s that Moog developed the
start of the modern synthesiser. Basically the way a synthesiser works
is by manipulating sounds with the use of an oscillator, pitch and
filter circuit and then adding that sound to another sound to create
new sound. With the use of waveforms such as sine wave, square wave and
pulse waves, the user could create new and interesting sounds. This
early system created by Moog was know as a modular system and each
module could manipulate the sound in a way described above and then
connect to another module and then another. Cables were used to connect
each module and modular synthesisers were very big, needed lots of
cables and were very expensive and extremely complicated to use.
Moog Give
Keyboard Players What They Want
In the 1970s the first mini Moog was produced which came with modules
already connected internally and access to these could now be achieved
with switches and sliders. The keyboard had 44 keys and lots of buttons
and sliders and buttons that musicians loved and of course it was
cheaper and easier to use. These early synths were monophonic, meaning
you couldn’t play a more than one note at the same time,
however many keys you pressed only one note would sound, by
today’s standards, it’s a bit limiting, but at the
time it was just a brilliant new invention to create new kinds of music.
Synthesisers
Just Get Better And Better, Or Do They?
By the mid seventies the first polyphonic synth was made and by the
eighties more manufacturers were making more complex machines such as
the Yamaha CS series of synths with the CS80 being probably the most
famous and used by many musicians of the time, I personally had the
model after that the Yamaha CS70M. These were 8 note polyphonic and
while they were fantastic sounding with lots of user control, they were
very heavy (not great when you’re carting it about in a Ford
Cortina) and were also notoriously difficult to repair. By the
nineties, synthesisers had become more advanced a lot lighter and a lot
cheaper. A good example of the next generation would be the Yamaha DX7;
this was an FM synth and not very user friendly. The knobs and sliders
had gone, the digital generation had arrived and in my opinion the
synthesizer had lost something. The older synths were known has analog,
and the new ones, even today are digital. There’s something
about the sound of the new digital models, there’s something
missing, they are too perfect and as everything that is digital today,
it either works or it doesn’t, there’s no middle
ground. My old CS70M had eight sound module circuit boards, one for
each note played; one board developed a fault which meant I could only
play seven notes at the same time instead of eight. The point is, as
long as I had one board operational the thing would work, I doubt the
same can be said for today’s keyboards. Having had my moan
about the evil of digital, I have to say that the new modern synths
have everything you could ever want from a sound making machine if you
are prepared for the steep learning curve, also some manufacturers are
bringing back the buttons and sliders that us musos loved in the
eighties.
If you want to hear the sounds of the synthesiser as it should be
played have a listen to some early Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre and Isao
Tomita. Be warned this is seriously good stuff.
Vangelis -
Pulstar [Live]
Jean Michel
Jarre - Oxygene 2
Tomita -
Snowflakes Are Dancing
Popular
Electric Piano Models
Some of the popular examples of piano manufacturing companies who were
famous for creation of these electro acoustic pianos were Yamaha,
Wurlitzer, Rhodes etc and а few popular electric piano models were
Yamaha CP 70 electric grand piano, Wurlitzer EP 200 A, Hohner Cembalet,
Electra piano, Pianet, Clavinet, Rhodes piano.
A few famous musical pieces that were played on electric piano were
Just the Way You Are by Billy Joel, Little Jeannie, Sorry Seems to Be
the Hardest Word, Daniel by Elton John etc.
APNewsBreak: Jackson enters fray over Grammy cuts
(AP)AP - The Rev. Jesse Jackson is entering the fray over The Recording Academy's cuts to its Grammy categories: He's asking to meet with the president of the organization and has raised the possibility of protests with the awards less than two weeks away.
Costume designer Eiko Ishioka has died at 73
(AP)AP - Eiko Ishioka, a bold, Academy Award-winning visual artist whose surreal and sensual costumes were worn by Broadway actors, Olympic athletes, Cirque du Soleil performers and movie stars like Jennifer Lopez, has died in Tokyo. She was 73.
Michael Jackson's legacy cemented by children
(Reuters)
Reuters - Late pop star Michael Jackson was immortalized in cement on Thursday when his three children stamped the "Thriller" singer's glove and shoe prints in the hallowed concrete courtyard of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
Top 20 Concert Tours from Pollstar
(AP)
AP - The Top 20 Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows in North America. The previous week's ranking is in parentheses. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
This DVD will help take your playing to the next level. Dave Limina
shares his proven method for improving the fundamental skills required
to build your harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic vocabulary. The DVD
offers easy-to-understand exercises and demonstrations that can be
applied to all levels and styles.
The Ultimate Beginner Series! has helped thousands of aspiring
musicians take their first steps towards experiencing the fun of
playing music. By combining volumes 1 and 2 on DVD or on two videos
with one book and one CD, we now offer the greatest and most convenient
learning package for the low price of $24.95
Composers in the Baroque period (1600-1750) produced some of the
greatest and most exciting keyboard music ever. This captivating DVD
looks at conventions and knowledge that help the performer create a
more historically informed performance. Organized as a practical aid to
today's performers and teachers, basic touches, articulations
Rhythm
Keyboard Workout
By Andrew D. Gordon. For Piano, Keyboard. Blues, Funk,
R&B. Book/DVD. 41 pages.
The Rhythm Keyboard Workout DVD by Andrew D. Gordon gives
pianists/keyboardists the opportunity to practice rhythm keyboard
techniques over common chord progressions while playing along to rhythm
tracks of keyboards, bass and drums in various different contemporary
styles including Blues, Rock, Funk and Latin.
This remarkable tutorial pack contains books 1 and 2 from the Absolute
Beginners series plus the songbook and fingering charts all in one
volume, with 2 CDs of professional backing tracks and a bonus DVD to
accompany the first tutor book.
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AP - The Rev. Jesse Jackson is entering the fray over The Recording Academy's cuts to its Grammy categories: He's asking to meet with the president of the organization and has raised the possibility of protests with the awards less than two weeks away.
AP - Mamma Mia, here they go again.
AP - Chris Isaak is returning to the roots of rock 'n' roll and doing it old-school: All in one take.
AP - Tim McGraw's long-delayed album "Emotional Traffic" has the attention of Music Row this week as it finally hits the streets.
AP - Anyone who ever doubted the transformative power of Bob Dylan's music need only look to Ke$ha.
AP - Eiko Ishioka, a bold, Academy Award-winning visual artist whose surreal and sensual costumes were worn by Broadway actors, Olympic athletes, Cirque du Soleil performers and movie stars like Jennifer Lopez, has died in Tokyo. She was 73.
AP - Kenny Chesney's steamy duet, "You and Tequila" with Grace Potter, continues to radiate heat.
