Yamaha PSR-E403

What are you planning on using it for?

I'd say that could be good for a real beginner that isn't planning on recording anything with it. The action isn't realistic, though.

If you have space and can find one in the paper I'd get a real piano, they're conservatively 1,000,000x more fun to play than any of those "home keyboards." Somebody is usually selling one for $300 to anyone who is willing to take it off their hands.
 
I just wanted it to learn how to play it and just to mess around with. Nothing real serious.

What is "the action"? Is that have to do withthe keys when you press them down?
 
I think the modern-day Yamaha PSR keyboards sound quite good (I've owned several PSR models during the last decade) and would be a good first keyboard. There are hundreds of sounds (you can experiment with "real" piano-sampled sounds, fill out your guitar-based music with string sounds, noodle around with ethnic and weird sounds, and have dozens of drum/percussion piece sounds at your fingertips). I've found the auto-chord feature on these keyboards interesting also (though the auto-chord patterns do tend to become tedious and their usefulness in making real "art" is questionable).
 
But still, I could learn the basics from this right? And be able to take what I learned from the keyboard to piano some day? Like, when I have the room for a real piano?
 
Theoretically that's true; in my own case I've never found it appealling enough to actually practice on a non-weighted keyboard or a keyboard with fewer than a full complement of keys.
 
With one exception, described below, the E403 would be a great starter keyboard to learn, with the understanding that it only has 61 keys, as opposed to the 76 weighted ones that I think would be the minimum for a real pianist, or the 88 insisted on by some purists. A couple years ago I was in the same situation as you and got a similar but slightly more expensive board (still only $300) called the PSR-K1, and although it has limitations I love it. I am sure that if I was a keyboard player I would want something better, but as a guitarist I have spent many hours with the K1 and these days almost everything I write begins there.

IMPORTANT .... The one negative thing about the E403 is I think that it will not save to a MIDI file directly, which may or not be something you want to do. Most of the cheapy Yamaha boards have internal multi-channel recording features and autoaccompaniment features that let you record what you are doing in the same way as audio recording except the result is MIDI data in USER songs that can be played back on the keyboard. If I want to send a MIDI file to another Yamaha user, my K1 allows me to save a USER song as MIDI on a flash memory card and move it to my PC that way, instead of the going through the trouble of connecting the board to a PC running sequencing software and recording it that way. Its not a big deal if you don't plan on exchanging files that way, especially considering that the MIDI files put out by cheapy Yamahas do not play well on other, non-Yamaha MIDI tone generators.

Ii you are not in a hurry to buy, I recommend having a look at the Casio boards as well - some folk prefer them, some don't. Also, at the time I bought my PSR-K1, Price Club had Yamaha DGX boards on site that one could play to get an idea of the sound quality before buying on line.

Tom
 
Wow, thanks for the advice although I already bought it. I have to say I am really enjoying it so far. I have played guitar for about 6 years and it is awesome to be learning something new, plus what I learned from guitar made the transition really easy.

About MIDI files I don't know much about all of that but I'm having some problem s hooking it up to the computer anyways.
 
It should be fine. The PSR series has come a long way and has some surprisingly good sounds. Enjoy it.:)
 
Aidyn said:
About MIDI files I don't know much about all of that but I'm having some problem s hooking it up to the computer anyways.
Click to expand...

Believe me, you can spend hours and hours reading up on MIDI and still be mystified by it.

As I recall, connecting my PSR-K1 to my PC involved first installing the driver (for Windows XP in my case) and then software for moving MIDI files from the PC to the keyboard. It worked, but I found out quickly was that file transfer process wasn't as easy as like the usual USB thing where a connected USB device (like my digital recorder) looks like a PC drive. Instead the software seemed to stream MIDI to the keyboard instead of just copying the file there as I expected. The next discovery was that I couldn't use the software to move the MIDIs I create on my K1 to the PC, at which point I lost interest and started spending my keyboard time learning how to play a little something. I have had a lot fo fun doing that, as i suspect you will.

Regards,
tom
 
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