ES 8 - better to use?

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Gospelkeys

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Just bought ES8... I really love this keyboard.. the only problem is.. I think the keys are way to heavy when i try to play CLAVE, BRASS, SYNTH LEAD, etc... Should I return mine for ES 7 ? How many of you MOTIF users out there play 88 keys? or how many play the ES 7? Dont know what to do.. Its a heavy keyboard and dont really want to carry it to guitar center... Should I just keep it? Or even,if i buy a smaller keyboard (which i will, like a korg trion le or triton extreme or even roland fantomx) can I use the functions of MOTIF on my second board? Any answers? let me know!
 
Keyboard feel is one of those personal issues that everyone has a different opinion on. Starting off as a piano player, I like keyboards that approximate the feel of a piano. Someone who learned on a synth might like that feel more. I suppose that ideally, it would be great to have several different keyboards with different feels for each kind of performance. A hammer action board for piano, a synth action for synth sounds and a semi-weighted for everything else. Throw in a board with waterfall keys for organ and you've got it made! lol

Whether you should return the ES8 or not is a decision only you can make. Didn't you try it out before you bought it?

As for using a different keyboard to play the Motif- No reason you wouldn't be able to do this, but you'd probably have problems assigning all of the controls to the other board. You could, of course, play the sounds from the other keyboard but still use the Motif's panel to make adjustments. Kind of depends on their physical placement in your studio if that approach would be feasible.

Ted
 
Me personnally, I would keep the ES8. You can't beat hammer action for piano playing. Do like I did, and go and buy some controller keyboards (I have personnally chosen M-Audio Radiums (61 keys) and Oxygen 8's (25 key).
If you need synth action you can have it, plus you can use the controllers knobs and sliders to control functions within the ES8 that you normally wouldn't be able to access in realtime (Plus you get a USB MIDI interface for your computer. Another advantage is that most synths allow you to have way more sounds in its sequencer than in normal programs or combinations. So you could set the Global channel for the ES8 to channel 1, then in the sequencer assign half your tracks to channel 1, and set the others to another MIDI channel, and set your controller keyboard to match that channel. This basically allows you to double the capabilities of the ES8 (although your still restricted to you the same polyphony limits, but with 128 voices the ES8 isn't even gonna sweat one bit).

Most importantly, you are not going to find many Hammer-action keyboards with a more realistic piano feel. Oh yeah Yamaha makes real pianos!!! As a matter of fact many manufacturers use Yamaha keys in their boards. The 88 key Korg Triton uses Yamaha hammer-action keys (The Triton Studio uses the KORG/Fatar F88 which is a Yamaha licensed design. Most all other Korgs are Fatar based.)
 
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