fake wurly and such?

  • Thread starter Thread starter tony moore
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tony moore

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ok, i'm a complete idiot when it comes to contemporary keyboards. i've been playing 'vintage' keyboards for awhile now. my favorite being my wurlitzer 200 and a clavinet. but both are way to fragile to haul to gigs, so they sit in my home studio. is there a newer keyboard that can sound somewhat like these vintage ones? i'd love to get wurly, rhodes, clav, organ, and mellotron-ish sounds!

thanks!

tony
 
my $0.02

Tony,

Everyone is bound to have a differing opinion on what sounds best, but many of the modern synths can pull of very nice sounds, including: wurly, rhodes, clav, organs, etc...

Personally, I settled on the Yamaha Motif. This is a board with some growing room, including the ability to store up to 128 user voices, plus a bunch of user-drums (and arpegios, etc.) so you can customize voices, create your own from the built-in waves, or sample your own waves. You should prioritize what you want from a synth, and use that to help you narrow the suspects -- things you may want on the list could include:

sounds (overall, and specific sounds too)
keyboard action (prefer synth or piano? want after-touch?)
price is a factor for some people
expandability, cutomizability
vendor/manufacturer support
etc...

Speaking of support, I've been blown away by the support Yamaha has put into the Motif. They are releaseing free voicebanks, and such, as well as releaseing a 2-hour DVD to help compensate for the lacking manual....
 
thanks!

thanks!

yes, i would like to have a piano feel with after-touch. as for the sounds, pretty much what i stated before, but some nice natural piano sounds would be nice too. as for price, i'd like to stay arounf $1000, but will spend more if it will really make a difference.

like i said, i'm completely new to this. i see keyboards that have midi features. and i also hear of keyboards with sampling features. i only have rudimentary knowledge of both. where can i go to learn about this? so i can be sure to buy what's best for me.

i'll look into that yamaha tho!

thanks! :)

tony
 
budgets and options

Tony,

First of all, if you want a keyboard with good piano (or "hammer") action keys, you might have to think about doubling or tripling your budget (sorry.) I think that's the most expensive part of a well-made keyboard. The Motif 8 has "balanced hammer action" meaning that all 88 keys have the same resistance and feel. the keys are heavy, and have a nice feeling resistence if you are used to an acoustic piano. Some of the competitors offer "graded hammer action" which has more resitance toward the lower and upper ends (I think). If the feel of the keys is your main criteria, be ready to go to a music store and spend a while... get a quick feel for several brands/makes, but also be prepared to spend 10-20 minutes at each of the ones that feels nice so you can get a true feeling for them.

Next, MIDI and sampling. Just about every keyboard has some MIDI functionality, while some go a bit further and provide "GM" or "XG" MIDI support. To read-up on MIDI you might want to try here: http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/ or just try a google search if those pages dont suit you. As for sampling, that's the ability to capture sounds to make your own synth voices (and a lot more, really.) Sampling is something you'll only find on some of the higher-end synths -- if it's something that interests you yet is out of your budget or not an option on a keyboard that matches all of your other critera, you will be able to use a software or other external sampler with just about any MIDI keyboard later on when you can afford it.


-Shaz
 
Hi Yo Antonio:]

You might look at some Stage Pianos of the electric nature. I have a Korg SP 100 in my studio and it does a nice job. They run around 700/800 American pezzutos.

Yamaha makes Stage Pianos, as do a couple of other companies.

I think you might try visiting a dealer/vendor and try out a couple of stage pianos. They are faily easy to haul around, plug in, attach a speaker for a gig, and do it.

For home, you can use cans and you will not bother anyone else who might be sleeping off too much Christmas grog.

My Korg has a few patches but a very good piano patch and the touch is adjustable.

Merry Christmas
Green Hornet
 
go green!

hey there green!

merry christmas to you too :-)

cool, that sounds more in my price range. how are new sounds added to the korg? via midi or sampling?

hey, i'm the one's who's green here! ;-)

and thanks for the tips shaz! cool site! i gotsa alot to learn...

tony
 
Give the General Music real piano pro a try. It has a great action, and pretty damn good rhodes and wurly sound. It also has the best piano out there period. It is what Kieth Emerson uses. Unfortunatly, they are distributed by peavy in the US, but its a kick ass board and pretty reasonable.

http://gem.generalmusic.com/en/products/pro/index.html
 
Alon te same lines as the General Music is the Kawai MP 9000. Give it a try, the action is what convinced me since I am first and foremost a piano player. Sounds great too and for a reasonable price 9at least to me).
 
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