FusionKnight
New member
I'm looking for a keyboard, as are many on this forum, and I'm searching for a little advice. I'm looking for something that will satisfy my wife's desire to play the piano and my desire to create or "develop" digital music.
My musical background is mainly classical performance. I've played piano since kindergarten and violin since the second grade. I've played in various orchestras, futzed around with a guitar, and got a Mandolin for a recent birthday.
I have always found "developing" music to be intruiging. I'm not the sort of person who could write music in my head. I like to sit down and play with sounds; much like I play with colors when painting. It's more a personally expressive excersize than a mathematical formulation.
The artists that intruige me as a composer are Paul Oakenfold, Paul Van Dyke, Phillip Glass, John Adams, Nickel Creek, The Kronos Quartet, Steve Reich, Linkin Park, Bernard Herman, Rob Dougan, Dream Theater, Tangerine Dream among others from classical, pop, bluegrass, electronica, etc.
So far we've been looking at the Big 4: the Roland Fantom-X8, the Korg Triton Extreme, the Yamaha Motif ES8, and the Kurzweil 2600XS. My initial reactions are that the Kurzweil is too expensive, the Yamaha is too hard to use, the Roland is too obscure, and the Korg seems to be playing catchup with their hardware.
From those 4 I've been most seriously considering the Yamaha and the Korg. I love the sounds of the Yamaha, the shear size of the sound and arpegiator libraries, and the expansion room.
I love the Korg's user interface though. After seeing someone at the local Guitar Center run through it once I at least had an idea of what was involved. One look at the Yamaha was enough to make me rethink this whole adventure. My wife really liked the weighted feel of the Korg. She's not so hot on the color.
What's with Korg using tiny ammounts of obsolete RAM? From what I understand the Triton Extreme only holds 96 Mb, while the Motif ES can take 512 Mb. Is there a difference in how these two workstations are using their RAM, or is the Triton just blatently inferior (on the hardware issue).
It has to feel and sound as much like a piano as possible for my wife to agree to it. She won't even use it if it's too hard to learn. I want something that will allow me to create rich, full musical "paintings", and give me versatility for the future. How fast do these things lose value?
From reading through this forum, it seems people are more than willing to voice their opinions given the chance. That's exactly what I need! Rant away! I always learn a lot from other people passionately arguing their opinion.
My musical background is mainly classical performance. I've played piano since kindergarten and violin since the second grade. I've played in various orchestras, futzed around with a guitar, and got a Mandolin for a recent birthday.
I have always found "developing" music to be intruiging. I'm not the sort of person who could write music in my head. I like to sit down and play with sounds; much like I play with colors when painting. It's more a personally expressive excersize than a mathematical formulation.
The artists that intruige me as a composer are Paul Oakenfold, Paul Van Dyke, Phillip Glass, John Adams, Nickel Creek, The Kronos Quartet, Steve Reich, Linkin Park, Bernard Herman, Rob Dougan, Dream Theater, Tangerine Dream among others from classical, pop, bluegrass, electronica, etc.
So far we've been looking at the Big 4: the Roland Fantom-X8, the Korg Triton Extreme, the Yamaha Motif ES8, and the Kurzweil 2600XS. My initial reactions are that the Kurzweil is too expensive, the Yamaha is too hard to use, the Roland is too obscure, and the Korg seems to be playing catchup with their hardware.
From those 4 I've been most seriously considering the Yamaha and the Korg. I love the sounds of the Yamaha, the shear size of the sound and arpegiator libraries, and the expansion room.
I love the Korg's user interface though. After seeing someone at the local Guitar Center run through it once I at least had an idea of what was involved. One look at the Yamaha was enough to make me rethink this whole adventure. My wife really liked the weighted feel of the Korg. She's not so hot on the color.
What's with Korg using tiny ammounts of obsolete RAM? From what I understand the Triton Extreme only holds 96 Mb, while the Motif ES can take 512 Mb. Is there a difference in how these two workstations are using their RAM, or is the Triton just blatently inferior (on the hardware issue).
It has to feel and sound as much like a piano as possible for my wife to agree to it. She won't even use it if it's too hard to learn. I want something that will allow me to create rich, full musical "paintings", and give me versatility for the future. How fast do these things lose value?
From reading through this forum, it seems people are more than willing to voice their opinions given the chance. That's exactly what I need! Rant away! I always learn a lot from other people passionately arguing their opinion.