What is the best keyboard for organic sounds?

C

Colwarter

New member
Hello everyone,
I really need your help right now! I'm a pianist and never thought I'd play something else than acoustic piano until I got a new band. I really like their stuff. They are playing a kind of weird jazz with a lot of organic sounds like contrabass, accordion, music box, strings, and of course a lot of piano. I'm plannig to buy 2 keyboards: a Nord Electro 2 for grand piano and organ sounds, and a second piano for the organic sounds. I've been looking around, and still don't know which keyboard would fit the most. What do you guys think of the Roland Fantom series? Is there a keyboard with only organic sounds? Please help me. Thank you very much. Alex
 
Patience dude-- you think this is as busy as the mic board or something?! :D

The "best" organic keyboard is gonna be a highly subjective thing. I have a Fantom X6 to use in my band for the traditional stuff, having come from analog synths in the past, and it suits me well. Others would probably argue that it's not as good as some others, but for the price I'm happy.

I would suggest that you go to your local music store and try as many synths as you can. It sounds like what you're looking for is a sample-playback sort of keyboard, like a Roland Fantom, Yamaha Motif, or Korg Triton. There are a few others (Kurzweil, Alesis, etc) that are also probably worth checking out.

If you're primarily playing, then the sequencer/workstation stuff as well as drums and user sampling, are likely a secondary concern. Focus on the action of the keys themselves and the sounds from the keyboard-- they're what you're going to live with daily. And if you're planning on the Nord, then piano and organ sounds in this second board are also not terribly important.

Finally, consider your price range. If you can live without some of the bells and whistles, then the "light" version of the above synths may make a lot of sense for you (like Roland Juno G, or the LE versions of the Yamaha or Korg). I've also had a lot of luck with eBay, but wouldn't recommend going for something as spendy as a synth if you're an eBay novice.

Good luck!
 
I'd say get the Kurzweil K2600 with Vintage Keys and Orchestral ROMs, skip the Nord and the Fantom... With the K2600 you'll have both bases covered (as the K2600 also has the KB-3 mode which is a B3 emulation) and much much more.
 
I'd say Fantom X6 because it has 4 SRX slots plus you have the ability to resample sounds to your taste.Roland has a wide selection of SRX's-You should have NO problem finding "organic" stuff.
Buy the latest Fantom w/ audio upgrade.This gives you eight audio tracks in addition to the 16 MIDI already there,which gives you a complete studio wherever you go.
 
ACB said:
I'd say Fantom X6 because it has 4 SRX slots plus you have the ability to resample sounds to your taste.Roland has a wide selection of SRX's-You should have NO problem finding "organic" stuff.
Buy the latest Fantom w/ audio upgrade.This gives you eight audio tracks in addition to the 16 MIDI already there,which gives you a complete studio wherever you go.
Click to expand...
I'd say Kurzweil K2600 because it has 4 ROM slots, plus you have the ability to resample sounds to your taste and further process them with VAST + KDFX. Kurzweil has a strong base of established 3rd party library support, plus the ability to open AKAI and Roland libraries. You should have NO problem finding "organic" stuff. With the 32 track sequencer you can use as many RAM tracks as you can hold in memory to mix MIDI and audio tracks and you don't need to get a separate "audio upgrade". The KDFX FX unit easily shits on most $1500-$2000 standalone multiFX processors out there, not to mention it is a rather flexible audio routing mixer. It's FX cover the gamut from great sounding reverbs/delays/modulation FX to obese filters to mastering tools such as multiband compressors and phase alignment utilities :p
 
Awwwww, c'mon, I think this board needs a bit of a good natured pissing contest :D OK, OK, you make a good point... I'll go to the Cave now.
 
Yeah -- a pissing contest could be fun :) How about analog synths vs digital (or am I dating myself...)?

So Colwarter, in an attempt to bring us back to the main topic, you can see that there are lots of opinions on what's an appropriate board for your situation. I would still suggest that you try lots of different ones to see what suits you best. I'd also suggest that you focus on the sounds within the ROM memory of the synth, or perhaps via expansion boards, as I'm assuming that you're new to programming and sampling. Those functions are nice to have, but if your desire is to just sit down and play, waiting to load a sound or figure out the architecture of the instrument will likely be frustrating.
 
Hey guys thank you so much for your help. I'll definately consider the Kurzweil K2600. I would be able to have just one keyboard. And I don't very like samplers, I want it to be as natural as possible. I'll start another topic to have some opinions about the piano sounds of the Nord Electro 2. Thank you again.
 
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