Keyboards

Deliberately posting in social because I don’t really want a music board perspective on this, but I know there’s a lot of expertise out there.

Due to things happening in life I’ve adopted a slightly “fuck it” attitude lately. I bought myself some new shoes on a whim the other day, which I never do, for instance. Now I have another hankering and am after some advice.

I quite fancy teaching myself to play the piano/keyboard, so am in the market for a relatively cheapish thing to practice on. I don’t intend to become a concert pianist or start my own band, but would like to avoid buying a turkey.

Browsing around I’m quite surprised how amateurish the manufacturers seem to be. Casio’s website looks like it hasn’t been touched in two decades. And everybody reviewing on the internet is annoying me, so I’m interested in the thoughts of people here.

I think I don’t want to go as far as a full 88 key dedicated electric piano. I reckon I’d be happier with a more portable and more featured keyboard, ideally with the chance to hook it up to a PC or phone to experiment with recording etc. Something that performs in a reasonably authentic way so I coulld actually claim to be learning the piano, but with some fun stuff to go with it. Something like the Casio CT-X700 is roughly in the right ballpark for instance.

Anyone any recommendations? Obviously it has to have a bossa nova setting. That’s non-negotiable.

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season 5 netflix GIF by Gilmore Girls

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You know what I mean!

By all means be expert, but don’t expect me to be.

And don’t post pictures of Jude Fucking Law in my threads.

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I have an MS Natural one. One of those examples of Microsoft doing something really well.

I can at least vouch for the ongoing quality of Casio - went in a different direction to you and got weighted 88 key to specifically go ‘traditional’ but yeah, the quality against the price is brilliant

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Is Theo doing a bit here, or is he doing himself?

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Might be legit - if you don’t read the full post it would be easy to assume you meant computer keyboards and that’s why you didn’t want the music board! I assumed when clicking in the first time it was about computer keyboards.

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I guess to crystalise my thinking here a bit. When you buy things like this there tend to be loads of features. Some of them are really useful and some of them are a complete waste of time, and it’d be handy to have a feel for any of those.

Yo if I get to post anywhere about my mechanical keyboard I will be legit thrilled

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If you want to learn to play, a metronome and a piano sound are all you need, a sustain pedal helpful. But that’s it. And MIDI.

I say this because if you use it to record you won’t use the in built sounds, you’ll just use MIDI signals.

Oh. You might want a function that splits the keyboard in two between two sounds.

Keys - if you’re not fussed about weighing look for ‘full size’ at least

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personally I’d say some sort key weighting is useful - for me there’s a big difference between a clacky cheap keyboard and playing a piano. But I have known people who have only played on keyboards who’ve been great, so might be a personal preference thing.

Yes I think this is important to me. I don’t want to muck about on an electronic keyboard principally, I want to try to learn to play a piano. But that said I wouldn’t want to nerd out so much that I’m literally left with just a piano emulator.

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I’ve got a Roland Go:Keys, it’s pretty good, would seem to tick most of your boxes (or you might prefer the Go:Piano)

as long as it has midi that won’t be the case :slight_smile:

This is just reminding me that the shoes I’ve bought are some black 1460 DMs. And yes I did buy them after watching “Inside The Factory” last week. :smiley:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CYeapDeqAUh/

this is my fella

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Nice, although I’m not sure I can find the space for anything that permanent.

I think possibly the impression I’m getting is that the best option is to go somewhere that has them available for demo, since the feel of the keys themselves seems to be pretty high up the list of choices to make.

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as an ex music shop employee i strongly agree with that - it’s just good to get your head around the size, weight, the feel of it and etc