Seemples question; a billion possible answers.
Having grown up with a piano in the living room, yet also having dodged piano lessons at the time and having never subsequently got to grips with the little black and white devils, I’ve long harboured a temptation to buy a keyboard that I can put on my desk in front of me and plug into a usb socket on my office PC.
I don’t need to spend a gazillion on this – I’m not looking to blow serious wonga on a Nord for example. I suspect I’d rather have 61 keys than 49 from the outset, but beyond that it’s a mystery to me, and I don’t have a handy copy of the ‘Which? USB Keyboards’ report.
So whaddya think? Amazon currently steers me towards this baby:
M-Audio Oxygen 61 IV | 61-Key USB/MIDI Keyboard Controller Featuring Velocity-Sensitive Keys, 8 Pads, 9 Faders and 8 Knobs, Plus ProTools | First, Ableton Live Lite and 3 Premium Virtual Instruments
But is it really any good? Is there a better one I should look at? Can you only get rubbish for around a ton-fifty and should I raise my budget? What are the pitfalls to look out for? So many questions, so few answers. Can the Massive come to my aid here?
This is an almost impossible question to answer!
The immediate responses are:-
Do you play any other instrument? If, for example, you play guitar, how would you go about recommending a beginner’s guitar?
How committed are you to doing this? If you’re going to go anywhere half serious with this you will soon get frustrated by a small keyboard. 76 keys better – 88 if possible.
It all depends, of course, on your budget and what space you have available. I don’t have a “Which Report” in my head and the range of possibilities is probably almost endless. Looking at the Amazon page you suggested that looks fine – but so do any of the others suggested as alternatives.
My suggestion would be to start as cheaply as you can – you only need keys to operate software via usb. That way you don’t lose much by upgrading if you get into it – or you don’t lose much if you don’t!
I play a bit of guitar. If I was to be asked to recommend a beginner’s guitar, I’d say go to a music shop with a pal who plays a bit, and have a think about what sort of thing you wish to be able to play yourself, and how much you wish to understand why what you’re playing sounds the way it does. It’s this latter journey I’m more interested in.
Whilst exploring this I’d like to be able to knock out a few Elton tunes, Carole King numbers, some Coldplay, some Lennon, some Newman; basically some choons. Nothing particularly fancy; I’m not aiming for Rachmaninoff 2 by Christmas or anything.
I’d spend £150 without losing too much sleep, and I’ve got about 95cm of desk space I can use.
What I don’t have is any real insight into the relative merits of say, a keyboard controller (like the one I found on the dodgers) versus a self-contained thing like a Casio that makes its own sounds. Obviously, I can only play the former by attaching it to a PC of some kind, while with the latter I can annoy people in any room of the house. But with the latter I can’t bugger about with the sounds I make or easily combine them with anything else I might have lying around in digital form. Beyond those considerations I’m still in green chump mode.
I don’t even know which brands to consider or to avoid. I know some reliable names, which are usually out of my exploratory price range, but Amazon is awash with (probably Chinese) cheaper brands I’ve never heard of, and of whose reputation – if they have one – I am clueless.
So just looking for clues and suggestions really! Thanks for replying above, btw.
If you get a standalone keyboard instrument with Midi via USB (most apart from the very cheapest/most basic have this) then you can use it with software just like a USB device, as well as playing it on it’s own too.
The key thing (ha ha) is the feel of what you’re playing on. For you’re budget you’re not going to get weighted keys but the reviews of the M-Audio you’ve looked at say the feel is reasonable. You’ll get better hardware in a controller keyboard than you will something stand alone – and, of course, access to all kinds of sounds. In your position I would go for that.
Ideally – as with your guitar advice – you would go to to a shop and try some out but …….
Have a look on Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace. I got a very nice Yamaha keyboard with 88 keys that sounds like an actual piano for 150 notes. The woman had bought it so her granddaughter could have lessons but the granddaughter refused to play, in both senses. Result. I should think that happens quite often.
Yes, I got a 88-key weighted controller – I’ve just checked, it’s a Studiologic – for about £50. It turned out the owner lived round the corner from me and was having a house-moving clearout. It came with a MIDI to USB thingy, but I bought a Roland midi piano the size of a paperback for another £50 or so. No USB and no PC means it just works.
I’ve got a Nektar Impact LX61 which is great. Never played a M Audio with an action I liked but it’s a very personal thing. But my guiding rule is for keyboards you can’t go wrong with Yamaha. We got TJ a Yam YPT230 which was cheap and is brilliant.
PS midi anything comes with a special feature known as WDIFW aka why doesn’t it flipping work. A Yam you switch on and go. Takes batteries, built in speakers…I have an old Yam NP30 at the bolt hole and it’s superb. Was cheap when I got it too.
Decisions, decisions.
@Geoffbs7 gives sound advice (ha and indeed, ha) and I’m veering towards getting a controller keyboard. Apart from anything else it will mean I can make the thing sound like a stonking church organ or like Mrs. Mills’ piano, using software.
And then @Mike_H points out that I can in fact have the best of both worlds if I buy something with the mysterious “Midi via USB” on board, so that looks like the way to go if I can.
@Twang, I hear you. I even like Yamaha guitars. Well, some of them. And with a rep to protect, you can be reasonably sure a product won’t be utterly shoddy. Unlike some er, less well known brands. Avoiding the WDIFW factor means that if I buy new I’d do as @Geoffbs7 suggests and do it in an actual music shop. That means two things: first I’ll have to contain my excitement until after the current shenanigans has run its course, and secondly I’ll be able to take my Windows tablet along to the shop and plug the darn thing in on the spot.
@mikethep and @fentonsteve – I think you’re on to something with the second hand angle. Who knows, after 6 months I may surrender to the fact that I just don’t have a brain that can cope with understanding scales and modes any better than (i.e. shakily) it currently does, and then I’d be adding a shiny new keyboard of my own to the pile on eBay etc.
I don’t do Farceberk, so the marketplace there is out of my reach. On the other hand, the FPO is a regular in the horsey part of the Zuckerberg thing… maybe I can pursuade her to dip a toe and take a look there for me. Gumtree always feels a bit dodgy to me, a bit like buying stuff off a bloke you meet in a pub and will never see again. But I can still at least look there without handing over the digital keys to my life, so I’ll check that out too.
Many thanks to all commentators – all informed opinion is greatly appreciated and helps to provide confidence and expertise to the decision making process for me.
Twang’s recommendation of Yamaha keyboards is sound. Not too expensive – or at least only as expensive as you want to go.
MIDI is the standard via which electronic musical instruments talk to computers and to each other, btw. Mostly using USB these days, I think.
USB is, as I’m sure Foxy already knows being an IT guru, a house built on shifting sands. Technologically speaking, like.
MIDI on a DIN plug is a much safer bet, but it doesn’t really have much in the way of an official standard so, as Twang says, sometimes just does not work for no apparent reason.
Give me a USB connector any day if there’s a choice!
I shudder at the remembrance of old PCs with MIDI ports (mis)used to drive joysticks under the guise of a “Gameport” back in the day. What fun they were, and how quaint that they used to spit out their plug with no warning, especially when found at the almost impossible to access rear of your Pentium 200 pride & joy.
Too true, though undermining my own point sightly my Yam NP30 at the bolt hole has a 5 pin DIN which plugs into my small traveling interface and works fine.
I thought the *steels himself* ‘five pin DIN plug’ had died a death back when carpets were either orange or brown. Or both.
I think the newer models like the NP32 have USB, no 5 pin. Just had a look at the manual and it’s square USB.