shelly0624 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 21, 2019 3:02 am
I'm not buying right now. just looking.[...] Buying one will come later..
It's a good thing to take your time. As Saul said, there are so many options out there.
The 1st choice you may consider for your next keyboard is between a piano action type keyboard and a synth action type keyboard.
Whatever your choice, if I may give only one advice I would say (fwiw):
► chose an instrument with a good quality keybed, imo this is crucial if you want to enjoy playing it over time and if you want to improve your chops as a keyboard player.
___
I can only speak from my own experience, but here's my view about the quality of keybeds:
I started music on the saxophone when I was a child, much later I became increasingly interested in synthesizers, not to become a keyboard virtuoso but for composition and sound design (it was at a time when computers and plug-ins didn't rule yet). My very 1st synth was (guess what?) a Yamaha EX5.
While trying many different instruments in music shops, all with synth type keybeds
(*), I quickly noticed I could
feel big differences between all those keyboards although I was new to keyboards: some felt "cheesy", plasticky and toyish, some felt better, and some felt really pleasant to play.
(*) at that time I wasn't interested in weighted, piano action type keyboards because I knew that playing such a keyboard meant getting more involved in practising (later I discovered I was wrong: becoming a good synth player implies no less involvement than becoming a pianist)
That experience was a revelation: although I had never touched a keyboard before, I could feel differences between keybeds, I could tell which one I preferred, I understood why, and I could
feel which one would make me physically enjoy practising on it and which one would not!
I was very lucky with the EX5: I chose it from its specs because they matched my requirements as a sound design tool and as a composition tool perfectly, and its keybed was my preferred after trying, too!
To be more specific, it has the excellent FS semi-weighted keybed used on all upper range Yam and Korg synths until the Motif ES and the Oasys 76, and still used on the Montage in a lead free version called FSX. When you depress a key you have to overcome a certain resistance first, then it becomes lighter, giving the sensation of "throwing" the key. That's a very pleasant sensation, very different from the "springy" sensation of ordinary synth keyboards on which the resistance is simply proportional to the travel of the key.
Later, I wanted to improve my chops as a keyboard player, so I asked a pianist and friend of mine.
He told me the best way to achieve that goal, in his opinion, would be to build fingers strength and dexterity on a weighted, hammer action type keybed. He also advised me
to chose the keybed carefully so that it would be enough of a challenge but not too much of a difficulty to overcome.
So he lent me a Studiologic SL-880 master keyboard to try, a great controller with an excellent Fatar weighted and graded hammers keybed. I took piano lessons with him and I practised on that keyboard. At the beginning it was not easy to switch from the FS semi-weighted keybed of my EX5 to the piano action type keybed of the Studiologic, but with his encouragement I continued my efforts and I quickly became accustomed to it. I soon noticed that I enjoyed playing on a heavier keyboard and after a while I found that it made me a more accurate and a more expressive player.
Then, I also tried acoustic pianos, and I could feel the differences between them immediately. I hated playing on cheap and even on not-so-cheap uprights which I felt were stiff, sluggish and unresponsive. On the contrary, I really appreciated playing on my friend's Ibach grand. I even had the opportunity to try a Bösendorfer grand. I really loved the sound of the Bösendorfer, a deep, rich sound, you can hear and feel the whole piano vibrating while you're playing. As regards the keyboard, it has an immediacy in its response which makes it very expressive (you can obtain a light breeze or an earth shaking rolling thunder, and everything between), but it also has a
je ne sais quoi which makes it difficult to keep in control, which distracts the player from concentrating on what they are playing (that's not only me, much better pianists than I am say the same).
___
In conclusion, what I mean is that, while the sound is the primary criterion to assess a synth, the quality of its keybed and how it suits *you* should not be overlooked if you want an instrument which makes you enjoy practising on it.