Musicians - Need Advice
 

My oldest son has decided he'd like a keyboard for Christmas. He gave me nothing to really go on, outside of he wants to be able to hook it into his laptop.

I know dick about keyboards.

What are some good brands or models I can check out?

Bump for Selena, anyone no something ...

You can not go wrong with Roland. go to you local music shop and express you concern to the nice man in the keyboard area. He will show you a few keyboards, and then feel free to puchase the cheapest one.

Why cheap?

1. 90% of the time a new instrument collects dust after a week. Especially if the child has had no training.

2. If you purchase the less expensive one, you can trade it in on a better one when the time is right. Keyboards can get expensive as hell.


Musical instruments are like computers. And the salesmen can be just as bad.
Nothing bothers me more than Grandma getting sold a top of the line gamer PC when in truth she wants to email her daughter in Ohio and will never use the PC for anything else. Same goes for instruments, don't be impressed by the man PLAYING the keyboard. He is not your son, and it will sound very different when you get it home.



This is all based upon your son having limited or no training on keyboards. If he is an experienced player, ( which i would doubt based on this post being posted in the first place) disregard and get him a nice Roland.

Thanks for the bump, mchtye. :)

And thanks for your advice, Mack. I will check that brand out. He's 18, and is very difficult to get any 'wants' out of. So the keyboard will probably be his big present.

Does he use Garage Bang? If he just wants somethign to play thru his computer as a MIDI device and not an actual keyboard, I would suggest the M-Audio Keystation 49. $99.00

If he is looking for a keyboard to actually play and it can play without a computer, I would suggest a Roland or Yamaha. $200 and up.

:2 cents:

What's your budget and how serious does he plan to get into playing? If he plans to hook it up to a laptop and will be downloading samples/soft synths then I'd recommend to get a high quality MIDI controller. It will still have many cool sounds, and will not be very expensive

I'm impartial to Kurzweil keyboards myself. They have a very sick triple strike grand piano patch.. blows everything other than DVD samples away.
The way I've seen it is that you have 4 major brands: Kurzweil, Roland, Korg, Yamaha

Here's my opinion, it's based on the fact that I only like weighted keys. I hate the light feel of the non-weighted keys:
If you're looking to spend ~1.5k then get Kurzweil PC2X or Yamaha S90. Both very good choices and will be hooked up to the laptop with no problem. They got a plethora of good sounds to boot.
If you wanna go a little bit more expensive, Kurzweil K2600 is considered to be one of the best keyboards out there, it can do ANYTHING sound-wise. They have dropped in price recently since the model has been around for quite some time. Korg Triton is a good choice too. Usually professional musicians have both K2600 and Triton since they keyboards complement themselves very nicely. Korg's pads kick much ass.

If you wanna go less expensive, these ones have unweighted keys and I'd recommend them in a heartbeat. All of them are older models (Trinity is 10 years old!), but they're awesome.
Korg X5D - oldie but goodie.
Korg N364 - same!
Korg Trinity - triton's predecessor.
Korg Karma - AWESOME for playing around and fairly new! You may want to take a look into it. If you don't want weighted keys then I bet your son will LOVE this one.
There's also one very cool Roland model with 61 keys, the name escapes me.

I haven't been in touch with music industry for about a year-year and a half, so perharps somethign slick and inexpensive came out, but you won't be disappointed with any of the above choices

EDIT: before buying a keyboard, read ONLINE REVIEWS. They are very helpful

Can't edit anymore, so I'll just add to the above post. Online reviews are very helpful. Once you find the model that you're interested in, make sure to google for its reviews. One major review site is http://harmony-central.com, they have lots of keyboard reviews

He's wanting to have the capability to use it not connected to the computer as well, so I will look into those brands you mentioned. Thanks :)

I don't have a very big budget. Single parent and definetly not a playah. :winkwink: I'd like to stay in the $500 -$700 range, and the upper end of that is pushing it. I can't say for certain to what level he wants to take it. As another poster suggested, it may end up just collecting dust. However, he has talked of wanting to learn the keyboard or the piano for a good bit of time, so I'm hoping he would stick with that.

Your post has been incredibly helpful. I will look up the models you have suggested and read reviews of them. Thanks so much :)