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Choosing a Keyboard - The Voices

   

Today's portable keyboards are packed with amazingly-realistic "voices" (also called "sounds" or "tones"). Just touch a button and your keyboard sounds like a Honky Tonk piano, a mellow trombone, a punchy banjo, a Xylophone, or a power rock drum kit. As well as instrument voices, many keyboards offer cool voices such as applause, ocean waves, a door creaking, heart beat and so on.

Number of Voices

Most portable keyboards come with at least the General MIDI (GM) voices. This is an industry-standard selection of 128 instrument voices and 47 percussion voices covering the basics needed for playing most types of music. Not all GM voices have identical voices, but the basic selection is the same. Most mid- to high-end portable keyboards go well beyond the General MIDI voices offering hundreds of additional variations, funky instruments, vocal effects (like Oohs and Humming) and more ethnic instruments (like Rabab, Gopichant and Shanai). Phew! These extended voices are called GM2, XG, XGlite, XF and GS (from Roland).

When shopping for your keyboard you won't be able to listen to all the voices, so listen to those you're likely to use the most. For a keyboard to learn to play on or to accompany a singer, for example, check out the piano voices. For house of worship use, you'll probably want to listen to the organ and choir voices. If you plan to be in a rock band later, you've got to love the piano, electric piano and organ voices.

If a keyboard is "GM compatible" -- what does that mean?

It means that the keyboard has the General MIDI voices, plus circuitry which allows the right information about tempo and other music elements to be selected. This means that the keyboard will accurately reproduce any GM music files that you load into your keyboard. This will become important if you're planning on creating songs to send to your friends. You sure don't want your awesome guitar solo to sound like a Kazoo on your friends keyboard! If you both have GM-compatible keyboards, your song will playback properly with the intended instrument sounds. GM-compatibility will also be important if you purchase GM music files, like styles (more on this later) and songs to load into your keyboard. The Internet has thousands of song files available and you can rest assured that your keyboard will be able to reproduce these files.

How do you know if a keyboard is GM compatible? The GM logo is stamped on the keyboard itself. You can also look for the XG logo on Yamaha keyboards, and the GS logo on Roland keyboards. If one or more of these logos is present, the keyboard is GM compatible.

Dual and Split

To enhance your performance options, many portable keyboards offer dual and split modes. Pressing the Dual button allows you to layer and blend two sounds at the same time; piano and strings, for example, is a popular option. Pressing the Split button allows you to play a combination-instrument performance such as funk bass with the left hand and electric piano with the right hand. With hundreds of voices to choose from, the combinations are only limited by your imagination. You can also select the split point on the keyboard.

Built-In Effects

Effects add ambience and dimension to the sounds and most portable keyboards come with the common effects reverb and chorus. Reverb simulates the sound of playing in a large concert hall (in your living room!); chorus adds a lush shimmering quality to the sound and can make a single instrument sound like a group of players. The higher the keyboard price, the more effects you get.

When shopping, check if the keyboard's effects include a "DSP." This is a digital signal processor which enables a collection of amazing effect goodies, ranging from distortion (essential for that hip electric guitar sound) and delay (which echoes the sound) to rotary speaker (great for organ sounds) and much more. If you want to spice up your melody, look out for a harmony effect, which adds a variety of harmonies (extra notes) to your right-hand playing. And if that's not enough for you, some keyboards include an equalizer (EQ), allowing you to boost (or suppress) certain frequencies of a sound to tailor it to suit your music.

 

 
 

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