I am a bass player at heart with reasonable music theory knowledge behind me. I am not a skilled 6-string guitar player but I dabble. Arthritis makes both difficult at times. My best asset is that I am 'a music ideas' kind of guy. I can devise good tunes - lyrics, music, beats, all there just ready to be put together. I also delve in spacey jams in addition to my prog meets heavy meets pop leanings. Most of the music will be made in a basement setting (a studio sortof). I will be playing all of the instruments except drums (perhaps programming drums). Lets say I have $2500 to spend on keys/synths (one or multiple, I dont know, thats why I am asking). For some reason I have seen Roland Fantoms do things I like when seeing them at a show. But I'm not always sure what I'm looking at. I would have another $1500 for a PA, assuming this is what I would want to power my new keyboard. If you wanted detailed history on vintage guitars, basses, and amps, I'm your man. But I dont know squat about keys. Thanks.
TTH, the Fantom would be equivalent to a genuine US made Stratocaster in the guitar world - at the upper end of the (electronic) keyboard world (in terms of price too). The Fantom and any other "workstation" keyboards can provide drums (and backing if you want!) The Y-man
Thank You for that analogy, works for me. I am at the beginning of my research, but just a month or so away from purchase. I'm at the beginning of a lot of things, just came out of the hospital with some memory loss over anestesia. Anyway, the whole "Workstation' thing throws me a bit. I assume that being a 'workstation' does not undermine live playability or does it. This is likely one of the repeated questions key knowlegable people get all the time. Forgive me, just 3 days ago I was having trouble reading words, and music key sigs - forget it. But its coming back as they said it would.
Basically a workstation let's you be a "one person band" It can pump out backings, drums, melody from one unit - simultaneously at your control. Many units also have a built in mutitrack recorder, as well as a range of stomp box effects built in (delays, reverbs, chorus, compressors, etc) The difference between a low/mid end package (such as say a Casio CTK-7000 that I have) comes down to: - quality of sound (you'll see talk of how much memory of sample etc) - number of simultaneous sounds (polyphony) - ability to modify sounds - effects - keyboard "touch" The Y-man