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Do all keyboards have aftertouch?
Aftertouch
- Thread starter bachfantasia
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happyrat1
Destroyer of Eardrums!!!
Nope. Generally speaking, only higher end models.
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bachfantasia
Most of the keyboards I have owned in my career have had aftertouch, but I hardly ever used it. It was handy for some specific sounds, but there again, they were sounds I rarely used. In other words, if I liked all other aspects of a keyboard, lack of aftertouch would not be a "show stopper" for me. I still have one old Roland arranger that has aftertouch, and that feature is turned off. I also have two fairly new upper-end Roland "synths" that do not have aftertouch, and I do not miss it, especially since they have the "D-Beam" controller. The worst workstation I ever had with aftertouch was the Yamaha XS. If you didn't turn aftertouch off, it would flood the MIDI stream with so much extraneous data that other MIDI equipment in the stream would choke on it. When I pick out a new keyboard that I like, if it has aftertouch, well . . . it's nice to know it's there, if I ever need it, but I will probably leave it turned off, but if it's not there at all . . . no big loss (for me). I think if you polled a lot of musicians, you would find about a 50/50 split between those that can not live without it and those that can. Like most other things, it's a matter of personal preference and playing style, but if you have never experienced a keyboard with aftertouch, it is difficult to make that decision when buying.
Most of the keyboards I have owned in my career have had aftertouch, but I hardly ever used it. It was handy for some specific sounds, but there again, they were sounds I rarely used. In other words, if I liked all other aspects of a keyboard, lack of aftertouch would not be a "show stopper" for me. I still have one old Roland arranger that has aftertouch, and that feature is turned off. I also have two fairly new upper-end Roland "synths" that do not have aftertouch, and I do not miss it, especially since they have the "D-Beam" controller. The worst workstation I ever had with aftertouch was the Yamaha XS. If you didn't turn aftertouch off, it would flood the MIDI stream with so much extraneous data that other MIDI equipment in the stream would choke on it. When I pick out a new keyboard that I like, if it has aftertouch, well . . . it's nice to know it's there, if I ever need it, but I will probably leave it turned off, but if it's not there at all . . . no big loss (for me). I think if you polled a lot of musicians, you would find about a 50/50 split between those that can not live without it and those that can. Like most other things, it's a matter of personal preference and playing style, but if you have never experienced a keyboard with aftertouch, it is difficult to make that decision when buying.
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FYI, there are two types of aftertouch, monophonic (channel) aftertouch and polyphonic aftertouch. My Ensoniq keyboards from the early 90's had polyphonic aftertouch. My newest keyboard has monophonic aftertouch, which 99% of the keyboards that have aftertouch, fall into this category. Polyphonic aftertouch is rare:
http://electronicmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Polyphonic_aftertouch
http://electronicmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Polyphonic_aftertouch