E-Piano for practicing piano and home recording

[Simon Klein]

Hello,

I have been composing music with an old Yamaha PSR310 and Cakewalk. I never had piano lessons, but i want to take lessons to improve my play. Now i am searching for an e-piano/keyboard that i can use for practicing at home as well as for composing on my pc. Currently i don't have enough space to give the device a fixed position, so i need a portable one. As i found out 88 graded hammer action keys on an e-piano seems to be very beneficial for practicing piano. My current keyboard only has 61 unweighted keys and also no pitch- or modwheel. It would be nice if i could also have those wheels on the keyboard. I searched a couple of e-pianos/keyboards but am quite unsure which one would be the best for my purposes. There are stage pianos, master keyboards and pure midi controller keyboards:

Yamaha p105
http://www.thomann.de/gb/yamaha_p_105_b.htm

Casio Privia Px3
http://www.thomann.de/gb/casio_px3_bk_privia_limited_edition.htm

Studiologic 990 Pro
http://www.thomann.de/gb/fatar_sl990_pro.htm

M-Audio Pro Keys 88
http://www.thomann.de/gb/maudio_prokeys_88.htm

The studiologic is a pure Midi-Controller: It has no own sound engine but a MIDI-Out and pitch- as well as modwheel. The Sound is generated by the software via VST plugins. This seems to me as the most versatile solution. So for hearing any sound the processing would be: keyboard -> soundcard -> computer(laptop) -> amplifier. Is this setup still adequate if one later wants to perform on stage?

I also searched for something like an external pitch/modhweel controller that i could use to complement a keyboard, but could'nt find one. Maybe theres another solution for this?

So maybe you have suggestions for me what would be an adequate device for my purposes. Maybe you also have suggestions, about the durability and quality of the keybed of the different brands. It would be nice if you could help me with this.

Thanks

 

[happyrat1]

If I were shopping for an electronic piano right now I'd be waiting for the Kurzweil SP5-8 to hit the streets. It'll be all the instrument you ever need both in the studio and onstage. It hasn't been released yet but there's a lot of buzz on the web about it and a sneak peek of the specs has been released.

http://www.synthninja.com/new-keyboard-from-kurzweil-the-sp5/

Here's a google translated page of the original Polish leak.

http://translate.google.ca/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http://www.muzykuj.com/aktualnosci/kurzweil-sp-5,613.html&act=url

I would estimate the street price for this unit to run about $1200 or 800 to 900 Euros.

As for moving around a keyboard a lot and adding wheels to your stand, take a look at my post here with my own unique solution to the space problem.

https://www.keyboardforums.com/posts/163085/

As for your sound hookup, the more you introduce into any system the more likely it is to fail at some point in that system.

For a home setup what you describe is perfectly adequate though I'd add a small mixer between the keyboard and the computer soundcard to give you better EQ and electrical isolation and level and impedance matching control but if you are going to perform on stage definitely invest in a proper sized keyboard amp or PA system.