which keyboard?

[slappyjoe]

hi. i dont play keyboard, just mess around . i am going to learn keyboard but i dont know which keyboard to buy. I play guitar and sing and am looking at a keyboard to play backing tracks and have various drums... rock roll,waltz,country tunes etc. to accompany my singing in bars and clubs. a recording option would also be good but my afordable price is around £600-650. am looking at the psrs 550 or the korg pa 50.. any ideas, i would be grateful for response but please keep it simple as im not familiar with keyboard terms. Thanks all! just read review of pa 50 and dont like the sound of a floppy disc for keeping tracks....

 

[The Y_man]

PA50SD uses an SD card - not floppy disk.

Both nice keyboards (and more expensive than my main keyboard).

To some extent, it comes down to personal taste - suggest you listen to demos of them on youtube, as well as going to a shop. See if you like the sounds of the backings, drum kits, piaonos, strings, brass, woodwind settings, as well as any other fancy extras.

For a beginner, they will have tons of features you'll take a while to grow out of.

The Y-man

 

[The Y_man]

On the personal taste thing, the difference between a Korg and Yamaha of a similar price might be say the difference to a guitarist between an Ibanez and a Fender.

As a models range, the PSRS550 and PA50SD fall in the higher-middle price range (say in the guitar world, a higher end Ibanez, but definitely not for example a top end US made Strat or Gibson).

Hope that gives you some ideas.

Also, unlike guitars, keyboard deprieciate in value (ferociously) even if you buy a top of the range monster


The Y-man

 

[slappyjoe]

thanks Y

thanks for that, picture is becoming clearer! just one other question - with the rhythm/drum track for say a r/roll 50s cover - is there an option to add a simple bass line from keyboard ad use this as my backing with guitar playing over live at gig? if so is it a complicated process?

 

[The Y_man]

Did you want to pre-program the Bass line (into the rhythm - or in Yamaha language "style") or actually play live (along with the preprogrammed rhytm / backing?

The Y-man

 

[Vctor]

Any keyboard that has an on-board sequencer (Song Memory), you can play a custom bass line with your left hand, record it, and then your can play it any time.

If this is what I understand from your question...it was ambiguous.

 

[slappyjoe]

which keyboard

thanks for reply,sorry for being somewhat vague. Yes what I want is the rhythm or drum track playing with a base line running through. ill be on guitar so no free hands. So ideally, I would like to find a suitable drum sound and add a base line in the key that i want. So probably need to find both on keyboard and record, does this make sense??

 

[Vctor]

You would need to play the style (backing tracks) with the right chords and record it to the keyboard memory.
I think Korg Pa50 must have the option to mute/unmute tracks, because it's a mid-end arranger.

By the way, there is Korg Pa50, and Korg Pa50 SD. Only the latter model has the option to use a SD Card.

 

[slappyjoe]

which keyboard

Big thanks Vctor & Yman, very helpful. A great forum - highly recommend it!