keyboard suggestions

December 20, 2005 9:36 AM

I'm looking for musical keyboard suggestions...

I'm interested in finding one that can be played by itself, but, ideally, also has a USB port for use as a midi controller (instead of regular midi connections). I'm looking for something that would be as cheap as possible used. Pianos that would be nice would be if it were an analog-style synth, or was at leat programmable.

posted by dial-tone to media & arts (2 comments total)

I just last week got the Yamaha PSR-295, which you will find for a little under $200 at various places online.

Its sounds seem very good to me (an amateur). This is not a high-end keyboard, but for my needs seemed like the right buy. I'm basically just recording it into my home PC multitracker (sonar producer 4). It can certainly be played standalone.

It also has a MIDI over USB connection, although I am painfully inexperienced at using MIDI so far so can't tell you how good or bad it is and have nothing to compare it to.

Feel free to ask some more specific questions if you like (just beware I'm an amateur), you can email me too if you want, however, I'm going on two week vacation starting tomorrow night.
posted by poppo at 9:50 AM on December 20, 2005

It's possible that you could find what you're looking for somewhere, but I think you're going about this the wrong way. If you go for an all-in-one keyboard, you'll probably end up with something that is neither inexpensive nor particularly good at being a midi or standalone keyboard.

I would suggest you consider getting two seperate keyboards; one to act as a dedicated midi controller, and one standalone. Depending on what exactly you want to do, decent midi controllers can be had for under $100. If you aren't doing anything too fancy (which you might not be able to do with a combo keyboard anyway) you can get a decent controller for $50-$75. Even with a $200 budget, that leaves you enough to look for a nice vintage digital or (if you're particularly vigilant/lucky) a decent analog synth.
posted by Espy Gillespie at 11:22 PM on December 20, 2005