keyboard gear  
   
   
  This is what my keyboards look like when I am wearing my fisheye glasses. Nord Lead 3, Motif ES, P250.
   
  Clavia Nord Lead 3
  Clavia Nord Lead 3
 

Mini Review:

If you like christmas lights then you will love the nord lead 3. It's a keyboard made especially for Christmas.

This thing is expensive, so you should ask Santa to help out. If you--like me--have played too many sample playback things lately, then this is like playing a real instrument again. Not only is it alive with velocity and after-touch, but the lollipop-stick pitch-bend is much more expressive than the usual wheel; and the modulation wheel can be set to any and as many parameters as you want. What this means is a wonderful morphing. Imagine Manfred Man playing the Moog with five of his mates helping him twiddle the knobs in real time.

Also, all those fairy-lights actually show the real position of all the knobs when you recall a preset: so what you see is what you get.

The only negatives I can think of: the build quality leaves something to be desired; and it is digital. Oh, and there are no effects in it. Still, I think after the Moog this is one of the most interesting keyboards ever made.

Check out some samples: (coming soon)

sample 1

sample 2

sample 3

   
  Yamaha Motif ES 6
  Yamaha Motif ES 6  
 

Mini Review:

Hey, it's a sample play-back thingy. What can I say? Of all the hardware variations around, this is certainly the best. Very nice electric pianos and organs.

Several words of warning: it's supposed to be a work station but the interface is typical Japanese style. That means it makes as much sense as the manual. This is another of those feature rich gadgets that make it almost impossible to get at the features. I don't even use it in multi-timbral mode. If you just want pretty nice sounds then this is pretty good; but I don't envy those who want to use all of it's features.

Check out some samples: (coming soon)

sample 1

sample 2

sample 3

 
     
  Yamaha P250  
  Yamaha P250  
 

Mini Review:

I had the P150 in Canada. I eventually got the P200 here in Japan. When the 250 came out I immediately sold the old one and got it. This is not something I would usually do, but the 250 was so much better sounding. This really is a joy to play: the main grand piano and electric pianos are simply lovely.

Several words of warning. With this version Yamaha added a General Midi sound set in addition to the 10 or so main sounds. What this means is that using this with a sequencer and setting patch changes suddenly became a royal pain in the neck. Don't even dream of a pop up list of patch names. The best you can do is:

1. Stay away from the General Midi sounds completely.

2. Set your sequencer to record and then select the sound you want: the patch change will be recorded.

Once again Yamaha demonstrates that marvelous Japanese ability to turn something great into something awkward by simply adding features without spending a moment to think about the user interface.

Also because of the built in speakers, the P250 sounds much better when you sit down and play it than when you record it. The speakers add just the perfect colur to the sound and the sympathetic vibration offers a sense of playing a real instrument and not just a sample playback gadget. All in all this is the best electric piano I ever heard.

 
     
  Roland XV 3080  
  Roland XV 3080  
 

Mini Review:

This was pretty much the first thing I got when I started to set up my studio (bedroom) in Tokyo. It replaced a Roland GM module in Canada and sounded so much better. However, 4 years later and with Yamaha back on the scene, it sounds very flat. The electric piano samples are really bad: play a note and it sounds like a digital recording is being triggered! Try a similar sound on a Motif and it sounds like you are playing an electric piano.

To my ears all the Roland stuff suffers from this problem. Also the velocity switching is brutal and makes using some sounds a nightmare.