i hear you Dikki but there are very few musicians out there that put together a traack for people to listen to commercially all by themselves. The finished product is as the result of a team of musicians, producers etc and the workstation keyboard will have been one element of many that went to make the finished product . The workstation, no matter which one, is never going to be used to produce a finished radio ready track even if you use a computer to help. Fully produced music that you and i will hear on the radio requires whole teams of people including technicians , sound engineers,song writers and proucers. I dont think you will disagree with me that it takes a team of people to put a decent commercially ready track out there.

So why does the concept of a workstation continue to exist at all if what i have just said is true? (by the way i am not asking if its true , i know it to be true !)

I suggest because the musician who perhaps created the original song wanted to get as close to what he/she heard in their head in the first place and then hand over te "concept idea" to a producer who will then put the arrangement of the song into sharper focus and pull in the bass players, drummers, horn players ete as they see fit. The workstation however you use it helps the song writer get their ideas accross.

And one more thing. You are right that a lot of young musicians use mostly the computer to make music and not actually any particular instrument itself.....and it shows !! cut and paste music has proliferated the music industry for the lat 25 years to the point where pretty much every song i hear on the radio sounds like the one i heard before and there are more cover versons than original song writing because so much has to be done with copywrite clearance because of the samples used in contemporary music that it is easier simply to get one clearance from the record label for a cover of the song than 20 for each sample that is being used in a "new song".

You will also find that many new producers see themselves predom inantly as that "proucer" and not neccessarily great musicians. Many of them can play a little keyboard, a little guitar, some drums a bit of bass but not actually to a high standard for any. There are exceptions to this obviously but for the most part this is true.

The reason workstations have the capability for both integration into a larger music production system as well as being self contained is because thats how very many musicians work in the real world. If that were not so, then the work staion element could be dropped altogether and all that would be needed was an instrument that could play a stack of VST and nothing else. But the most popular keyboards today and the best selling are fully functional self contained and extended integration capable machines.