Frank, I agree with most of your post with the exception of the above. The new Triton Extreme which is in my stable, has wonderful new Piano's and very excellent acoustic voices like Gitars, strings, Brass, Reeds, and the all important organs, which in my opinion, finally take it out of the Hop-hop pigeon hole. Give it another look-see!

But you still can't use it to do a single...

Regards,
Al

See returned my psr3k thread....

I noticed the information on the Roland site OMITS the weight of the keyboard. They have the length, width, etc, but not the weight.

Are they still filling the thing up with electronics?

Gary, further to Fran's answer, a 76-key keyboard is arrived at by chopping one-have octave each off the top and bottom of an 88-note piano range. 73-key keyboards tend to be C to C, e.g., Nord Electro.

Also, 76 key acoustic pianos (mostly uprights) were made at least back into the 1800's as less expensive "home" models back when music was mostly "do it yourself" and a LOT of homes had pianos in them.

BTW, the "arguement is settled", LOL. Underneath the Roland G70 logo it says "Music Workstation" so any G70 owner can now truthfully say they own and use a "Workstation" keyboard.

Tom

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Bigger is not always better

[This message has been edited by Tomcat (edited 10-01-2004).]

I have a feeling that the G-70 is going to be quite heavier that the other 76 keys arrangers

There's so many bad assumptions here that I hardly know where to start. For one thing - not everyone here uses arrangers the same way. I mostly use mine for SMF playback behind my live performances (and no, it doesn't sound AT ALL like an arranger when I do that - you're the one who should hear the difference). Having arranger features just means that when the time comes and I either get a request for a song I don't know or I just want to change things up when performing, I can perform improvisationally. You cannot do that with a Motif ES nearly as easily (I own one - I know).

That's really the difference between workstations and arrangers - the live performance features and aspect. Workstations have to cover so much territory that their user interface cannot be setup exclusively for live performance like an arranger is. With a Motif for example you would be best off setting up your performance combinations and settings well in advance to pull off what an arranger can do right out of the box. And it still wouldn't be the same trying to remember what buttons F1 or S2 do as opposed to the verse/chorus/fill-in buttons of an arranger.

As to "arrangers haven't improved in ten years" - I didn't use arrangers ten years ago because they couldn't pull off what I could do with stand-alone sequencers, tone modules and midi-controlled mixers. Today they not only do all that and more but they do it in a convenient cost-effective package. In fact, today's pro-level arrangers also include built-in programmable mixers and effects for both the synth and for the vocal input, plus they included programmable harmonizers. Many also include the ability to display chords/lyrics/notation. If those features can be found at all in workstations, it's only after you've added a lot of extras onto them.

And your assumption about workstation-hand-down-technology going to arrangers (in part from your other threads) is wrong: Yamaha sells more arrangers in total from $100 to $10,000+ than they do workstations like the Motif because the home market is far larger than the pro market and always will be. Some of their best technology can be found in home instruments like the CVP-900 (which has 256 notes of native polyphony - that's not "old technology"). Yamaha even said that the chord recognition and MegaVoice features of the MOtif ES came from the Tyros, not the other way around.

Unless I'm reading the specs of the Roland G-70 wrong, it is their most powerful keyboard to date with more memory dedicated to sounds than any of their previous workstations. And it's an arranger. This beast has one obvious purpose: live performance. Anybody can sound good in a studio but it takes real horsepower and chops to do it live, and I'm glad to see the major companies like Roland and Korg taking pro arrangers seriously. Yamaha will catch up with a Tyros 2/Pro someday soon I would bet. Today is Roland's day in the sun though.

[This message has been edited by The Pro (edited 10-01-2004).]

While I agree that the Realtime Performance features can not be matched by any of the top workstations, most of the Arranger keyboards, specially YAMAHA, do not have a workstation-like sequencers and synthesizer engines.

That's the only negative point in YAMAHA Arrangers from the $100 PSRs to $2500 TYROS. And it looks like the G-70 will have similar sequencer like the older VA sequencer, instead of the Fantom-X sequencer.

[This message has been edited by Shakil (edited 10-01-2004).]

Does anyone know if it has any digital outs?

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Peace,

Musikman

The G-70 has no digital audio outputs.