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With sounds and features rivaling pro workstations, today’s arranger keyboards are as much powerful musicmaking tools for as they are fun factories that make music approachable. From entry-level to high-end, we’ve rounded up the latest from six makers.
Why do arranger keyboards have such a cheesy rep among some musicians? Blame it on the “Bossa Nova” button — the same one you found on the kind of 1970s home organs that also had self-strummed chords and walking bass lines. The kind whose brochures proclaimed that with just two fingers, you could delight a roomful of friends and family. In fact, these are the modern arranger’s legitimate ancestors — they were the first keyboards to offer automatic accompaniment, both to keep beginners interested and to help experienced players pull off a fairly sophisticated one-man band act. Though today’s arrangers are light years more powerful, portable, and affordable, their mission is largely the same.
Under the hood, an arranger full of backing styles with associated variations, intros, fills, and endings isn’t different from a “pro” synth workstation full of phrases and sequencer patterns. Like these machines, many arrangers also let you create your own patterns, and trigger and chain them in ways that serve your groove, and some even have tweakable, synth-like sound parameters. So what’s the difference?
Mainly, it’s in how the user interface interacts with you. Synth workstations — your Yamaha Motifs, Roland Fantoms, Korg Tritons, and Kurzweil K2600s — more or less expect to take orders from a producer. Producers want the most open-ended set of tools possible, and scalpel-precise, if sometimes tech-heavy, descriptions of how these affect the sound.
Though many arrangers have production tools like sequencers, they’re live performance rigs first and foremost, so playing one is more like being a bandleader. Typically, bandleaders don’t say things like, “We’ll enter loop mode at 02:31.374, at which point the brass attack envelope decreases 250 milliseconds.” They say, “Coming out of the solo, we’ll repeat the B section until I cue us to the outro, and horns, gimme more staccato!” Arrangers are designed to let you give exactly this sort of direction to a virtual backup band, while playing parts live as much or as little as you want. Since a good bandleader reads the crowd, you can make on-the-fly decisions about varying a tune’s arrangement and which tune to play next.
Is a virtual band a good thing? Arrangers attract more than their share of lightning over this legitimate question. Our answer tends towards the positive, because we don’t think the ethics of technology as a performance tool changes just because the name of a musical style is on a panel button instead of a sample library’s DVD case. And while the glass seems half-empty when one cat with a blingy megaboard beats out a talented jazz combo for a gig, it’s half-full when any keyboardist is chosen over pre-recorded music. Arrangers make both these scenarios possible, and we hope this roundup helps you decide what they’ll make possible for you.
CASIO WK SERIES
Casio has been producing aggressively-priced keyboards for a long time, and the fact that their web site refers to the WK series (whose most expensive model lists for $599.99) as “high end” should give you an idea of their philosophy. Don’t let the modest price fool you. The WKs offers impressive bang-for-buck in terms of both sound and expandability, and are very lightweight too, especially when you consider their larger form-factors of 76 keys, or in the WK-8000’s case, 88 keys with an integrated stand.
STYLES
Casio put a lot of thought into the auto-accompaniment on the WK series, with a user-friendly interface that got me making music right away. The styles are wide-ranging, and the accompaniments sound tight and convincing. The “60’s Soul” rhythm had me playing “I Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops in no time, while I could do a dead-on rendition of Sting’s “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” with the “16Shfl 2” preset’s second variation. Besides letting me play favorite songs, the accompaniments routinely inspired me to write my own. Like on most arrangers, the main style controls are laid out right above the left side of the keyboard. Intros, fills, and endings are well-produced and flow nicely from one into the other, even when selected randomly and not on a downbeat. If you get too syncopated changing on, say, dotted sixteenth-notes, expect to hear a truncated or choppy-sounding backing part. “Smarter” tracking of your left hand is part of what you’re paying for when you get into pricier offerings from other manufacturers.
Directly below the display, buttons 1 through 16 turn parts on and off in real time. For instance, you could start a song with just the bass and drums, then switch on other instruments to your taste. Combine this with two main variations and two fills per style, and you can create polished performances on the fly with very little effort. Melody harmonizing, a standard-issue arranger feature that turns right-hand single notes into harmonies based on the current left-hand chords, works well and sounds especially nice with the WKs’ country styles. To top it all off, you can record five separate songs of up to six tracks and 10,000 notes each in internal song memory, using either realtime or step recording. You can save your songs to the internal SD card slot, or to a Windows computer over USB. Support for Macs is not yet available.
SOUND QUALITY
Casio has implemented its new ZPi (pronounced “zee-pie”) sampling technology into the WK series, meaning individual sampled waveforms for three velocity levels add more realism to sounds that will benefit from it. Even the least expensive model, the WK-3300, does not disappoint, especially the main piano sound, which I found to be surprisingly complex and musical. Most of the preset sounds are drenched in reverb, but hold up well after shutting it off, which is easily done by just touching the DSP button to the right of the display. Additionally, Synth Mode allows you sculpt a handful of basic sound parameters such as filter, envelope, and LFO, then save your changes in internal memory, on an SD card, or to your PC. The WKs feature one-button call-up of dedicated piano and drawbar organ modes. In drawbar mode, the button pairs below the display work as the nine drawbars of a tonewheel organ: One button “pulls out” the drawbar and the other “pushes it in.” Yamaha arrangers use similar buttons to operate their Organ Flutes mode, but on the Casios, there are only three volume levels for each virtual drawbar. The mod wheel adds a basic but very decent rotating speaker effect.
Speaking of effects, the DSP block lets you select from 100 built-in effects, store edited versions in up to 100 effect setups, and use downloaded effects from the Casio website. While the WKs’ effects are not as rich and creamy as those in uber-arrangers like the Roland E-80 or Yamaha Tyros2, they do the job nicely.
EDUCATIONAL AND PERFORMANCE FEATURES
All WK series keybaords have a generously-sized, backlit LCD packed with information. The top section gives the preset name and location. Directly below this is visual feedback of the chord being played (when one of the three chord recognition modes is active) as well as tempo, measure, and beat. Both a graphical keyboard and a musical staff show notes played by either you or a running song file. This can be especially helpful to beginning pianists by introducing them to the bass and treble clefs, while the keyboard graphics can show them how to play along with prerecorded Standard MIDI files.
Casio provides three chord recognition modes on the WK series: “Casio Chord,” Fingered, and Full Range. Casio Chord allows anyone to play four chords easily: major, minor, seventh, and minor seventh, using the root key plus from one to three keys to its immediate right. Fingered mode recognizes 15 different chord types to the left of the keyboard’s split point, which will suffice for most popular songs. Finally, Full-Range Chord mode tracks what your fingers are doing over the entire keyboard and interprets 38 different chord types, which are displayed on the LCD. It’s fun to plop your hands down on the keys and watch the WK show the chord symbol for what you’re doing The WK-8000 at Keyboard’s studios proved to be fairly well-versed, recognizing muso moves like major seventh, add-ninth, augmented, and diminished chords with aplomb. It had difficulty with sixth chords, always thinking they were the minor-seventh of the relative minor’s root. (A first position C6 voicing registered Am7, for example, with accompaniment to match.) Most other arrangers in this roundup have some type of “bass to lowest note” function as well, which could help matters here. Still, the WKs get an A minus in chord class.
COMPUTER CONNECTIVITY
The WK series feature USB and an SD memory card slot, but no regular MIDI jacks. My WK-3300 didn’t come with a USB cable or small SD card, which are inexpensive and readily available in any electronics store, though it’d be nice to open the box and have the whole kit and caboodle to get you started, like you usually get with a digital camera.Here is where the Casio WK series really excels, especially in its price range: You can use these keyboards along with the bundled (but PC-only) Music Data Management Software, not only for the usual librarian and storage tasks, but to download new tone and drum waveforms, Standard MIDI song files, and effects setups to customize your WK. This software includes Wave Converter, which lets you create your own WK series tones from WAV audio files, Rhythm Converter, which turns SMFs into accompaniment styles you can then load into the WK, and a full-featured graphical tone editor. With the aid of a computer, you effectively have a simplified sampler on which you can play back your own sound creations. Impressive! I visited music.casio.com and downloaded some of the extra factory sounds, and Casio is really doing its homework here.
SOUND SYSTEM
The WK series comes with stereo 2-way bass reflex speakers, and they provide plenty of volume in a solo or duo setting, though I had to keep the volume below 2 o’clock in Drawbar Organ mode to avoid distortion. Should you wish to plug a WK-3300 into external amplification, you have to go through the headphone out on the front left lip of the keyboard, but the WK-3800 and 8000 have 1/4" stereo line outs on the rear. Casio’s not the only manufacturer that cuts this very corner in this price range: Yamaha’s PSR-E403 and PSR-S500 have a single 1/4" TRS jack labeled “phones/output,” for example. So, the observation that even my $125 cheapo keyboard from 1985 had stereo RCA outs is directed at the industry in general. Like USB cables and memory cards, stereo “Y” cables (go for 1/4"-TRS-to-dual-1/4" TS to plug into a stereo keyboard amp, or 1/4"-TRS-to-dual-RCA to use a home stereo or computer speakers), are cheap and easily found at your local circuit shack.
CONCLUSIONS
The Casio WK series puts a lot of power into a budding keyboardist or songwriter’s hands at a very affordable price. The sounds and accompaniments will bring out the creativity in players of all levels. While the build quality might be a little on the flimsy side, it’s perfectly fine for musicmaking at home, and should stand up to weekend warrior gigs if you use a good case and remember to treat them like what they are: delicate pieces of musical equipment. Are they full-blown arranger workstations? Given the somewhat basic sequencing features, I think of them as songwriting stations, but their sounds are certainly good enough for semi-pro applications. With the ability to load customized, WAV-based sounds, the WK series also opens up a “pro synth” experience to people who might have thought they couldn’t afford to have one. Given this, it won’t surprise me one bit if we begin to see as many WKs on keyboard stands on hometown stages as we do in aspiring musicians’ bedrooms and college dorms.
GENERALMUSIC GENESYS PRO S
As high-end arranger workstations go, the Genesys Pro S does everything the big Godzillas do, and when it comes to audio files, a few things some don’t. Its utilitarian-looking panel accesses a ton of musical power, and it’s surprisingly easy to use.
The Pro S’ grasp of diversity is impressive. It pays a lot of attention to styles for ballroom and swing dancing, and to invoking not just “ethnic” flavors, but regional variants: “BourbonStreet” had an authentic Mardi Gras vibe, and no less than three flavors of cumbia (Mexican, Tex-Mex, and Spanish) is just one example of how there are always enough variations on a theme to please even the most ‘hood-proud crowd. Club and techno styles have a lot more surliness and cred than I’d expect from a keyboard that also has a style called “WelkShow.” Keyboard sounds are great overall, but some brasses and guitars sounds sound rather sample-y, like what you’d have expected from a ROMpler a few years ago. On the other hand, punchy drums and basses give the styles a uniquely uncompressed, in-your-face quality. If a Yamaha Tyros2 or Roland E-80 sounds like a well-mastered CD, the Genesys sounds more like a live band. The main piano sound is not overly bright, great for jazz, but nothing like the modeled beauties in the company’s digital pianos, such as the pRP-700 reviewed last month.
The Genesys Pro S manages audio files alongside the usual MIDI-based styles and songs. It can play back audio tracks from its CD-RW drive, MP3s and WAVs from its built-in 20GB hard disk, and record to hard disk in stereo WAV format. This captures every sound the keyboard makes, as well as your singing and/or playing an instrument into the Genesys’ audio inputs, vocal effects and harmonies included. What can’t it do? It’s not multitrack, and won’t play back audio while a style or MIDI-based song is running. But you can store up recordings on the hard drive, then hit the “CD Studio” button to organize and burn a CD. The Yamaha Tyros2 does stereo audio recording, but you need to buy and install a hard drive yourself. It doesn’t multitrack, but it will overdub onto the recording, something I couldn’t do on the Genesys. My only other beef was the lack of any USB port, but given how thorough a turnkey system the Pro S is for entertaining, songwriting, and recording, you can really get a lot done without touching a computer.
KETRON SD-5
At first glance, you could mistake the SD-5 for some kind of military-spec keyboard. In Ketron’s words, they’re a small company that doesn’t have unlimited resources to put into slick industrial design and starship-like user interfaces, preferring to invest them all into the sound. After spending a couple of weeks getting to know the SD-5, I see where they’re coming from: this keyboard has some of the most live-sounding styles in this roundup. Partly this is because each main variation section can be up to 32 bars long, so your ears get bored less easily; the styles also have the same uncompressed quality as the Genesys Pro S, but with note-for-note sophistication more in the Korg Pa800’s league. The SD-5 changes the instrumentation a bit less from one style to another — a good analogy is how the David Letterman band just absolutely shreds on any tune you can think of, but on a relatively uniform set of instruments. Strummed funk guitars in the styles are particularly authentic: “Funky1” and “Funky2” had me dancing like a dork in the Keyboard studio.
Some styles are exceptionally realistic, thanks to the unique, unexpected Drum Remix feature: The styles’ “Drum2” part can slice, stretch, and squish audio files that sync up with the rest of the MIDI-based accompaniment. In “Soka,” for example, a long audio loop of a Latin percussionist wailing away is part of what you hear. We’ve run columns about how you can make programmed drums sound more real by adding an acoustic recording of, say, real congas or cymbals, and the concept is similar, only these tracks perfectly follow your tempo and style section changes. The SD-5’s big brother, the SD-1, can import and adapt WAV and Akai samples for the Drum2 track, but with the SD-5, you need to use custom, pre-encoded files, which you’ll be able to download from
www.ketronus.com. Limitations? There’s a definite learning curve to this axe, and its 32-track “sequencer” is only for song file or style playback, not recording songs, so the SD-5 doesn’t qualify as a full composing workstation. But it has a great-feeling keyboard, with aftertouch, and once you get to know it, it’s an amazingly clever, well-thought-out live rig.
KORG Pa SERIES
Korg’s current lineup of arranger workstations — and they are all workstations, offering full-featured 16-track sequencing and song playback in addition to style-based accompaniment — consists of the entry-level Pa50, the high-end Pa1X Pro Elite, and in between, the Pa800. Though the Pa1X Pro Elite offers some pro features you won’t find on the Pa800, such as audio recording and improved vocal processing, the fact that the Pa800 is brand-new hardware gives it twice the polyphony and a generally snappier touch screen and operating system.
SOUND QUALITY AND STYLES
With few exceptions, I found Korg’s styles to be unfailingly tasteful, funky, and realistic. If one accompaniment part stands above the others, it’s the bass lines. One example, and one of my favorite Pa800 styles, is the aptly-named “FashionFunk,” which sounds like the Brand New Heavies got a gig at a runway show. Its four variations get predictably busier, but all feature some of the hippest bass playing I’ve ever heard from any arranger keyboard. This sort of pleasant surprise characterized just about every style family. “HorrorMovie” is a scream — moving up one variation really gives you the sense that the masked psycho just got a little closer to the victim.The Pa800 features a new RX grand piano sound (this stands for “Real eXperience” in Korg’s marketing materials), and I hope Korg takes this as a complement: The keyboard action, which is silky smooth, has aftertouch, and seems perfectly matched to every other sound in the machine, doesn’t do this piano justice. With some practice, I got good dynamic and harmonic range from it, but played via MIDI on a weighted controller, it becomes a whole new instrument. By any hardware keyboard standards, arranger or otherwise, this is a world-class sound.
When it comes to following your chord changes in a way that makes musical sense and doesn’t come off as mechanical, all arrangers at this price and above are very good. That said, the Pa800 is my current favorite. One reason is its top-notch chord recognition. Like on all Pa models, a pair of buttons determines whether the keyboard scans the left hand, right hand, or both to tell what chords you intend, which is often a function of some less-obvious mode choice on other arrangers. In practice, the display identified just about every altered chord and extension I threw at it, including augmented, diminished, sixth with and without an added ninth, major seventh (with a major or minor third), flat and sharp ninths, suspended second and fourth, even sharp 11th. With Bass Inversion active (a button found on many arrangers, including the rest of the Pa series, the Ketron SD-5, Generalmusic Genesys Pro S, and Roland E-80), even “slash” chords such as Fmaj7/A were recognized properly. It wasn’t just lip service either: Style playback was uncannily hip to the displayed chord, and seemingly, to my intentions. Was there the occasional clam? Yes, but less frequently than with most hired guns I’ve worked with, and the Pa800 doesn’t ever raid the buffet.
DUAL SEQUENCERS
On any Pa keyboard, you’ll find two sets of transport buttons labeled “Sequencer 1” and “Sequencer 2,” with a DJ-like crossfader between them. They have a different purpose than the 16-track sequencing mode you’d use to build a song (though Sequencer 1’s buttons are used to control the Pa50’s). These play back MIDI file-based songs in the keyboard’s internal memory, or in the Pa800’s case, directly from an optional internal hard disk or any USB memory device, which you can plug into a neatly recessed socket to the keyboard’s right. On the Pa1X Pro Elite, or an older Pa1X series arranger with the MP3 board and CD drive installed (see “Audio Included” below), they can also handle CD tracks and MP3 audio files, with one catch: You can’t have two CD tracks or MP3 files at the same time. You can mix it up with a CD track on one sequencer and an MP3 on the other, and two Standard MIDI files at once is no problem.
NO SLOUCH
If the Pa800 is like a master sideman, then the Pa50’s styles sound like the kid who takes lessons from him and practices hard. The Pa50 makes very similar musical choices — just not quite as expertly and fluidly - in all style families. Variation 1 of the “Soul” style was perfect for playing James Brown’s “Cold Sweat,” and variations 2, 3, and 4 added the signature comp from “I Feel Good.” There’s plenty to please on the more traditional side, whether your audience wants to hear the Godfather tarantella or dance the Charleston.
ROLAND E SERIES AND G-70
Roland has updated their long-standing “E” keyboard line with the affordable E-09, the mid-level E-50 and E-60, and flagship E-80, which it’s fair to describe as an expanded G-70 (reviewed May ‘05), only with internal speakers and 61 keys instead of 76.
STYLES
Not surprisingly, the styles of the E series get more realistic as you move up the product line; many of the high-end E-80’s are downright startling. Much of this has been achieved by including far more waveform ROM than a base G-70. Roland has taken great care to program realistic styles, and this is where the E-50, E-60, and E-80 really shine. The instrumentation, voicings, and rhythm were always appropriate for the wide range of included styles, and the “Cover” function can change all the style’s instruments, or just the drums and/or bass, without affecting the actual rhythm and notes. The options correspond to band types, and if it suits your purposes to make something sound a little more acoustic or electronic, or to have a Gamelan ensemble render a techno breakbeat, now you can. I usually felt as if I were listening to a recording of a real band, especially the rhythm section.
Not surprisingly, the entry-level E-09 has styles with fewer articulations, and somewhat stiffer-sounding virtual bandmates. It’s at its best when playing back straight-up keyboard sounds like synth, piano, and organ, and I thought some of the Asian and Middle Eastern styles had a bit of a theme park quality. Then again, the E-09’s price is about an eighth of the E-80’s and less than half of the E-50’s, so these comparisons are somewhat unfair.
The E series’ four intros per style progress from simple to complex: the first is a one-bar intro, the second follows your left-hand chords, the third is a longer, fully arranged intro over which you play a melody, and the fourth is the same but plays the melody for you. Variations for the main body, fills, and endings are similarly organized, and triggered by button, pedal, or on the E-80 and G-70, aftertouch.
SOUNDS
The E-80’s sounds are rich and nuanced, and you can layer up to three of them for the right-hand part and two in the left-hand part, plus a manual bass that when activated mutes the auto-accompaniment bass in a running style. As mentioned, the underlying sound architecture is similar to Roland’s Fantom-X line, and the E-80 and G-70 accept the same SRX sound expansion boards as the Fantom-X (the E-80 has two slots; the G-70 one). Though the E-50 and 60 have less wave ROM and don’t take SRX boards, their base sound set is otherwise similar to their bigger brethren. As expected, the E-09 has the most basic sonic complement, and though it uses some of the same samples, there’s simply less “wow” factor here. Most of the E-09’s sounds would be considered entry-level quality by a pro’s standards but quite good by a beginner or hobbyist, especially the piano.The E-80’s main piano sound is of a New York Steinway, mutisampled in stereo with damper pedal resonance. I found it equal to many of the better digital pianos in our Dec. ‘06 home digital piano roundup, making it a real standout among arrangers. Organists will love the E-80’s nine sliders. Normally, they adjust the volume of the “live” keyboard parts — Upper1, Upper2, and so on — but press either the Harmonic Bar or “Organ” Easy Setting button, and they become Hammond-style drawbars, controlling what’s essentially a simplified VK-8 clonewheel (reviewed Nov. ‘04), with excellent vibrato/chorus and rotary simulation. Though many arrangers now have dedicated drawbar modes in addition to the “straight” organ sounds, Roland leads the pack for authentic B-3 sound. You do have to buy at the high end to get it: Only the E-80 and G-70 have this feature.
A great variety of electric pianos includes an exceptional Wurlitzer. About the 106 tones in the E-80’s “Synth” family, technical editor Stephen Fortner raved, “They’re like a tour through the ‘70s and ‘80s. They sound very hi-fi, and seem to be organized for the user who sound-hunts based on memories of favorite songs.” Strings and brass, while not subpar, were weakest compared to other acoustic sounds. I wouldn’t feature them in an orchestrally-focused style, but they were more than adequate for pop backing, as well as some jazz and big band swing.
EDUCATIONAL AND PERFORMANCE FEATURES
The E-50, E-60, and E-80 can display four staves worth of music, given any Standard MIDI file. The E-80’s composite video RCA output puts this, or karaoke lyrics, on an external monitor, ideal for both sing-alongs and classroom instruction.The E-80 and G-70’s Vocal Harmonist processor takes mic or line-level input via an XLR/TRS combo jack on the rear panel. It includes harmonizer effects that offer the ability to choose the gender of your backup vocals and the size of the ensemble. You can also morph your own voice into a robot, alien, member of the opposite sex, or almost anyone else you’re not. The synthetic harmonies sound very good - comparable to entry-level dedicated harmony boxes from companies such as DigiTech. The pitch correction is a little rough: you’ll certainly hear it working if it kicks in, but better that than a sour note at a paying gig. Speaking of gigs, a very cool feature is that you can enter a vocal range into the E-80, which will then transpose every song to an appropriate key.
SEQUENCING AND RECORDING
The G-70 and E-50, 60, and 80 all have 16-track sequencers that, while they lack any audio sampling or recording capability, have editing features on a par with pro workstations like the Fantom-X. Track, event list, and “piano roll” views are on hand, but you don’t have to deal with any of these — simply hitting the record and play buttons will capture everything that happens as you jam with a style, including all sound and mode changes, and harmonic bar and Guitar Mode playing. On E-80, there’s even a control track for the Vocal Harmonist settings, so although your voice won’t be recorded, any processing changes you make will. The E-09 has a more basic 16-track sequencer, with quick setup modes so you can easily record everything at once, just the “live” keyboard parts, a single track, or do punch-ins.
COMPUTER CONNECTIVITY
All keyboards in this section except the E-09 have a USB port for MIDI communication or file transfer with a computer, and a 3.5" floppy drive so you can load up any legacy song files you have. Even on the E-80, you don’t get a “skinny” USB port for storage devices, like on the Korg Pa800 or Yamaha Tyros2, but there is a PCM-CIA slot. Though this is an aging memory format, adaptors sold at electronics stores let you use your digital camera card of choice. All E models ship with Roland’s Database Manager software (Mac, PC), originally created for the G-70. With it, you can organize and exchange E and G-70 songs, styles, and user programs, or download them from Roland’s new online arranger community,
www.rolandkeyboardclub.com. A great reason to create databases is to have handy set lists for diverse gig types such as club dates, church services, weddings, and company parties. The necessary files for solo entertaining can be imported from your computer as well, including Standard MIDI, .KAR (song files with display-ready karaoke lyrics), text, and images in Windows BMP format.
CONCLUSIONS
With an unusually realistic sound and a lot of flexibility, the E-80 is one of the best arranger keyboards on the market — a worthy rival to Yamaha’s Tyros2 (reviewed Feb. ‘06). While I’d prefer the Tyros2’s Super Articulation voices (see page 31) for arranging in the studio, I’d rather have the E-80’s rhythm section behind me at a club gig. It’s a close call, though, and hard to go wrong with either one. At more approachable prices, the E-60 and E-50 offer much of what makes the E-80 great, while the E-09 is a more budget-minded point of entry into arranger-land.
Yamaha TYROS2 & PSR SERIES
Whether you’re a frugal beginner, a seasoned pro, or somewhere in-between, Yamaha has keyboard offerings to ignite your lust for fresh gear. Their expansive product line takes a “shotgun” approach with something for every budget. Does every pellet hit a bull’s-eye? Let’s find out.
STYLES
The Tyros2 is Yamaha’s flagship arranger workstation, with accompaniment styles that are remarkably realistic — thanks in no small part to its Super Articulation voice technology. I was particularly impressed with the ripping brass articulations of its big band styles, and orchestral styles that feature excellent string sections. But it also has other great-sounding families such as Latin, Movie and Show (I dare you to punch up the “70s TV Theme” style and not break into singing “Shaft”), Ballroom, and World. Its pop accompaniments are contemporary enough, but a few that featured those famous Yamaha DX electric pianos sounded a little dated.Just down the line from the Tyros2 are the PSR-3000 and PSR-1500, which have a lot in common with the original Tyros (reviewed Aug.’03). The difference in style realism between these mid-level PSRs and the Tyros2 is often more than subtle, but only occasionally dramatic. The styles’ realism largely depends on that of the individual sounds involved, as opposed to the rhythms and notes Yamaha chose to program in, which to my ears were tasteful, good choices overall.
Next come the PSR-E403, E303, and E203. Though their styles won’t fool a trained ear into thinking a live band is playing, they’re surprisingly realistic from the point of view of the keyboard-curious consumer who’s mainly encountered musical instruments in stores like Costco or Best Buy. For this reason, even the bare-bones PSR-E203 is as big of a leap forward for its price ($159.95 list) as the Tyros2 is in its lofty class.
All PSR-E models have styles with an intro, two section variations, and an ending that mirrors the intro. The E203 has tap tempo, and sync start to begin style playback when you strike the keys. The E303 adds Pianist styles for accompanying traditional piano pieces (as opposed to anything “with a beat”), keyboard splitting and layering, and a basic One Touch Setting feature (see “Arranger Decoder Ring” on page 20). The E403’s Easy Song Arranger button lets you “remix” song files according to the style of your choice, imparting new rhythm and accompaniment tracks that totally change the song’s vibe.
SOUND QUALITY
The PSR-3000 includes velocity-switched sounds Yamaha calls Mega Voices, which combines basic instrument samples with performance techniques. For example, a guitar might include open and muted strings, slides, harmonics, hammer-ons, strums and body slaps. Since these affectations are triggered by specific velocities, it takes a lot of practice to play them consistently from the keyboard, but they sound remarkably real when properly programmed into a style. Fortunately, Yamaha has done plenty of this for you.Super Articulation voices, found only in the Tyros2, take the Mega Voice concept to the next level, and they are easy to play live. Selected sounds — notably guitars, strings, and saxes — analyze your playing in real time, and vary the articulations, timbre, and envelopes according to how you play. This feature can add finger noise to a guitar preset, breath to a saxophone patch, or it can alternate between polyphonic mode when playing staccato and monophonic when playing legato — and those are just some of its cruder chops. The results are startlingly lifelike: I’ve only heard this kind of realism in virtual instrument libraries. In a hardware keyboard, I’ve never encountered this level of intuitive playability for these sorts of sounds.
The PSR-E203, E303, and E403 share a pleasant-sounding stereo grand piano. Everything else is sampled in mono, although drums are panned in stereo. The PSR-E203 has a variety of reverb effects; the E303 and E403 add chorus and, like higher-end arrangers, can generate right-hand harmonies based on left-hand voicings. While not pro-level, these sounds are excellent for the price — especially the quality of the piano you get for the price of the PSR-E203. If you think any keyboard in this price range must sound like a toy, listen again.
EDUCATIONAL AND PERFORMANCE FEATURES
Though the Tyros2 is clearly aimed at experienced arranger users, its educational features are quite advanced. The display can put a bouncing ball above the music staff, showing you which notes to play as the score scrolls by. The Any Key practice function pauses the song playback of the accompaniment parts until you play the right note. Plug in a mic, and Vocal CueTime pauses playback until you sing the correct note. Both the PSR-3000 and the PSR-1500 have interactive guide modes that function in much the same way, though the 1500 lacks Vocal Cue Time. The PSR-E203, PSR-E303, and PSR-E403 were designed with children, young adults, and beginners in mind. The onboard Yamaha Education Suite provides 100 or more songs (depending on the model), a variety of lesson levels, and visual feedback about what you’re playing in the form of staff and keyboard graphics. Play a chord, and the display will tell you its name; select one from the chord dictionary, and it shows you which notes to play. You also get three types of lesson for each hand: Listen & Learn plays the left- and right-hand parts with the hand you’re learning mixed louder, Timing mode lets you practice the correct timing without worrying about melody, and Waiting mode stops accompaniment playback until you find the correct note, then continues. While you might expect features like this from an arranger or home digital piano with a four-digit price, it’s exceptional to find this level of interactivity from a product line that tops out at $399.99.
All practice and no play makes Jack a bored kid, so Yamaha incorporated fun sounds such as grunts, cuckoo clocks, barnyard animals, and beats into the PSR-E series in what’s called Sound Effect Kit mode. That may not hold the attention of adolescents who want to sound like they’re in a hip club, but this will: The E403 ups the coolness with two knobs that default to analog synth-like filter cutoff and resonance, but can be assigned to other parameters such as reverb and chorus, EQ, tempo, and even a separate filter cutoff for the accompaniment, so you can squeeze that rhythm down to nothing then bring it back again. Beginning with the E403, Yamaha adds a pitchbend wheel, and a modulation wheel with the PSR-1500.
The PSR-3000 and Tyros2 include vocal processing, via a 1/4" high impedance mic/line input, and they also have a video output that can display song lyrics for karaoke or mirror what’s on the LCD display. Each keyboard’s Vocal Harmony function can create four-part harmonies including your voice, which is transposed in real time to fit the prescribed harmony. It can be triggered during performance from left hand chords, right hand notes, or a MIDI file.
COMPUTER CONNECTIVITY
Tired of having to download Standard MIDI files from the Internet to your computer before you can import them into your keyboard? Well, the PSR-1500, PSR-3000, and Tyros2 can connect directly to
www.yamaha musicsoft.com. All you need are a WiFi base station hooked to a cable or DSL (no dial-up) connection, and a USB WiFi receiver to pop into the keyboard’s “USB-to-device” port. The LCD display becomes a browser, which you navigate with the surrounding buttons. You can download new styles or full songs straight into the keyboard, possibly even doing so at a gig. Tech editor Stephen Fortner advises, “If you’re going to use this under fire, sometimes the keyboards aren’t as good as laptops at finding available networks. So make sure you know the SSID name of the base station where you want to connect, because if you enter it manually, the Yamahas always work great.” You can also use these models’ USB ports to connect to a variety of storage devices. The Tyros2 has even more computer options, such as a VGA output for direct connection of a computer monitor.
The PSR-E203 and E-303 have MIDI in and out but no USB port, but the E303 can import Standard MIDI Files via the MIDI in, using an included software utility. The E403 trades MIDI jacks for a USB interface.
CONCLUSIONS
With its serviceable sounds and surprisingly deep educational modes, the PSR-E203 offers exceptional bang-for-buck in the $100-$150 range. The non-velocity-sensitive keyboard may be a dealbreaker for some, in which case the E303 should fit the bill nicely for an extra $100. Of the entry-level models, the E403 offers the best sounds and a few ways to sculpt them. Its closest competition, the Roland E-09, lists for over $200 more. I prefer the sound of the E-09, but it lacks the PSR-E403’s knobs and educational features. In the under-$2,000 category, Yamaha’s PSR-1500 and 3000 offer fully professional sound. Roland’s similarly-priced entries, the E-50 and 60, have sounds that equal Yamaha’s. Only the Roland E-60 has the elbow room of 76 keys, but Yamaha offers some compelling features: direct internet connection, and in the PSR-3000’s case, vocal processing. Roland counters with touch screens on their mid-priced models, and the ability to wave your hand in the air to trigger one-shot sounds, instrument hits in tune with your chords, and DJ-like turntable effects, thanks to their signature D-Beam controller.
At the high end, no other keyboard’s comparable sounds can match the realism of the Tyros2’s Super Articulation voices, but Roland’s E-80 has some cool features the Tyros2 lacks, like Guitar Mode (see page 30), a far better drawbar organ mode, a touch screen, the D-Beam, and a killer built-in speaker system. Overall, the sounds and features of both keyboards are stellar. Roland gives you more effects, and I preferred their sound and that of the E-80’s vocal processing. But the Tyros2’s educational features, which trickle down generously through the whole Yamaha line, can teach you to play like nothing else.
ARRANGER vs. WORKSTATION
An arranger is any keyboard with automatic accompaniment styles, including drum, bass, and various instrument parts. These styles follow your playing and can respond to full or simplified chord fingerings. This is just the bare-bones concept, as many arrangers add features such as score and lyric display, educational modes, and vocal harmonizers. Some also add workstation capability: Technically, a workstation is any keyboard that combines a wide variety of natural and synthetic sounds with an onboard multitrack sequencer, so that you can compose and record full, multi-instrumental songs.
Creating songs on arranger workstations has a different vibe than on “pro” workstations, such as any Korg Triton, Yamaha Motif, or Roland Fantom. First, there’s the presentation: Though many pro axes are chock-full of preset grooves and phrases for use as musical building blocks, they typically don’t group them under buttons that correspond to acknowledged musical genres like “Jazz” or “Latin.” Second, and more important to songwriters, is how arrangers organize your tracks for you. Simply hit the record button and start jamming with a style you like, and all that style’s drum, bass, and chord parts have already been assigned to internal MIDI tracks, as have your right-hand parts. It’s not that pro keyboards lack similar functions — on the contrary, most now have templates that pre-assign sounds to tracks, the ability to record riffs played by the arpeggiator into the sequencer, and other shortcuts to arrange your music. It’s that arrangers make this the highest-priority, most in-your-face way these keyboards work.
GIMME SOME ACTION
The keyboard on the WK-3300 and 3800 is a weak point. The keys have a lot of sideways movement, especially the black keys, and I wouldn’t want to play them in a two-fisted barrelhouse manner. However, for arrangers that offer so much for the price and for the introductory market at which they’re aimed, this is certainly not a deal-breaker. The WK-8000 feels much sturdier, and though its keys aren’t weighted, they’re comfortably sized and shaped like a piano’s. The WKs have four adjustable velocity settings in a global function menu. None sense aftertouch, but no arranger in this price range does.
ONLINE EXPANSION
Via the USB port on any WK series arranger, you can download tones, rhythms, Standard MIDI files (SMFs), and effects setups by visiting music.casio.com
MULTI-TABS
Sixteen buttons are placed exactly where a one-musician band needs them: on the rail just above the left side of the keyboard. In default mode, they mute individual drums so you can “thin out” a running style, but they can also toggle effects, select mixer pages for General MIDI song tracks, and call up registrations (see “Arranger Decoder Ring” on page 20). In Arabic Scale mode, the first 12 buttons select alternate tunings for each note in the chromatic scale. You determine the tunings in a separate menu.
1,001 GIG NIGHTS
Generalmusic offers special versions of several arrangers, such as the WK-1 and WK-2000, for Middle Eastern and Mediterranean styles, sounds, and scales. You can also the Genesys Pro S in a similar fashion, and Chicago retailer Maqam (
www.maqam.com) specializes in keyboards and multimedia that serve the growing gig scene you can learn more about in this month’s “Weekend Warriors” column on page 96.
TC-HELICON INSIDE
Selecting the “Mic” tab on the Pa800’s touch screen brings up options for types of harmonies, mic EQ and overall effect level, mute icons for your own voice and your three virtual backup singers, plus a talk-over button. The Pa1X Pro Elite adds a fourth harmony voice and pitch-correction. The underlying technology is from
TC-Helicon, and since they’re an industry leader in hardware vocal harmony boxes, our expectations were quite high. We weren’t disappointed — the sound quality is a perceptible notch above other arrangers’ best efforts in this area.
AUDIO INCLUDED
Two former options for the Pa1X Pro are now included at no extra cost, in the Pa1X Pro Elite. The EXPB-MP3 encoder board records stereo MP3 files of your performance — including external mic or instrument inputs and how you process them with the keyboard’s effects and vocal harmonies — to the internal hard disk. The CD-RW drive lets you play and burn audio CDs. Given that the Pro Elite also has a 16-track sequencer, this audio capability effectively makes it a full-on music production workstation as well as a live solo powerhouse.
GIMME SOME ACTION
All E series keyboards transmit both attack and release velocity, except for the E-09, which transmits only attack velocity. Only the E-80 and G-70 sense aftertouch. The G-70’s action (shown) is by far the best of the bunch, with weightier, longer-throw keys than anything in the E series. The E-09 has a different keybed still, with a little more resistance than most budget-minded unweighted actions, but somewhat of a table-like feel when it bottoms out.
ROLAND’S GUITAR MODE
Given the physics of how a keyboard is played, realistic guitar parts can be hard to achieve, no matter how good your basic sounds are. Guitar Mode, found in the E-50, E-60, E-80, and the G-70’s latest OS version, aims to help. Play any chord in the bottom range of the keyboard, and white keys C through A in the third octave duplicate the notes that would be played by each of six strings on a real guitar, enabling very authentic arpeggios. White and black keys above that trigger seemingly endless varieties of strumming techniques. Fret noise occurs in judicious amounts when you change chords, and though it takes some manual-reading and practice to master which strum patterns yield the best performance, this is offset by the fact that relative to whatever chord your left hand is holding down, it is impossible to find a wrong note with your right.
After trying it out, Guitar Player editor in chief Michael Molenda commented, “With the nylon-string patch, that sounds really, really cool. I like that certain keys become ‘strings,’ so it’s impossible to play an un-guitar-like voicing. Some of the heavy distorted sounds were great for single power chords, but still came off as sampled when you’re comping quickly from chord to chord.” Molenda’s a notorious hater of synthesized guitars, so if he’s saying anything nice about it, you know it’s cool.
Bottom line? While it’s no substitute for a real guitarist, nor for carefully studying how to translate guitar technique to the ivories, Guitar Mode is the quickest, cleverest way we’ve seen for a solo keyboard performer to achieve convincing and musically correct guitar parts.
GIMME SOME ACTION
The PSR-E303 and E403’s keyboards are velocity-sensitive. The feel is somewhat light and springy, with very quick key return. The PSR-E203’s keyboard is similar, but there’s no velocity sensitivity in the keyboard itself. However, its sounds are velocity sensitive if played from an external controller. The PSR-1500 and 3000 sense velocity but not aftertouch, and are smoother and quieter than the less expensive keyboards. To get aftertouch, you have to graduate to the FSX action in the Tyros2, which is synth-like but very substantial, with meaty weights that you can feel underneath the keys.
STOP THE PRESSES!
Just as we went to press, the spankin’-new Yamaha PSR-S500 showed up at our door. It’s positioned between the PSR-E403 and PSR-1500, and we were able to give it a quick spin. In essence, it’s a baby 1500, with most of the same styles, a nine-track sequencer, monochrome LCD (displays music staff, lyrics, and chords), ported two-way stereo speakers, and the stereo-sampled “Live” voices as well as the “Sweet” (featured acoustic) and “Cool” (featured electric) voices found in the 1500 and higher-end Yamaha arrangers. It will also play song files directly from a connected USB storage device, and let you mute individual tracks with the registration buttons, a cool feature when you want to play a part live. Next to the PSR-3000 in our studio, identically-named styles sounded only a tiny bit less sophisticated, but behaved exactly the same in terms of what notes they played. At $799, we think it’s going to give a lot of arrangers that go for $1,000 or more a run for their money, and we’re looking forward to spending more time with this predatorily-priced puppy.
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