comparing all the top keyboards,some have features that others do not,with the next phase of keyboards it seems that the top keyboards are coming closer together with their new additions ,in other words they will all be having the same things with better quality sounds ,styles,CD player,etc,etc,etc,so what is new on the horizon,what else can be done,mike

Money sales will determine the future of KB's.....they obviously don't care about users needs and wants..I remmber when there used to be a "PRO KB Room" in music stores where we could check out the top of the line KB/Synths withoout being bothered for hours, now everthing is out in the open mixed in with the cheapest models, banged up, broken, or not available at all...yep Kb's are going far alright [and in many ways there are improvements]....but...in the wrong direction



[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 01-20-2004).]

When it comes to technological advances, there is no end in sight. Just last night on the national news I saw a microchip the size of a grain of sand that can be imbedded into the skin of an apple. When the apple is placed on a reader, the computer identifies that it is an apple, how much it costs and adds it to the other items on the customer's grocery bill. However, instead of long check-out lines, the reader was right on the grocery cart. The information was sent to the store's exit, where they customer merely either signed his or her credit card slip, or handed cash to the person at the exit, who then handed them their sales slip.

Sometime in the next few years, we're going to see things in keyboards that are beyond our wildest dreams.

Gary

Great!!! more people out of work in supermarkets!

[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 01-20-2004).]

PSRXXXX it aint , OpenSynth NEKO 64™ But does show that the technology is here NOW to make a "keyboard" of this type. A Windows operating system for an arranger anyone?,


Anthony

[This message has been edited by Jupitar5 (edited 01-20-2004).]

how much i wonder one of those cost???

Is the chip easily removed before eating? ...sounds real small, hard to handle

Geez, A windows based arranger... I see that as a complete nightmare!!!!! There are so many bugs in windows as it is. Imagine you're performing, and in the middle of a song you get that dreaded blue screen Yikes.

Squeak

Anthony,

This is the same picture they had shown us at a NAMM a year ago. This concept appears to be no closer to being an actual instrument than it was a year ago. There is also a similar product, Mediastation76 from Liontracks, which was going to be exhibiting at NAMM, but generated no publicity at all (I have seen no press releases, and if anyone was attending this NAMM exhibition, they did not appear to have taken notice of either prototype. Too bad, because it is high time for someone to give the Rolands and Korgs a run for their money.

Benno, about the price, I believe there is an old joke that applies here:

A woman walks into a store and asks the owner:
-Joe, how much is this?
-$10, Joe answers
-But Joe, Pete around the corner has it priced at $5, the woman says
-So why don't you go to Pete and buy it from him? says Joe
-Pete is all out of it
To which Joe answerd:
-Lady, when I am all out of it, my price will also be $5

In other words, The price of vaporware does not matter until there is an instrument ready to be sold.

Regards,
Alex

There are a lot of professional musicians who play live with Gigastudio, a Windows based sampler. That's a pretty demanding program, but if a good computer is only loaded with that software and nothing more, it is no problem. I think the same will be true for an arranger synth. But I think that arranger players will want dedicated buttons on a console to control style variations and what not.

I think some developments on the horizon will be:

1. More and more realistic voices
2. Superior style morphing
3. Improved ability to create styles out of midis
4. Music Finder databases that can call up style, tempo, and any other desired parameter
5. More voice editing capabilities
6. Pitch correction on the vocals
7. More realistic vocalizers
8. Human voice modeling so that someone with a mediocre voice can sound more like Frank Sinatra. I'm not happy about this one.
9. Ribbon controllers to create arpeggiations
10. As everything becomes more miniaturized, they might create an accordian arranger that has everything on it.
11. Each year, the top arrangers have more and more styles. Ten years from now, you might be able to choose between 10-15 Mexican styles, a dozen Celtic styles, and many Arabic and Indian styles. The top arrangers might have 600 or more styles instead of 250.

These are some thoughts

Beakybird

How far can keyboards go ? I like to think back.. oh say ..25 years ago, before the current midi standard, before sampling ( not counting the Mellotrons ), before arrangers, heck even analog synths as we know them were in the development stage as far as being accesible to the average muwsician.

How many of us that were playing back then, on what was "hot" in the day, could have envisioned the tools that are available to us now ? In 1978, I had a Hohner Clavinet, and the remains of a silvertone organ. Five years later, it was the analog Korg poly 6 ( a huge advancement ) and the Yamaha CP25.

Casio's began appearing en masse, and their low end Yamaha counterparts along with them. They were nothing that resembles today's arrangers, but they were a sort of forerunner. About 5 or 6 years after that, I had one the midi romplers that changed everything as we had known it, the M1, and A technics SX KN somehing or other that began to take the more of the shape of today's arrangers but still was nothing like it's modern day cousins. I saw tremendous change over a 10 year period.

Maybe we've hit a plateau of sorts, at least in the arranger arena, or maybe not. A scant few years ago the PSR8000, G1000 and I-30 were king. Today it's the Tyros and PA1x ( and maybe something from Roland down the road ). While they are arrangers, there are also some big differences between then and now. I still think Vst type technology, where you will have the ability to add so much to an already good existing piece of hardware, will become king, as opposed to the Open labs type deals that start from scratch. Who knows ? I hope I'll be fortunate enough to be around a few more decades to see and experience it, no matter how it all turns out.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 01-20-2004).]