6. Typical Users

With the modern dominance of computers in music, you could be forgiven for thinking that there’s little place these days for something like a keyboard workstation, but whether you’re in the studio, on stage or in the classroom, they still offer great potential.

• In the studio, the clock is often ticking, and so the ability to come up with ideas quickly and get the right inspiration at the touch of a button is an important advantage. Riffs, loops and phrases can be quickly constructed and then imported into a DAW, or synchronised to a computer via MIDI.

• On stage, pre-prepared quality backing for complete sets can be stored in the keyboard to play back when needed, while performance features to add phrases and parts on the fly lend a spontaneity to your set that disguises all the preparation. When compared to a third-party laptop, a dedicated piece of musical hardware is much more capable of handling the rigours of touring, and all that you need is contained within the one instrument rather than distributed across computer, external hard drives, audio/MIDI interfaces and a bunch of cables.

• In the classroom or college music studio, a workstation often makes a great starting point for learning the principle methods of electronic music creation - recording using a sequencer, basic synthesis and sampling, and effects processing.