Just treated myself to a decent keyboard (piano-type, not QWERTY). In Japan, I bought a Kurzweil MIDIboard, a heavyweight monster of a thing which was a beast to program and lovely to play (polyphonic aftertouch, anyone? Great with the Arturia CS-80). It lasted me for over 20 years, and when I came to leave Japan, it was still working well, and I had no wish to throw it away. It ended up with Morgan Fisher, former keyboard player with Mott the Hoople, who took it off my hands.
It was great to hear him play the opening to “All the Way from Memphis” using this as one of his test pieces when he was deciding whether to buy it off me or not.
But that left me with no keyboard when I came to England. I’ve been using a CME Xkey 37 – another poly aftertouch beast, but the action is very limiting, and I wanted to play some piano – 3 octaves are not enough.
So I looked around, and found what looked like a great deal – a Fatar keybed allied to a decent piano, with a tonewheel organ emulator (with drawbars!), and a subtractive synth – and some fairly sophisticated MIDI facilties.
It has only just made it into the mass market, after production difficulties, it would appear, and my Studiologic Numa Compact 2X made it here this morning. So far, so good, though I have already uncovered a few wrinkles, but no dealbreakers.
Soon I’ll be uploading something to Soundcloud to tell you all what it sounds like.In the meantime, this is what it looks like – and it really is compact (and lightweight at 7kg).
