PAKEFIELD KEYBOARD FESTIVAL APRIL 2006. UK

Twice a year, April & September. Seven nights of keyboard bashing at Pakefield Holiday Camp near Lowestoft on the east coast UK. Manufactures showing product were. CASIO.HAMMOND.KETRON.KORG.LOWREY.ORLA.ROLAND.
THOMAS.WESRI. & YAMAHA.
The full week consisted of Daily tutorials and manufactures demonstrations.

This is not an in-depth report, but rather a few comments after attending the recent Keyboard Festival.
Seven nights accommodation and full board (3 meals a day), it appeared we were eating most of the time…Ha!!!!. Excellent evening concerts every night from pro-players from around the world, plus late night jam sessions till the early hours.

KETRON. The new SD5 was on show and I enquired about the new Riff feature. A few selected Styles have a letter R after the Style name, these are the styles that the Riff can be used, by selecting Variation 4 a pre-defined chord progression will loop allowing you to improvise.

KORG. Were working hard by providing twice daily tutorials on their PAX to show existing customers and new customers how easy their OS was to use. People tend to be shy away of changing to a new brand and having to learn a new OS so these tutorials were very welcome.

ROLAND. Did not have the new E models, it was stated the E80 and other E models would be available in August \ September in the UK.

WERSI. Brought over Franz Lambert to fully demonstrate the Scala Organ. A brilliant player and very approachable welcoming customer questions.

YAMAHA. As usual did an excellent job giving demonstrations and in depth product tutorials.

BOSE. PAS. Two performers were using these speakers on the concert stage. There would have been three, but Franz Lambert did not get his PAS's setup on this occasion.
Presence from this system was very good with excellent dispersion, unfortunately to my ears and others they lacked true top end, although bass was acceptable.
With this system having a remote control for BASS.MIDDLE & TOP it was unknown what the particular player had used for his settings. However both performances sounded middle prominent.

For the past 20 years the Keyboard Festival has been at Caister. This was the first time that the Keyboard Festival has been at Pakefield and it was obvious that the camp management were trying hard to make our stay enjoyable….another great week.

[This message has been edited by Graham UK (edited 05-01-2006).]