Hi guys and girls

My first post on the forums and I'm researching for my girlfriend who is a piano/keyboard teacher. Most of her pupils are piano, but she has 3 or 4 grade 6/7 keyboard pupils too.

Okay, she is not one of these piano teachers who does a bit of keyboard on the side, she had Degrees in this stuff and is a bloody good keyboard player and teacher.

Okay, now the background bit is out the way, here is the question.

She has a Yamaha DGX500, which as you know is basically a home full size keyboard with some tacky sounds. She also has a 5 octave Yamaha keyboard, again, one of the £250 home jobs with crap sounds and no decent usable features.

Her grade 6/7 pupils are doing pieces that her keyboards can't deal with i.e. She needs to be able to Split the keyboard at a certain point (this she can do on current keyboard) and choose particular instruments for each Split part i.e. Cello in the left Split and Flute in the right Split (this part her current keyboard can't do, it only has a few pre set instrument combinations, you can't choose which instruments they are).

Now, I'm a bit out of date with the technology and what she would need, but way back the Korg M1 seemed to be a decent Workstation.

Am I right in assuming that the difference between a Workstation and a Keyboard/Synthesizer is that the Workstation has built in multi-track recording features and does a whole bunch more, please clarify.

Would a Workstation suite her needs? if so, any recommendations on pro makes/models.

Price wise, was thinking around the £1,250 sort of mark.

Thanks a million for any advice in advance.

Cheers

Nigel