Hi all,

I'm in a search of an arranger keyboard that is most suitable for electronica, trance, ambient type of music (gotta have nice relevant drum kits and sounds with possibility to add from vendor's site, etc).

The current options as I see it are psr s950, bk-9, korg pa900 (or such) - am I correct or there's more to consider?

So in your opinion and experience what's the most suitable for my needs?

Thank you,
Vlad

I think any of those keyboards could work well. The cool thing about the Korg PA 600/900 and the Roland BK 9 is that they have the chord looping feature which I think would really be a plus for the modern music that you like. Also the Roland has the audio looper which could be quite effective for your needs. Good luck!

There're nice dance styles in PSR-S950 (including audio-styles), as for voices, it has the same set of synth-voices as PSR-S910/PSR-S750 does which is quite good, too. But I believe that for this sort of music it's essential to have an arpeggiator and knob-controllers. The Yamaha MM6 has such things, but on the other hand it's quite limited in other aspects - poor navigation, poor polyphony and I don't like its voices much.

I guess that this sort of music is mainly produced not as life-time performance but as part-by-part type of working, using PC or MAC, Motif and other stuff - but this's just a guess.

"Alot of it will have to do with what type of hip hop sound you want. If you are looking for the new school techno/dance/synthy hip hop then the sky's the limit with alot of the new soft synts out there like Massive.

If you are looking for that old school type hip hop, then basic bread & butter sounds for bass, strings, keys are sufficient (such as trilogy, kontact, kore player/packs, lizard lounge 3, etc)"

"s-950 is very nice for drums, i prefer it to the sp-1200 as it has less of a ring mod sound to it, especially if you drive them a bit & lower the bit rate they still hold clarity while still sounding dirty.

If your just gonna use it for drums you could get the much cheaper younger brother s900. Although depending on how you like your drums you may find both the s900/950 unsuitable for some hi-hats without doing some fine tuning on your eq. - I would recommend a good outboard EQ or mixer for your situation if you don't already have one.

Personally i hate the virus sound and find it very predictable & very easy to get boarded with. But i could say that for a lot of VS. I already own a ATC-1, its a great synth to have for bass and both leads i think you will be pleased. I would say wait until you have the ATC before you buy another synth. Don't know what the Andromeda is saying, never used one but i would say theres nothing wrong in having two SE units. I.E. the se-1 for bass and atc-1 for leads."

My suggestion to you (which will probably irk a few people here).., is to stay away from both Roland and Yamaha for this, and IF you HAD to choose between the Roland and Yamaha for these styles, I'd suggest the Roland.

The type of music you're wanting to play/record (which I'm sure you know) is an ever changing category of music. Typically for these styles of music you really (IMO) should look towards a synth/workstation because they have sequencers, patch editing, and other features that are tailored specifically for those styles.

However.., if you prefer the arranger for this.., I would strongly suggest you look at the Korg line up. Korg IMO does a much better job at combining both a fully editable synth engine with an arranger. Plus (although it's subjective), Korg, IMO has a sound set more adequate for these styles too.


I play and write the same styles of music, but I won't use my arranger for it (currently Yamaha PSR-S700). For these styles I use my Roland Juno-Di. My Di's an excellent example of how even inexpensive performance synths differ in comparison with arrangers for these styles. My $700 Di has a set of kits for electronica that surpass the S-950 (especially due to the ability to actually tweak each individual part of the drum kit with the software editor.

I then use my computer with a DAW for sequencing.


Sqk

There's no 'audio' looper on the Roland BK-9. The Chord Sequencer is a MIDI feature. Although, in practice, you might think them somewhat similar, one of the things an audio looper will do is loop YOUR playing, but a Chord Sequencer only loops the chords that you played (and you can still determine style, fills and Variations after it is 'recorded')

On the whole, if you are doing ambient, trance, that sort of thing, you are looking more for a keyboard that uses arpeggiators rather than an arranger. Sure, you can do somewhat similar stuff with arrangers (on the surface), but part of modern electronica's sound is the use of complex arpeggiators.

The BIG difference between arps and styles is that and arpeggiator plays what you play, whereas an arranger looks at what you played, and then tries to interpret it as a conventional chord type. And then plays THAT, not what you played..!

It's a subtle, but important difference.

But if you are determined to go with an arranger, I'd probably go for the one with a sampler on board. That makes it the Korg's (Yamaha's Tyros sampler is useless, as you can ONLY put Yamaha content into it - there's no multi-sample import at all). Plus Korg's voice editing is more in depth and WS-like than most arrangers.

However, the BK-9 might also be a good choice... It has a HUGE choice of synth sounds and pads (but with more limited voice editing than the Korg's), but the thing that puts it over the top is the ability to play audio loops in sync with the arranger, so if you have a library of trance or ambient loops, you can incorporate these easily into your performance. The sky is the limit when you start to add audio loops!

On the whole, I think, if I were looking for something to make this kind of music out live (if you are shooting for at home only, or in a studio, there are a plethora of VSTi packages out there FAR better than any keyboard made) I would make my choice between the Korg PA900 or the BK-9. And, truth be told, I'd probably pick the Korg (even though I'm a Roland user!).

Best of luck.

Thank you all for your suggestions.

If I'll consider BK-9, is it possible (besides creating my own) to edit styles on it, modify them, change the pattern of a drum part, and so on?

BK-9... All of the above, and now also, full user drumkit creation, and modification of the drum sounds themselves. For people doing electronica, being able to edit the kit radically is quite important.

You are no longer stuck using the drumkits provided, but can create User Kits using ANY drum sound in the entire instrument, along with some pretty heavy editing of each individual drum sound.

Part of the new 1.06OS...

Wow! That's one he'll of an addition to the BK-9 with drum editing. That really opens up the possibilities with this unit now for electronica.

I'm always tweaking kits with my Di's editor. Great to see this on the BK-9.

Sounds good!

Another question: will I miss something of the BK-9 if I'll get BK-7 instead and attach it to Motif of something?

Yes... basically, the BK-5/3 don't have the audio loops feature, or the user drumkits, and a BUNCH or other stuff.

TBH, the only BK I'd highly recommend is the BK-9. Perhaps if some of the new stuff gets added to the BK-7m or BK-5, they'll be up there, but for now, the BK-9 is the one to go for.

Thank you all for your replies!

For the music genres you mention I would strongly advise to NOT buy an arranger keyboard. Even the most recent arranger keyboards are not able to produce decent EDM and sound cheesy. I've made some YouTube video's in the past (and quite recently) in these genres, but the end result is always so-so and far below par compared to the 'real' EDM productions.

Decent style and sound programming for electronic music is somehow not a priority for arranger keyboard manufactures.

Synthesizer Workstations like the Yamaha Motif series and Korg Krome/Kronos can do a much better job in the before mentioned genres and have similar chord recognition functions to an arranger.

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Joost

I know but regular workstations do not inspire Besides, my type of trance and techno music is not pure good drums and sounds but a core melody (or tune) to it and the bells and whistles are on top of it.

Also, it is possible to create a nice modern music on an arranger and then add arrps and the rest to it using Motif and such.

I'd agree with Tostie, on the whole.

But with one important difference. Because arrangers like the Korg PA900/3X and the BK-9 (I can't recommend the PSR S950 yet, because it cannot loop the imported .wav's) can run .WAV loops alongside the arranger, the sky is the limit as to what you can do!

Bottom line is, the OP still hasn't told us whether this keyboard is needed for live music use, or for use in writing and recording. Or whether he is likely to want to do any other styles on it. If he does want to do electronica AND conventional music as well, possibly the arranger is the best choice, despite not being the best at pure electronica, especially if he wants a keyboard he can play out live on.

But if you are trying to do electronica just at home, I wouldn't bother with a keyboard at all! A dumb MIDI controller keyboard with a bunch of knobs and sliders, and then a ton of VSTi software synths would be the way to go, IMO. That's what most of the big boys use...

My problem is that I can't create music on PC, no tunes come out out of me, and I use PC only to finish the .wav file using WaveLab (Steinberg). I know I can create a tune on any arranger and then use PC with VSTi software etc., but I kinda want 1 keyboard for all for I hate spending time with PC diving into it where 99% of the time is spent on how to do this and that instead of just making pure music.

Have you tried Spectrasonic's Omnisphere? No doubt, if you get on an electronica site, other great VSTi's can be suggested, too.

The trouble with electronica is, it is still a living. breathing form of music. It hasn't petrified into something so formulaic that an arranger can do it well. Arrangers are REAL good at copying older styles, because we know what they should sound like, but electronica is still evolving, happening, and isn't really able to be defined well enough for a style to be written that nails it.

Plus, electronica tends to be VERY different from song to song, or writer to writer. Arrangers tend to smooth over the differences, and just churn out a vanilla copy of the style.

But you seem to be stuck a bit here. You say you need a keyboard that does it all for you to get inspired, but the whole POINT of electronica is that you DON'T do the same thing everyone else is doing! Plus, if you need the keyboard to inspire you, arrangers don't come with a whole lot of modern electronica styles (or what few they have will quickly grow stale on you).

From how you describe your problem, I'd say go for a Motif, M3 or Kronos if you can afford it. Or maybe a used Karma. But beware! If you want to do more normal music AS WELL as electronica, the arranger will be the better tool.

But I still think the BEST route is to find a friend making electronica on a computer, and watch how they do it, and get inspired by THAT! In the end, software is the best way to go to make electronica, you just need to see someone's workflow and use that as inspiration.

Will, I'll try to find a friend I know you're right all about it.