88 vs. 73 vs. 61: Your postmortem?

psionic311 · Post by **psionic311** » Thu Dec 20, 2018 8:10 pm

Yeah, I tried replacing my tier 2 X-station with Akai MPK61 Mk2, keys were a joke. The Arturia Keylab 61 Mk2 are pretty decent, almost as good as the Prophet Rev2.

I tried various 88 keys about a year ago. Roland FA08, nope. MOXF8, nope. Any of the Akai or M-Audio stuff, nope.

If you're keeping your Kross to gig with K61, you should be fine for occasional piano parts.

But if you intend to play a lot of piano on gigs, but go with the K61, you could leave the Kross at home and go with a portable 88key to pair up with the 61. Again I urge you to consider a Privia PX-5S, or if you don't want to spend that much, just about any Privia 88 key will do, like the mentioned PX3. They are light action but have a pretty wide expressive range.

Good luck with whatever you choose.

Zeroesque · Post by **Zeroesque** » Thu Dec 20, 2018 10:01 pm

psionic311 wrote:+1 on the 61/88 combo. More choice is better.

On a side note, we do Fly Like an Eagle as well. I've got a combi just for the space intro. I'm playing bass during the song itself, so just trigger some FX sounds and do some glissando's here and there for the synth parts. But I'd really like to nail the organ parts better. They're difficult to pick up by ear.. Do you have sheet music for the organ parts?

Unfortunately I don't have any sheet music. I just played along w/ the song a couple times to get the feel and make sure of a couple of the well-known licks.

To capture the essence of this organ part you have to be very active. Leslie on/off, almost constant drawbar moves, and a ton of volume swells with a pedal. You'll also smear/gliss with one if not both hands on nearly every bar line.

Not sure how Joachim Young played it, but I use both hands to do the staccato triplet "pickita-peckita-pow" lick

While practicing, start combining these things together - even arbitrarily - and you'll start to hear how great B3 players coax amazing dynamics from a machine that only makes a bunch of sine waves.

Zeroesque · Post by **Zeroesque** » Thu Dec 20, 2018 11:04 pm

psionic311 wrote:I tried various 88 keys about a year ago. Roland FA08, nope. MOXF8, nope. Any of the Akai or M-Audio stuff, nope.

When I played Roland's stuff at last NAMM, the pricey top-tier stuff had very nice feel, but anything below that was ho-hum.

ChrisDuncan · Post by **ChrisDuncan** » Thu Dec 20, 2018 11:10 pm

Zeroesque wrote: When I played Roland's stuff at last NAMM, the pricey top-tier stuff had very nice feel, but anything below that was ho-hum.

Before my purchase, I watched lots of videos on Yamaha, Roland, et al but never went out to play any of them. I suppose that's pretty dumb, but I'm a guitarist so I didn't expect to appreciate the difference with my limited chops.

So, I decided to just roll the dice on the K2 88. I was expecting it to sound great, but was surprised and delighted with how it felt. I know there's always something better, but I've never played an electronic keyboard of any description that felt like this.

mm-pro · Post by **mm-pro** » Mon Dec 24, 2018 7:56 pm

I always play with a bassist, so the 73 has worked fine for me.

psionic311 · Post by **psionic311** » Tue Dec 25, 2018 1:11 am

Zeroesque wrote:To capture the essence of this organ part you have to be very active. Leslie on/off, almost constant drawbar moves, and a ton of volume swells with a pedal. You'll also smear/gliss with one if not both hands on nearly every bar line.

Not sure how Joachim Young played it, but I use both hands to do the staccato triplet "pickita-peckita-pow" lick

While practicing, start combining these things together - even arbitrarily - and you'll start to hear how great B3 players coax amazing dynamics from a machine that only makes a bunch of sine waves.

Great advice, that organ part is very dynamic and ever-changing. I see I have lots of practice ahead of me.

Joe Gerardi · Post by **Joe Gerardi** » Wed Dec 26, 2018 2:01 pm

I started with the Kronos 88, but traded it with a member for the Kronos 61. Size and weight had nothing to do with it- if you can't carry a 54-ish pound keyboard a couple of hundred feet, then either go to the gym and man up a little, or take up the penny whistle and play Ren Fairs. But, I used to haul a 420-pound Hammond organ to gigs because it was all that was available in the 1970's, so maybe that's why these things till feel light to me.

For me the problem was the controls. The 88 keys made it the piano part of my rig (duh...) and that meant it was always on the bottom of the stack on the right side of and "L" shaped rig. THAT meant that when playing other instrument and using the Kronos via MIDI, I couldn't access the controls easily with my left hand. Plus, being on the bottom, there was always something on top, and the layout of the controls isn't exactly conducive to easy viewing that way.

So I traded for a 61, unpacked and dusted off my Roland XV-88, stuck that on the bottom, and life got much better and easier. I was going to whip out my Yamaha KX88 - which still has the best action of any 88, IMHO - but the Roland adds an XV-3080 to the mix, and one can NEVER have too many synths.

..Joe