88 key keyboard – Best alternative to an acoustic piano!

88 key keyboard - Certain musical pieces, especially in classical music, need a keyboard with more than 61 keys. So if you are more inclined towards classical music, the best option would be to go in for an 88 key keyboard.

Authentic Piano feel
Although a 76 key keyboard can be lighter and portable, the keys of most of these keyboards with 88 keys have that authentic piano touch. In their quest to get that perfect piano touch in a portable keyboard, most of these keyboards tend to be heavy. But then an 88 key keyboard is the best alternative to an acoustic piano, both in terms of the sound quality as well as the touch.

Authentic Sound
88 key Keyboards generally use the best piano samples and built-in amplifiers so the sounds produced by these keyboards are just too good. Lot of these models is targeted towards the gigging artist so these are packed in with a lot of power. You may or may not get built-in musical styles depending on the model that you have chosen.

Accessories
To make them lighter and portable, some of the 88 key keyboards may not come with built-in speakers so you will need to buy external speakers to play them. Other accessories like Adapters, Stands, Cases, Headphones and Pedals are available, which you will need to buy as it is assumed that you can play. Since these keyboards are comparatively heavier, the normal soft cases will not be good enough. You will need to consider the rigid cases which are specially meant for such keyboards.

Various Brands
There are a lot of manufacturers in the market who make keyboards with 88 keys. These keyboards are also known by a lot of other names such as stage pianos, portable pianos, and piano keyboards. Almost all the big players in the market manufacture them. Casio, Yamaha, Roland, Korg, Kawai are just few of the brands which you can explore.

An 88 key keyboard is also known as a piano length keyboard since an acoustic piano has 88 keys. It is also known as 7 and a half Octave keyboard. One octave contains 12 keys (7 white plus 5 black) so this makes it basically a 7 and a half Octave keyboard.

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