Musical Instrument Keyboard |
Sounds/Tones/Voices/Patches
In a musical keyboard instrument, the sounds available are also known by various other names like tones, voices, or patches. The presence of hundreds of sounds, along with the quality of the sound produced, is one of the most important factors in your buying decision making. In the more advanced models, you can even modify the various parameters associated with a sound to create a totally different sound.
Layer
On top of the hundreds of sounds which your musical keyboard instrument anyway has, you can create interesting combination of sounds by using the layering function.
With the layer button, you can layer an additional sound on top of the existing one. If you have selected the Piano patch and if you select the string patch with the layer button, any key pressed will play the combination of Piano and String. It is possible to create some really interesting sounds using the layer button, coupled with some sound effects.
Split
If you are a beginner, you may not use this feature as of now but it is good to know how to use it. The split button splits your keyboards into multiple parts and you can assign one sound to each of these parts. So you can play a cello on the left side and a Piano on the right side of the split.
Advanced keyboard players can normally play the part of the bassist in addition to theirs. They play the bass on the left side of the split and chords on the right side.
Polyphony
Polyphonic means ability to play "many – notes" at the same time. A musical keyboard instrument with polyphony of 10 means 10 notes can be played on that instrument at the same time. If you try to play more than 10, the additional notes will not be audible.
On a musical keyboard instrument, if you play dense chords, use the sustain pedal and still carry on playing more notes; you will need a polyphony of lot more than 10 sounds. For this reason pianos have at least 32-voice polyphony. It can go up to 128 depending on the music you want to play.
On musical keyboards, lot of the polyphony is used up by the accompaniments and layering.
Multitimbral
Multitimbral means "many timbres", means many different sounds (instruments) at once. Most musical keyboard instruments offer 16-parts which is enough for lot of users. It may not be enough for professionals as a lot of the 16 parts will be used by splits, layers and accompaniments.
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