Posted By Scott on January 30, 2010
Until recently I had a home kite building business so I just happen to have an industrial strength sewing machine. That machine has came in very handy for building dust covers for my amps and keyboards. I use that plastic tarp material you can get at a hardware store. A big 12 x 12 sheet of it maybe costs $15. I get the silver colored stuff which has a black colored backing. For edging I used 1″ wide nylon strap webbing in black also. What I do is fold the webbing around the edges of the material and sew it down. On the cover ends I do the same thing then sew the pieces together. I figure a cover maybe cost me $3 verses $2o for covers I’ve seen in music stores.
Consew 199R sewing covers
On the Roland RD-700 the output cords and power plug stick out the back side so I make a little flap there so the cover fits down nicely.
RD-700 protected by a Boogie Beau made dust cover
The covers really help keep the keys clean and in this case the sun off also as the keyboard is next to a window.
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Posted By Scott on January 21, 2010
One reason I blog is to tell people about the mistakes I’ve made in hopes they don’t repeat them. Over the last year I’ve managed to purchase I think seven stands for my three keyboards. I’ve now got some work to do selling the stands I don’t like on EBAY. One thing I don’t like about any of the keyboard stands I’ve purchased to date is the height adjustment isn’t very micro. Usually it’s about two inches between settings. One Z stand had almost three inches between settings. If necessary the Z type stands can easily have extra holes drilled between the setting holes to fine tune it to your desired height. The basic scissors (ironing board) type stand I don’t like because those big X bars underneath don’t give much leg room to reach pedals and space is limited as to where you can place pedals underneath. The Z type stands have more leg room and space for pedals. I thought the Z stands were the ticket until I got a Roland PK-5A bass pedal unit. You need a big space for that device.
Table top stand, with mike, sheet music and light
I have now switched to a table top type stand as seen in the picture above. The legs angle out on it and I’m happy how quick it folds for transport also. I’m going to be adding to this table stand a bit as I want to put an add on bar on the back for a microphone goose-neck and a full length sheet music rack with lights. As you can see in the picture I now have a mike stand and sheet music stand on the floor plus a light which is mounted on the table next to the keyboard. Those three items I hope to make disappear into my table add on. The only downside of the table top stand is it is not near as stable as the other types as the legs are not very wide. I would only want to use it for sit down playing. If you had kids running around in the house then a Z stand would be a better choice. I’m also looking into how I could make my Z stands a bit wider. If I could do that I’d be a bit more happy with them.
There is more to a stand than just the stand. I didn’t mention that most companies sell teir attachments (sometimes called risers) so you can add another keyboard or two on the same stand. Other attachments include mike booms and sheet music racks. A type of stand I didn’t mention so far is the column stand which is one big support column with feet and stand arms that fold in for transport. The column stands sure look cool on stage but run in the hundreds of dollars range in cost. Yet another type of stand I’ve seen I call the swing set stand known as an A-Frame stand. They literally look like a kids swingset and are big and strong for supporting multiple big heavy keyboards with attachments.
In summary just let me say that you probably will never find the perfect stand. But surely you will have fun trying too. There are several companies selling keyboard stands however currently I like the On Stage brand of stands the best.
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Posted By Scott on January 9, 2010
I’ll really miss my Yamaha YPG-235. I sold it on EBAY for a reasonable used item price. This is the 76 key keyboard I practiced and learned on for like six months before I got my Roland Juno Stage. Even after I got the Stage I still played this guy almost daily as I really liked the built in metronome, simple boogie drum beat number 83 and the default grand piano sound for playing Boogie Woogie type tunes. This unit also does a bit of arranging and recording. For someone just starting out any of the Yamaha YPG models are a great first keyboard choice. It even has a nice detachable sheet music stand built into it!
Yamaha YPG-235 - sold
I’ve had a couple emails from people thinking of buying one asking me why did I sell mine? Well mainly because I just only have room for like two full size keyboards in my little play room. Also I want to practice most of the time on the keyboard I plan to perform on and that is the Roland Juno Stage. One person asked if they should get the 88 key version instead of 76. Well for someone starting out 88 keys surely are not necessary. This keyboard only splits two ways so you still have a lot of keys for each hand to cover. More expensive keyboards will usually allow you to split the keyboard into 4 parts or even 16 parts like my Roland Juno Stage does. Those 16 parts by the way are each a separate MIDI track. There are plenty of songs where the keyboardist can use a piano and an organ and one a 88 keyed keyboard split in the middle can easily cover that. That is something someone in a performing band might really need but it’s not something a beginner would use. The internal speakers on any of these portables are a little weak for my tastes. I had the YPG-235 plugged into a Roland KC-60 and a Subwoofer and it sounded fantastic.
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Posted By Scott on January 1, 2010
I have two big Boogie Beau announcements to start 2010 off. The first one is I have a new baby with weighted fingers! Well I should say a new old baby. Yes yet another keyboard and one I’ll be practicing and playing daily on. It’s a Roland RD-700. The RD-700 came out around year 2001 and this one is in like new condition. The RD-700 was replaced with the upgraded RD-700SX around 2004, the current RD-700 model is the RD-700GX. Being near 10 years old model wise you could almost say the RD-700 is a vintage keyboard. I bought it from a pawn shop via EBAY. It came in a premium heavy duty SKB carry case which was a good thing because I could hear the UPS guy bumping it around hard getting it out of the delivery truck. This baby is heavy, the case weighs 35 pounds and the RD-700 54 pounds. My wife and I struggled to get this unit through the house.
Roland RD-700 (2001 - 2003)
So why did I want such a big keyboard? Well that comes to the second big announcement. I’m taking piano lessons at Owens College here in Toledo starting early January! It’s a one hour per week for twelve weeks of private instruction from a music faculty member. Several times over the last few months I’ve plunked around on an acoustic piano or weighted keyboard at Guitar Center for a few minutes. I’ve found it terribly hard to adjust to the hard pressing keys. The semi-weighted keys on my Juno Stage I thought would help me transition to fully weighted keys but it hasn’t. I don’t know for sure but likely I’ll be on a fully weighted keyboard in the Owen’s piano lab for the lessons. In any case I felt I needed to make the jump and verify whether my tired old fingers can chop on fully weighted keys or not. So far so good and I plan to increase my playing time on the RD-700 a bit each day.
If you are interested in the piano lessons at Owens Collegesee the Workforce and Community Services flyer for January – April 2010 Personal Enrichment Courses. The presonalized piano lesson description is listed under the Play section on page 7B. Classes aren’t back in session until Jan 11 so there still may be time to sign up as of this posting.
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Posted By Scott on December 25, 2009
Part of the fun of playing keyboard is finding nice old vintage keyboards to play with. I recently picked up a 1989 Roland PRO-E Intelligent Arranger keyboard on EBAY. With shipping this guy cost me just $70. I was wanting a small sized board I could easy take with me anywhere and at just 25 1/2 inches wide this guy really fits that ticket. Now I need to find or modify a keyboard table as what I have is too wide, so for now I added a wood board under it to bridge the stand arms.
Roland PRO-E Intelligent Arranger - vintage 1989
When I looked closely at this guy I was shocked at how much technology was in a keyboard made over 20 years ago. The auto accompaniment features are great with around 36 built in styles with dazzling drum intros and endings. You can save I think 48 setup registrations. It can even record midi songs or loops but I need to buy the optional 32K memory card. Those vintage cards go for anywhere from $25 to $99 so it might take me a while to find one on the lower end of that range. There are many more features this old board has and to learn about them see the PRO-E manual on this manuals page at the Roland Web site.
The only little problem I’ve noticed so far are two high keys don’t have any velocity control to them, they just sound loud when pressed. Some day I’ll get brave and take the cover off to see if I can clean inside it a bit. The big benefit I’ve found with playing on a keyboard with just 37 keys is that it is forcing me to use chord inversions all the time. In split mode either hand can’t wander at all and I’m starting to get into the chord inversion practice this guys gives me. I should soon have a demo PRO-E song recorded for your listening pleasure.
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