[Soundz]

Hey, i've been wanting to learn how to play the piano for years and I have some spare time now im self employed so want to give it a proper go.
Have got a pretty poor budget - £150

Anyone got any recommendations? I'm not fussed about all the fancy bits and bobs. Would an 88-key board be best if im wanting to play piano?

Is this one any good? http://www.dv247.com/invt/froogle/24172/

Thanks

[technoman28]

What you are looking at there is a controller keyboard, it doesn't actually make a sound itself, it only controls external sound devices. You can get "virtual instruments" that would give you plenty of sounds to play with (there are loads of free ones out there, and on cover CD's of magazines like Future music and Music tech), but if all you are looking for is a basic piano sound, you may need to be looking at secondhand, ie ebay. You also need to think about going to a music shop and trying a few out so you can decide what type of keyboard action you prefer. "Piano weighted" keys have a heavier action, more like a real piano, whereas "weighted" have a less heavy feel. Synth type keys (the ones that do not have square shaped fronts) are usually very light action. You can also find out how they compare sound wise, ie a Casio compared to a Yamaha.
To be honest though, £150 is not going to get you much, especially new. But saying that £135 is pretty good for an 88 note controller, semi-weighted means it will be less heavy than a real piano action, but that is probably a good thing. Plus if you go down the virtual instrument path, you can get loads of different and classic sounds free, grow your hair down to your waist, wear a glittery cloak and pretend your Rick Wakeman! What more could a person want in life.

[davepuma]

My mother has a Casio LK93TV AD5 that she's had for 6 months or so. She picked it out as it was aimed at a complete beginner. I have no idea whether it's still made or not but she got it from rockingrooster as I found the confirmation email in a folder. As far as I know she gets on fine with it, although every time I'm round at my parents, I've never seen it in use and my Dad just shakes his head at the mere mention of it!

[Soundz]

Thanks for the replies.

Ahhhh so if i wanted to play that I would have to plug it into my laptop. hmmm well that shouldnt be a problem, most places I go my laptop goes too lol.

I'll look into it a bit more and see what I find

[cerouax]

I'm no expert, but I think you'll need a decent ish soundcard with ASIO drivers so that latency(the lag between pushing the piano key and the sound playing) isn't an issue. I'm using a very old Creative soundblaster with free drivers from KX Audio quite happily. I have an old Evolution keyboard controller for use with FLStudio. Looking at the one in your link, it looks very similar. Demos of FLStudio are available which do have a number of softsynths, the limitation used to be that you couldn't save your projects, but would be no issue with live playing. Maybe the following links could help:

http://www.flstudio.com/
http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1
http://www.kvraudio.com/

Please bear in mind that my experience and kit are from a few years ago, so things may well have moved on a fair bit...?