Functions of a Keyboard: Term 3

Piano - When you press a key on the piano the hammer on the piano hits the string and sound is created via the vibrations and air. On a piano you can control the amount of volume, sustaining and velocity. On an organ you can't do any of these. No matter how hard or soft you press a key on the organ it creates the amount of volume it was designed for. On an organ there are no pedals whereas a piano has three pedals making it easier to play. On an organ there are toe boards and the toe boards adjust the depth of the organ when someone is playing. On a piano you can control velocity, pitch, volume, etc.

Pipe Organ - A pipe organ is a musical instrument that has big whistles on it. You can't control the sustaining on a pipe organ. You would need to use a lot of articulation to keep the flow of the organ. Toe boards on the organ can control the amount of depth that you want while playing. When you press a key on an organ compressed air travels through the whistle via vibrations. It's like blowing gently into an empty glass bottle and it creates a deep sound. A bad thing about an organ is that you can only sustain the sound with your fingers rather that using pedals. While controlling the sustaining with your hands it can cause hand stress and hand cramps. On an organ you can't control the effect e.g. you can't control delay, threshold, etc.

Harpsichord - When you press a key on the harpsichord a plectrum plucks the string and creates sound via the vibrations. A bad thing about a harpsichord is that the plectrum could cut the string in half and this can be a bad thing if the performer is playing live to an audience. Like a piano it has three pedals, so this means you can control sustaining and many other parameters. These parameters are reverb, velocity, etc. However you cannot control the amount of resonance or on a harpsichord and you can not change the sound of the harpsichord. This what the harpsichord was designed for, to create a plucking, small resonant sound.

Electric Keyboard (Synthesizer) - An electric keyboard synthesizer has sounds made from default synths using synthesis. Synthesis creating your own sound from scratch instead of sampling a sound. When you press a key on an electric keyboard, it creates sound via the built in speakers, however it doesn't have proper sustaining pedal. You have to plug a pedal into the keyboard to control the sustaining. The sustaining pedal acts like an on/off switch. So no matter how hard or soft you press the pedal it will still create a lot of sustaining, resonance and ambience. A good thing about the electric keyboard synthesizer is that you can choose a variety of presets in the keyboard library. This means that you can play anything you want with any sound of your preferred choice.

Electric Keyboard (Sampler) - A sampled sound is not a synthesized sound made from scratch, it is a sound that has been audio recorded. An electric keyboard like a roland synth will likely have a lot of sampled and presetted sounds. If you wanted, you could save a preset onto a hard drive and then you could import it onto logic and you could play around with it and use it in a track you are composing. This is a good thing about using sampled and presetted sounds. A bad thing about and electric keyboard sampler is that if you are looking for a spscific kind of sound and the keyboard doesn't have it you would need to use synthesis to make the sound you are looking for, and you can't do this on a roland synth. But sometimes presets and samples can come in very handy when it comes to composing music.