Tips for Buying a Church Keyboard: Part 1

Video Transcript

"TOM SMITH: Hi. This is Tom and I'm doing this for ExpertVillage.com. We're talking about how to play keyboards in a worship team at a church. One of the things I want to kinda wrap up with is what to look for in a keyboard. You may be stuck with something you already have or the church may already have a keyboard but if you've been asked to look for a keyboard or the church has gone and asked you to look for a keyboard, I would say you could probably bring it down to eight things you should look for, like a check list of eight things when you're looking for a keyboard. First thing is the number of octaves, depending on whether this is the main keyboard or whether it's a second keyboard, may dictate whether or not you want to--whether you need a full 88 keyboard. There's 88, there's 77. I think this is 66. One, two, three, four--this is five octaves so I still have a pretty good range. I doubt I'd need to ever go lower than that. And I doubt I'd ever need to get higher than that. So, for me, this is a reasonable number of keys. But that's something you should look into at your checklist. Second thing is touch or sensitivity. If you've been brought up playing synthesizer or organ or piano, you may be looking for a different touch, and each brand has a different feel depending on whether they have weighted hammers or whether they've got springs or whatever technology they do for the actual feel of the keys. What matters is, how does it feel to you? Does it feel spongy? Does it feel sluggish? Can you play fast and slow? Make sure that you try playing fast with the keyboard to make sure that the touch is good. And also the amount of sensitivity. Like, not all keyboards have touch sensitivity and what that means is if I play--this particular one has touch sensitivity so if I play it softly, it has one type of timbre sound. If I play it harder, I put more pressure on it, you can hear the difference; it can sense the pressure. So, depending on how you play when you're looking at keyboards, keep that in mind. A third thing is reliability. These things are going to be used by different people in your church, I'm sure. They're going to get a little bit of banging around. Get something that's reliable, that's going to go the distance; you're not repairing."