A keyboard named "Elegance" - the one thing it hasn't got

This keyboard, which is the last one in the pile I got a couple of months ago, is a total disaster! If you want the short explanation go to 5:25.
The music is an assortment of the build-in demo songs except the last one which is Jean-Michel Jarre's 'Magnetic Fields part V (the last rhumba)' that I do my best not to destroy completely, though the keyboard was not a willing cooperator! At least KZbin's content match could recognise it.....

[@snoballuk]

KEYBOAR DSPLIT could almost be an intentional joke if it wasn't for the other mistakes on the front panel.

[@zloboslav_]

That's some very potent chinesium you've got there... It's nostalgic, reminding me of late 90s knockoffs. Oh no the accompaniment!!! No no no nope!!! I agree this is truly unforgivable, but also hilarious. Thank you for sharing and making me laugh :)

[@organfairy]

I deliberately took the somewhat humorous approach to the subject - I mean, can you do other things than laugh at this? The other keyboards in the pile were also somewhat bad, but at least they were playable. Nonetheless I have actually made reasonably listenable music with this schizophrenic keyboard. I will show some of it the near future.

[@TheKnobCalledTone.]

If The Shaggs made a keyboard, this is what it would sound like

[@T-Cat-wy7ly]

You absolutely must keep this instrument - it must even have a place of honor in your collection! Because with this 'thing' (you really can't call it an 'instrument'?) you can prove how difficult it is to develop a musical instrument.

[@vbarr67]

Wow this keyboard is a joke !! I spotted the problem and I was thinking "oh that can't be!". And yes it is ! :D At least it's an interesting museum piece of both mechanical and electronics failed designs. Thanks for the humour :)

[@organfairy]

And it's not just that one: I have bought one cheap before, and it also had tuning issues and an accompaniment section that was two semitones away from the melodi section. So it is not broken, it is designed like that! As I mentioned in the text I believe it was rushed through development or it was designed by someone who didn't know how a keyboard work, so they tried to play some of the keys and thought "aah that's close enough, to production with that one". I actually didn't want this one, but I was given a pile of cheap keyboards for free so, you know the old expression "never look a gift horse in the mouth".

[@matthewmeno5279]

yeah, I guess the feeling of the keys could've been changed, but also the organ sound could've been tuned! That's what I heard that needed changing!

[@PeranMe]

Fantastic!! I can’t help myself, I want one!! Thanks for this video!

[@zapador]

I regret buying my Roland, this is much more elegant and probably a fraction of the cost!

[@LittleRichard1988]

What are you talking about?, the Roland is a million times better even if it's from the late 80s or early 90s. Even if some of these samples were taken from Roland they are very short samples so it won't sound anything like as good as your Roland unless your keyboard is a Roland EX-50 well that was actually made by Medeli but even that is of higher quality.

[@zapador]

@@LittleRichard1988 Sorry, I see the sarcasm got lost in translation. My bad! I love my Roland Fantom 8, everything about it is amazing. Sadly I'm still a beginner so I don't really do it justice.

[@philipclayberg4928]

Ah. It must've been made by the same people who created the "Word Perfect" word processor (who decided to ignore anything that had been designed and used before, went out into the middle of nowhere and created their own word processor; I hated it until version 6 came along and *finally* it began to be easier-to-use).

[@matthewmeno5279]

First of all, let me tell you about the organ sound on this keyboard! The organ sound on it, is out of tune. The rest of it sounds pretty good, but I like the Yamaha sounds best of all. Whatever it is that makes it a total disaster, I can't really see because I'm visually impaired. I did like the blue danube being played on there.

[@timothyverbist5795]

I don't really hate this keyboard, i only agree about the keys & the feeling.

[@organfairy]

Do you have this model?

[@timothyverbist5795]

@@organfairy I used to have a keyboard like this, but i donated it to school.

[@T-Cat-wy7ly]

@@timothyverbist5795 You gave it to a school - but you were a really bad rascal there. How is a student supposed to discover his love for music with such a terrible instrument? Or was it a dog school 😉

[@timothyverbist5795]

@@T-Cat-wy7ly Bruh, it was just an instruments for kids to "smash" the keys, i prefer myself getting a Casio or a Yamaha for beginners & a Korg for Mid-level musicians.

[@EfiSamara-v3v]

+2 transposer

[@atmeltronic128]

I know a place that sell's cheap used keyboards at a flea market. But they kind of expensive. Around 40, 50, 80 dollars if not a little bit more, some of them a main brand and some are cheap garbage.

[@UzumakiNarutoX3]

Wow this keyboard sounds a bit drunk🥴 Never thought an electronic keyboard could be so out of rune from the factory...

[@organfairy]

It puzzles me too. I believe that both the accompaniment being two semitones away from the melody and the tuning in general being off key is a case of 'we couldn't care less' attitude from the people who developed this abomination. In 2001 I worked on a project at my former workplace where I should program a wavetable sound engine from a company named Winbond. I remember that every sample had to be exactly in tune for it to work. Maybe they used the same technology here and they had just stolen some samples from various sources without checking that they are in tune with each other - who knows.

[@andymerrett]

Ooh ouch. Some of those demos are really out of tune as well.

[@organfairy]

Yes, and the same happens if I use the transpose function. I have recorded some music with it - which was a struggle - and I thought I could just play the accompaniment, and then set the transpose to -2 so the rest would be in tune with the accompaniment. But unfortunately it transposes sort of 1.95 semitones instead of exactly 2. So I had to play the chords two semitones higher than the melody for the whole thing to sound bearable. Also some of the instruments are more out of tune than others. The piano is in tune, the trumpet is...... reasonably.... in tune, while the organ is unplayably out of tune.

[@orincat10]

it definitely sounds like the loop points for the marimba on the first demo are ever so slightly off- once it gets to the loop it gets out of tune.

[@christopherpalsson2380]

This review seems unfair. You hate this because it’s made in China. You know any other country could make this kind of version of this song and this keyboarding even has better quality sounds than Casio keyboards and sounds that are more legendary.

[@organfairy]

Will it comfort you to know that I can hate keyboards of any nationality if I believe they are poorly made?

[@ModernBard]

Ah, it looks like a 2000's chinese made keyboard, i had one that had those terrible sounds (maybe even more terrible than yours) usually say a big "100" numbers of presets, but there is actually 16 only, that are rip off of yamaha ROM, also same with the genre names i remember "Bisco" lol, maybe it's disco made with biscuits ? Keys were even worse than yours, the cat broke one by sleeping on it, very flimsy and fragile piece of crap, a few years laters i got a Hohner d1000 "Made in France" less sounds but much much better built quality !

[@organfairy]

There are a lot of repetitions in this one too. But that is not just limited to modern keyboards. I once played an Elgam organ from the 1970's and it had like 12 instrument sounds on the upper keyboard - but in reality they sounded like 4 or 5 because there were so little difference. I had a smaller Elka organ with only 6 instrument sounds and they were really different, so even though it was smaller it was actually an organ with a much more diverse sound selection.

[@ModernBard]

@@organfairy Repetition exist in vintage casio toy keyboard like the ones that stand "180 voice rom" or something else, just because you can enable two voices at the same time, and you got 180 different combination, smart move from the marketing dep. Pro keyboard nowadays like my yamaha psr s750 have the "same" thing, with guitar voices, there is a lot of guitar sounds, but actually there is only 8 guitars full voices in rom, the others are just repetition with a different DSP effect, and different EQ. so, from 8 voices, they make 60 differents voices.