I saw Herbie Hancock in concert last night and for the last 3 pieces of the show he played a wireless keytar – a Roland AX-Edge I believe. He was having a ton of fun interacting with his band and ripping on the keytar.
I’ve never played a keytar and never really considered one myself. But seeing Herbie do his thing walking around the stage looked like a blast.
Does anyone here have some keytar experience to share? Is it as fun as it looks? How easy is it to transfer keyboards skills to the keytar? Is it an entirely different playing experience?
You could probably score the old Rock Band keytar for cheap somewhere if you want to try it with low commitment - it has 5 pin MIDI, you can change octave, and the touch strip adds additional performance control. I have one I used with a Volca FM for a bit as a battery operated setup. Also I love Herbie Hancock and I have most of his albums!
Probably not quite the answer you’re looking for, but my friend got an AX-Edge once and I mainly played it laying flat like standard keys. I wanted to see how it connected with my gear as I only just started my hardware journey at the time. I was a novice and didn’t pick up on much other than it sounded great, build quality was good, and that it connected via midi very easily. That being said, so long as you’re ok with roland type patches with no editing capabilities (there’s various mod assignments per patch i think) it’s a solid gig keyboard. As for playing it upright as intended I didn’t really do much of that, but it definitely felt weird having never played keys that way. I think an adequate keys player could get acclimated quickly. (I am a barely serviceable keys player.)
Congratulations, I saw him probably about 10 years ago and it was absolutely phenomenal. He broke out the Roland Axe Synth on that show too.
Vinnie Coliuta on the drums? Monster!
More OT, my wife has the same Axe Synth and she has done shows with it. Mostly using it as a midi controller for her own sounds. They are definitely fun to play. I’ve not done it myself, but I know I want to.
I have Alesis Vortex Wireless 2 midi controller keytar, don’t use it much, but when I do it’s a lot of fun. It’s not that hard to adapt, I could play it relatively ok almost instantly, right hand on keys, left on pitch/mod controls. It’s hard to tweak controls though (Vortex has faders), I’d say it’s meant to be played, not tweaked.
I play my Digitone from an Alesis Vortex keytar in a band. We played one gig where I used a normal MIDI keyboard and I hated being stuck standing in one place, so I bought the keytar. Love it. To get the most out of it, I have a Bomebox that does a few tricks to split midi over multiple channels and what have you, controlled by a Beringer Fcb1010.
The drummer was a young guy – Jaylen Petinaud. He was absolutely killing it!
The guitarist, Lionel Loueke, was amazing as well. He was coaxing tones out of his instrument that I’d never heard on a guitar. Plus he doing lots of super interesting poly-rhythms. There’s an NPR tiny desk of him playing very different music here: NPR Tiny Desk, Lionel Loueke
I had seen Herbie about 12 years ago and he was also amazing then. Last night he gave the band a little more space / time to do their thing, but especially in the second half of the show he showed why he is still the master! I can’t believe how energetic he still is. I hope I’m still bringing the same energy at 84 years old!
Pretty darn sure he was with Herbie when I saw them. Amazing musician. They took the song Absolute Proof to new levels of out. I had no idea where the 1 was, lost and amazed at the master tier musicians playing in front of me.
Back to keytars though…