Do I want a keyboard or a synth??

[popvulture]

my hands are large as fuck and i use the pocket piano the best out of all my synthesizers.

naggers need to deal with it. i can't play on my electric organ for shit.

Hey, I just don't wanna spend over a hundred bucks on something that feels like a toy. To each his own

[psychic vampire.]

I mean, for all my synths, i am terrible at proper key playing. I prefer tiny boxes without keys and an external sequencer, but the rackmount ESQ-m is more expensive than my ESQ-1 with an even more limited interface than the keyboard version's admittedly bare bones approach. I have thought about selling it and buildimg an ambika many times in 3 years, but the one time a year i need to bash out chords live, or the times when writing at home where I can jot out huge chords makes it worth it.

But despite their slight (and I mean SLIGHT) overlap, a Blofeld will more than likely be my next poly. Delicious wavetables, and despite its menu diving, a level of patchability and modulation you would otherwise need to go into modular for.

[popvulture]

i was mostly making fun of myself for being the best at playing a really expensive toy rather than having taught myself properly.

Admittedly I feel like a luddite plenty of times with my complaining about the tiny keys. I should probably get over it

[psychic vampire.]

My only gripe with tiny keys is basically everyone already has keys and by the time you're throwing tiny keys on there, make it a god damn rack mount. There is a reason why vintage racks are almost always more expensive than their better UI keyboard versions and it is because aside from Moby, no one has space for that shit. Like, seriously, no one can be bothered to make rackmounted synths anymore, but they're great! Give me a tx81z over a Volca FM any day. Sure, its programmability is shit, but I'm just gonna be dumping other people's MIDI patches in there anyway, and it has chord memory?!

Okay, that was a long gripe.

OP, once again, between the microkorg and its brethren (roland gaia whatever, mininova/ultranova), refaces, minilogue, and roland boutiques, there are a lot of small, easily affordable synth entry points. If you want only tr00 analog and don't care one way or the other about polyphony, there's also the Bass Station 2, which i will keep forever, the MS-20 mini, and a myriad of other stuff.

[rfurtkamp]

One thing to remember when going the laptop route: come an OS change or format switch, your plugins are worthless unless you stick with that (now insecure) computer for eternity, and eventually you won't be able to get one with the version you need to run the software.

Hardware is forever by comparison. It either works or it don't.

[echorec]

Whatever happened with the synth hunt?

[01010111]

Whatever happened with the synth hunt?

[PeteeBee]

I spent a few hours at a shop playing different ones. Initial guesses were pretty accurate, I really liked the Roland boutique stuff, especially the ju-06. Sounded really nice, but I lack the ability to play what I want to hear and I can't imagine spending the hours working through books that it took me to get articulate on guitar. Decided synth isn't for this season of life. Maybe soon. I'm tentatively trying to change jobs. If I can carve out half an hour a day to learn a new instrument I'll buy one.