I have been putting off learning it, but I should really start. Just as an interesting comparison, I compare it's range to ukulele. As an accompaniment. And common ranges in general.
Standard re-entrant GCEA ukulele with 15 frets covers a range of C4 to C6. It is the range of a human soprano. Some ukuleles have more frets and some only 12. But 2 octaves in general as usable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch_notation
See first picture in the above link.
Linear ukulele adds from G3 up to same, so almost down to alto range F3.
Now this keyboard’s range by default is from C2 to C7, so it can provide accompaniment fine to those melodic ranges. It is 2 octaves below re-entrant ukulele and a third below lowest note E2 of a guitar. And one octave above ukulele.
But a bass guitar or upright contrabass ones (normally) start from E1. This keyboard and I guess same as most other 61 keys ones can be set an octave lower or higher than default. Higher is ridiculously higher than a human range soprano, so not in my opinion really that much needed. Except for instrumental solos. Humans can hear them still.
But an octave lower one, yes it is a nice option. C1 to C6. C1 is a third lower than bass guitar’s one, so low enough truly. These electronic keyboards can of course be transposed too to anything in between, but then a C is not anymore a C etc, so that is just a ”capo option” and somewhat of a lazy man’s crutch.
For classical piano music starting from Beethoven’s etc. time piano, 61 keys is not enough. Look at the second picture in the link I provided of a range of an 88 key piano. You can have octaves 2 to 6 as default (+ one top key). And have that range transposed one octave lower (or higher).
Standard re-entrant GCEA ukulele with 15 frets covers a range of C4 to C6. It is the range of a human soprano. Some ukuleles have more frets and some only 12. But 2 octaves in general as usable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch_notation
See first picture in the above link.
Linear ukulele adds from G3 up to same, so almost down to alto range F3.
Now this keyboard’s range by default is from C2 to C7, so it can provide accompaniment fine to those melodic ranges. It is 2 octaves below re-entrant ukulele and a third below lowest note E2 of a guitar. And one octave above ukulele.
But a bass guitar or upright contrabass ones (normally) start from E1. This keyboard and I guess same as most other 61 keys ones can be set an octave lower or higher than default. Higher is ridiculously higher than a human range soprano, so not in my opinion really that much needed. Except for instrumental solos. Humans can hear them still.
But an octave lower one, yes it is a nice option. C1 to C6. C1 is a third lower than bass guitar’s one, so low enough truly. These electronic keyboards can of course be transposed too to anything in between, but then a C is not anymore a C etc, so that is just a ”capo option” and somewhat of a lazy man’s crutch.
For classical piano music starting from Beethoven’s etc. time piano, 61 keys is not enough. Look at the second picture in the link I provided of a range of an 88 key piano. You can have octaves 2 to 6 as default (+ one top key). And have that range transposed one octave lower (or higher).
Last edited: