In hours of fiddling, searching and experimenting, I haven't yet turned up more than a handful of sounds on the Korg which come close to the naturalness of most of the sounds on my old T4 (an instrument itself over seven years old, let's not forget). And.they just aren't.įor example, here's something I knocked up in less than a couple of hours on the T4. But none of that really matters if the sounds are not as good. When I had the T4, it was like the musical equivalent of crack – I would get lost for hours playing with the orchestral sounds, being inspired musical ideas would seem to come from nowhere.
I really don't like the Korg very much at all. If I didn't find exactly what I was looking for, sonically, on the spot, because of its greater flexibility, I could create that sound myself.įast-forward by two weeks of ownership, and I have a painful confession to make. It would, the salesman argued, do everything the Tyros could times a million etc etc. Yet I still allowed myself to be talked into it. The thing is, when I started actually playing the Korg, I was rather more underwhelmed than I thought I would be. The salesman absolutely backed my choice – the way he saw it, the Korg was for pro players using it live, the Yamaha mostly for people playing at home for pleasure. I eventually decided to take the plunge and went to an emporium in the North West of England which sells both Yamaha and Korg. In terms of the quality of its construction and materials, it looked far more 'professional' than the Tyros or Genos.
I'm a pro keys player, and the Korg seemed to offer an array of great sounds coupled with really flexible and (compared with the Yamaha arrangers) deep sound creation potential. The reasoning behind this conclusion seemed solid enough.
And after viewing a welter of YouTube videos, reading specs, manuals etc, I came to the conclusion that my next buy should be not a Yamaha Tyros 5 or Genos, but a Korg PA4X. After a couple of months of owning (and enjoying) a pre-owned Tyros 4, I decided I wanted to upgrade my arranger.