Electronic keyboard
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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An electronic keyboard or digital keyboard is a type of keyboard instrument. Its sound is generated or amplified by one or more electronic devices.
Modern usage of the term "electronic keyboard" typically describes a type of inexpensive sampler marketed to amateurs and children. The term is occasionally used as an umbrella descriptor for any electronic musical instruments with a musical keyboard (including but not limited to electric pianos, digital pianos, synthesizers, mellotrons, samplers, electronic organs, and arranger keyboards) but professional musicians generally refer to these instruments by name or simply as "keyboards", reserving the term "electronic keyboard" for the inexpensive type noted above.
Such electronic keyboard instruments are typically inexpensive, smaller, with mediocre sound quality, and lack many features offered by professional instruments. They can generally be located in electronics stores side-by-side with stereos, video games and the like, or even in toy stores.
However, the line between "professional" and "amateur" instruments can often be blurred: professional musicians may use inexpensive keyboards for novelty or out of necessity (for example, reggae music in the '80s made frequent use of pre-programmed rhythm patterns on inexpensive digital keyboards), and due to advances in computer and electronics technology, many relatively inexpensive keyboards (under US$1000) have an array of features that would have been unavailable on even the most expensive synthesizers of past decades.
