Electronic Keyboards (Arrangers) buying guide

Electronic keyboards are lightweight, portable inexpensive musical keyboards with built-in accompaniments that are perfect for home use. These music keyboards are best suited for beginners (although you get models for intermediate/advanced players as well). Children around 6 years and above can learn to play music on these electronic music keyboards.

Electronic Keyboards for Kids and Adults: Perfect for Beginners

The various benefits of music education for children is well-documented, so if you’re a parent, you must definitely encourage your child to learn music.

Lot of parents want their children to learn to play a musical instrument, but they are also aware that kids are restless and can get easily bored.

Ideally, parents would like their kids to stick to an instrument for some time, at least for a couple of years.

Another challenge is that they are unsure what instrument they should choose for their child.

Most of the time it comes down to choosing between a keyboard or the guitar. Some find keyboards to be easy to learn, they feel it’s less practice and easier to handle. Whereas I have friends who hated taking piano lessons as a child but now play the guitar. Some others are not sure about either.

There are several musical instruments that are comparatively easier to learn, and the music keyboard is definitely one of them.

Learning to play keyboards offers several advantages, and also helps one understand more about digital music production.

So if you are still not sure, I would suggest you go with the music keyboard instrument first.

• Are you a serious beginner – Young or Adult?
• Are you a parent looking for a musical instrument for a child?
• Looking for a budget keyboard but with some cool stuff so that you get a bit creative?
• Want to buy a musical keyboard for your child? Has your child been learning to play the keyboards for some time now and are you looking for an upgrade?

Then you must consider buying an electronic music keyboard, also known as arranger keyboards.

These come with built-in rhythms, also known as styles/accompaniments. They have built-in speakers, and are loaded with several sounds, rhythm patterns, and built-in songs to help you learn to play.

There are various kinds of keyboard instruments. Novice players however don’t need anything expensive or too fancy to begin with, and you also don’t want to overwhelm the new student.

Electronic keyboard instruments are perfect for beginners (children as well as adults) because they are inexpensive, lightweight and portable, easy to operate, and yet come with several exciting features and sounds.

More importantly, these personal keyboards come at a price that’s practical for most families.

Understanding Arranger keyboards (and Ensemble Pianos)

Digital keyboards/pianos nowadays come with lots of built-in accompaniments (also known as styles) that allow keyboards to be used as a one-man band.

Also known as arranger keyboards (or ensemble pianos in the case of digital pianos), these keyboards with several built-in accompaniments (also known as styles or rhythms) which are basically a combination of several backing instrument sounds such as drums, bass, piano, guitar, brass and strings.

An “arranger” keyboard is called so because it lets you add interesting arrangements by using buttons such as Start, Stop, Intro, Ending and Fill-ins.

You will find hundreds of styles based on various genres such as Pop, Rock, Blues, Latin, Country, Jazz, Techno and more.

Related: Importance of Music Styles on Arranger Keyboards

These keyboards also come with hundreds of instrument sounds, also known as tones or voices (includes instrument sounds like piano, flute, guitar, violin, drums, and also several synthetic sounds).

These keyboards also feature various sound effects (reverb, chorus, delay, and more), and several demo songs that demonstrate the capability of the instrument and these songs can also be learned.

So, all these styles, sounds and effects enables you to perform like a one-man band/orchestra using an arrange keyboard.

Today’s arranger keyboard is a full-blown entertainment system where you just have to play the melody (and/or sing-along) on top of the selected rhythm to sound like a band (as if a bunch of musicians are playing along with you).

Arranger keyboards are also known by different names – electronic keyboards, home keyboards or personal keyboards.

These keyboard instruments serve as an important music education tool, and are an excellent creative tool for songwriters and performers.

In the past, most arranger keyboards available in 61 keys, but nowadays you get arranger keyboards with 76 and 88 keys as well (some with even weighted keys).

Features on electronic (arranger) music keyboards summarized

• Almost all the keyboard models come with touch-sensitive keys.
• Hundreds of sounds and styles/Rhythms (ability to add more sounds and styles), lots of effects such as reverb, chorus, equalizer, and more.
• Features like splitting the keyboard and layering sounds.
• Built-in speakers, large LCD screen display, run on Batteries or AC Power.
• Music lessons that teaches basic musical concepts.
• Sequencer/Recorder with multi-track recording, Audio recorder (some entry level keyboards may not have a sequencer).
• Inputs: You can connect pedals, microphone, external device to playback music (MP3 or other formats).
• Outputs: USB connectivity to computer, sen output to flash drive, options to connect to headphones and to external amps/speakers.

The top-end arranger keyboards come with super realistic and high-quality sounds, styles and effects, feature powerful built-in speakers, have the feature to display lyrics, have touch-sensitive screens, come with sequencer and recording features that let you record and mix songs easily. Some even let you connect a microphone to sing along. Basically, the top-of-the-line arranger keyboard gives all the power to a live performer to dazzle the audience. They are also more expensive, easily costing a few thousand dollars.

In general, with hundreds of sounds, several functions, recording features, etc. electronic keyboards are like true entertainment systems nowadays. Most keyboards come bundled with AC adapter, stand, pedal, and in some cases even the carry case/bag.

Electronic Keyboards: Best Uses

All Variants at a Glance

Electronic keyboards are available in various variants:

While 61-key keyboards are the most common, you get arranger keyboards with fewer keys, known as mini sized keyboards. These are also available in 76-keys and 88 keys.

• Mini-sized keyboards: 36 keys or 48 keys (less than 61 keys). Designed for the earliest beginners.
• 61-keys keyboards: More models available in this category. Some even come with lighted keys.
• 76-keys keyboards: Most brands now also offer 76-keys keyboards (doesn’t cost much more than 61-keys nowadays)
• 88-keys keyboards: These come with semi-weighted or fully-weighted keys (these are more of porable pianos).

Best Uses of Electronic Keyboards

Here are the best uses of these arrange keyboards:

• Great for Music Education: The various sounds, styles, effects, and recording features generates curiosity, encourages creativity, and serves as a great learning tool.

• Learning to play keyboards. Even kids aged 4 can get started. These come with several learning features to help you learn faster.

• It enables you to play using both the hands, a skill that can be carried over to the piano. Make sure you get at least 61-keys with touch sensitive keys (better to get 76-keys so that you can play more pieces).

• These are also ideal for beginner singer-songwriters as it comes with lot of voices and rhythms to play with, and is user friendly when it comes to saving your compositions etc.

• If you have played piano in the past, you can choose an 88-key keyboard with accompaniments (also known as ensemble piano) that allows you to play piano on top of interesting accompaniments.

Electronic Keyboards: Understanding the Variants

Mini Size Electronic Keyboards

A mini keyboard comes with smaller and fewr number of keys and is great for introducing little kids to the world of electronic music.

Mini sized keyboards are smaller in size and have less than 61 keys. These are usually available in 37 keys (3 octaves) or 49 keys (4 octaves), and have smaller sized keys. They have several tones, rhythms and built-in songs, with decent speakers. These do not have touch sensitive keys.

You have more options nowadays in mini keyboards (in addition to Yamaha and Casio mini keyboards.

Checkout the best mini keyboards for kids

You also get toy pianos, which are smaller sized (but playable) pianos designed for the youngest learners. These have piano like keys and only makes piano-like sounds. Read more here.

Portable 61-Key Electronic Keyboards

These are perfect for adult beginners as well as children who are serious about learning.

If you have been learning on a mini sized keyboard earlier, you should consider upgrading to a 61 key keyboard (or even to a 76-key keyboards).

Even if your child has not played before, but you see the potential and interest in music, a 61 key touch sensitive keyboard will be apt.

Brands like Casio, Yamaha, Rockjam make good 61-keys keyboards. Most of these keyboards are available for around a couple of hundred bucks, and come with touch-sensitive keys. These are perfect for beginners and hobbyists for learning to play the keyboards (suitable for kids as well as adult beginners).

Best 61-key electronic keyboards for beginners: These electronic keyboards are priced under $200 and provide a nice mix of features and affordability.

Lighted keyboards: You also get keyboards with keys that light-up making it easier for you learn to play songs. Beginners (both children and adults) like this feature where the keys light up and wait for you so that you know which key you should be pressing next while learning to play the built-in songs. Checkout the best lighted piano keyboards here.

76-Keys Electronic Keyboards

Electronic keyboards have gotten cheaper in recent years, and they now pack in a lot of features for the price. You can now even buy 76-key electronic keyboards at entry-level prices.

These let you play more musical pieces (as it has more keys), and there are some real value buys in this category.

Despite having 76-keys, they are still lightweight because they don’t come with full-weighted keys (most have unweighted or semi-weighted keys). Nevertheless, do consider these keyboards as well if you’re looking for your first electronic keyboard.

Best budget 76-keys keyboards

Mid-Range Music keyboards for Intermediate Level Players

Bit more expensive than the keyboards suggested above, these are mid-range category music keyboards (priced around five hundred dollars). Suitable for intermediate/experienced players, serious learners and hobbyists, these keyboards can be used for songwriting as well because of their variety of built-in styles, to quickly come up with nice sounding tracks. Read more here.

Keyboards with Weighted Keys

If your child has been really picking up the piano lessons well and if the teacher has asked you to get a weighted keyboard for your child, then you may consider the full sized 88 key keyboards. These have the same number of keys as on a Piano.

Though the digital music piano keyboards with the traditional looks cost more, you do have some affordable options in 88-key musical keyboard instruments.

Best budget 88-Key music Keyboards/pianos (priced around $500)

Popular Keyboard Brands

Yamaha and Casio are two names that always pops up when you talk about keyboard brands, especially if you’re talking about beginner keyboards and pianos.

While they are still quite popular among keyboard players, there are a few other brands that make quality keyboard products.

Read more on Keyboard brands here.

Essential Accessories

Once you buy a keyboard instrument, you will also require few accessories to enjoy your playing experience.

Here’s a comprehensive list of accessories and what is essential for beginners.

You may also require piano keyboard key stickers that aids in learning the piano notes, especially useful for kids.

Great Time to Learn for Adults

This is a great time to learn a new skill.

It is convenient, and one has access to so many learning resources.

Adult beginners, who are usually unable to spare time, can learn right from the comfort of their own home.

Here are some tips and advice for adult beginners keen to play the keyboards.

Useful Links for Keyboards & Pianos

If you’re totally new to music keyboards, you can start reading here to know about the various types, and features on digital Piano Keyboard instruments.