How many coders, devs, programmmers, IT peeps, technical design folks are also musicians and/or seriously in pursuit of music lifelong? Curious to know as for more than 30 years in tech I see a lot of crossover.

I played in a symphony orchestra at age 14... and was a music editor on several feature films... But less lately, too busy with vision projects—My "birthday present" to myself in 2019 was an 88 key weighted-action Yamaha piano/controller.. and I have yet to open the road case!

I've been looking into 88 key simple boards don't need many voices but a strong piano sound. Effects are less important than sound quality. Always interested in recommendations. Do you play it or does it stay in its case? I have two guitars cased one at the ready the rest stored.

I have this one kawai-global.com/product/es1… Really nice sound, has a proper deep-travel pedal, MIDI, some other features I don't use.

That looks nice and of course I like the 88 keys. One of the points of limiting voices and effects and honing in on a more full piano sound is building back skills first. Which keyboards do you guys think are most like the tactile experience of a piano?

They never feel quite the same, but the weighting is pretty decent, and it matches the variation of a real piano (lower keys are heavier and higher keys are lighter).

That's good to know I have to get over to some of our local stores I haven't been out and about town much but it appears more stabilization with covid is in play and a hands-on experience is best. Majority of my friends here are great musicians with varied industry activities.

Something to look for in weighted: piano weighted is as James mentioned, where the lower keys have a heavier weighting, and there is studio weighted, where the weighting is even across, which is you are using for synth is useful, especially if going from synth action to weighted.

--studio weighted may also have features like aftertouch, and a straight piano setup may not. So this gets into if you want or plan to be a straight piano vs adding in other performance attributes. Aftertouch is very useful for a string patch, for instance.