Roland Fantom-G8 88-Key Advanced Workstation Keyboard

Comments about Roland Fantom-G8 88-Key Advanced Workstation Keyboard:

I'm not a musician. I sing but most often do theatrical tech work. When I get a singing part, I do OCR on the sheet music (Smartscore)and play the music through a synth; thus the purchase of the G8. It was a demo unit off the floor that I purchased just a few months ago.As a techno-geek, I am extremely pleased with the wealth of G8 features. For example, Seussical the Musical has many sound effects (wind, jungle sounds, explosions) embedded in the score. I was able to install and modify effects in the G8. I added reverberation and echo, for example. These were then programmed into the dynamic pads for easy triggering by the musician.There seems to be an endless variety of G8 tutorial videos on the web. Most, of course, are targeted to the composer. I've found few, however, targeted to my primary use, small scale theatrical effects and sound engineering. The user manual is very dense and difficult to follow but Roland has some good workshop manuals on-line. The telephone support, while OK, could have been a little more patient and understanding given the high complexity of the product. For example, the support tech gave me an overly complex procedure to program the dynamic pads but, fortunately, I accidentally came across a much simpler way. I suggest subscribing to the on-line Roland Clan User Forum. There's good information and support from the user community.Lastly, it was difficult to find a case for the large G8. They are out there but it took some perseverance. I am looking forward to spending time learning more of the G8 features and how to better apply them G8 to my needs. I might even do some [@] tutorials, myself, that are geared to the stage technician.

Comments about Roland Fantom-G8 88-Key Advanced Workstation Keyboard:

I have been without a proper piano to play for three years now and I am very pleased to have this as a replacement. More to the point, it has been extremely useful in musical composition. I am currently writing a video game and also composing the score to the game. The Fantom G8 is exactly the kind of tool I always dreamed of having for musical composition. It has an impressive array of features that make everything I want to do not only possible, but easy to do. Its sound list is extravagantly large filled with rich sounding instruments, and its editing capabilities are powerful, if a little difficult to use.
If I had to pick one thing to gripe about, I would say that the ARX expansion boards, while a fantastic add-on to this already amazing machine, are pricy for what they do. It would be nice to get them, but after taking the plunge for the G8 itself, it's difficult for me to want to spring for those upgrades.
On the up side, upgrading the RAM was a relatively cheap thing to do. It uses old 133MHz SDRAM, so it's not the easiest thing to find but if you look in the right places (search for the right thing) you can come by a 512MB stick for a very low price.

As for Roland's competition, I have yet to find a comparably priced keyboard by Yamaha that I would pay even a third of what it was going for. I can't say much about KORG. I never got the chance to play around anything KORG that would have been considered "competition" to the G8. I do not, for instance, consider the Oasys to be fair competition. For this price range, I'd give the G8 my vote every time.