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What is the difference between an electronic keyboard and an electronic synthesizer?

Core difference: The timbre of the electronic keyboard is fixed, while the timbre of the electronic synthesizer is editable;

The biggest difference between the electronic keyboard and the electronic synthesizer is that the electronic keyboard cannot complete the change of the internal frequency timbre, which makes the electronic keyboard’s It is a fixed instrument in nature, it is more of a functional instrument and does not have the ability to edit and create timbres. The internal storage unit of the electronic keyboard can only store a small number of musical instrument tones, and cannot be edited or re-created.

Electronic synthesizers can edit the timbre of any note, providing a creative space platform. As long as you want, you can create any timbre effect. Theoretically speaking, an electronic synthesizer can represent the timbre of any musical instrument in the world. It is possible for you to obtain the timbre of all musical instruments in the world. This property makes electronic synthesizers an essential tool for electronic music creation and a great advancement in reducing the cost of music production.

Take the Chinese independent musician An Gang as an example. His representative works are "Once Upon a Time", "Singer" and "Storyteller". The form of music he creates is mainly based on electronic synthesizers, which can be clearly seen in his live broadcast. He only has an acoustic guitar in his hand, but he can switch the timbre at any time and play violin, electric guitar, trumpet, piano, classical guitar, saxophone and other instrument tones. It also retains the details of vibrato vibrato, portamento and other playing techniques. In this way, for independent musicians, an electronic synthesizer can complete the establishment of a small music studio, which greatly reduces the cost of various musicians' needs. At the same time, the biggest advantage is that the sampling of musical instrument timbres is mainly digital.

The electronic keyboard cannot achieve such arbitrary editing effects on any instrument, and is limited to the performance of electronic keyboards and fixed stored tones. Electronic synthesizers can provide MIDI interfaces, allowing any musical instrument to perform any timbre. In theory, a higher-end professional-grade electronic synthesizer can complete separate recording of multiple tracks, which is extremely popular in Europe and the United States. It provides a new experience of directly producing finished music on site.

The following is a brief supplementary explanation of the principles and reasons for the formation of electronic synthesizers and electronic keyboards; 1: Electronic synthesizer; thirty-two overtone frequencies.

The significance of the emergence of electronic synthesizers stems from the popularization of scientific progress. From a scientific perspective, among the vibration frequencies generated by sound, each basic unit of a single tone can be divided into thirty-two overtone regions. collection. Simply put, the reason why any stable timbre is this timbre is because its thirty-two overtone areas have different levels.

The set of these thirty-two overtone areas is a collection of single-tone frequency waves. Theoretically, the reason why an electronic synthesizer can change the timbre at will is because the core component of an electronic synthesizer is essentially the Thirty-two overtone zones have the ability to make editorial changes. The change of timbre is accomplished by changing these thirty-two basic overtone zones. The final wavelength result of all musical instrument timbres is a collection of these thirty-two overtone zones. Then the following can be deduced: there is a tool that can change the overtone zone of the final expression of the wavelength to achieve all musical instruments. The change of timbre is the core of the existence of electronic synthesizers.

To achieve a deeper level of editing in the thirty-two overtone region is actually the application of Moore's Law. Because Moore's Law shows that every 18 months, the number of integrated transistors will double and the integrated performance will double. This provides the possibility of realizing the underlying capabilities of the development from electronic keyboards to electronic synthesizers. After all, an editable music platform requires completely different production levels and integration capabilities than a simple write-in electronic keyboard.

According to the editorial operation of the thirty-two overtone zones, coupled with the performance improvement of Moore's Law, the electronic synthesizer MIDI cannot achieve a more popular value. The core lies in the technological changes after the performance improvement caused by Moore's Law, mainly two technologies: synchronization technology and arranger technology. In human terms: multi-track distribution capabilities, arbitrary input capabilities, and arbitrary output capabilities.

Synchronization technology is the key to the popularization of electronic synthesizers or MIDI (Intelligent Digital Music Interface). Because in the early days, even with the editing ability of thirty-two overtones, it actually did not improve the actual music at all. Until the emergence of synchronization technology, editing capabilities expanded to a new stage. We know that the main body of music is divided into: monophonic, tonic, and polyphonic. Among them, single tones cannot constitute basic music. At least there must be a combination of tonic and secondary tones to have general music popularity. Synchronization technology, for electronic synthesizers, is the ability to add audio tracks.

Adding an audio track so that the new audio track and the original audio track are in the same time track at the same time completes the implementation of the power amplifier. This is synchronization technology. That is, multi-track distribution; but the increase in audio tracks alone cannot satisfy the popularity of MIDI. Because MIDI with synchronization technology is just a functional supplement to the internal timbre, it can complete non-vocal music types such as classical music and light music.

In fact, because of its small size, MIDI is unable to complete the huge volume of music such as classical music. Therefore, the electronic synthesizer during this period was only an orchestra or band accompaniment. Until the advent of arrangers.

Arranger, as the name suggests, is an integrated arranger logic, which greatly packages a large-scale mixer and can complete complex functions with simple operations. The input and output are the core of the arranger's capabilities, which provides a perfect B-box stage and pop music stage. Electronic synthesizers are actually simpler in value and function than professional mixers, so it is impossible to segment the field of professional mixers on the professional top music stage. Popular music is the stage for electronic synthesizers.

The emergence of arrangers and synchronization technology directly allowed electronic synthesizers to make up for the final shortcomings. It has made music arrangement extremely popular. So much so that now the entire arranger market is basically the audience of MIDI. The purpose of digital music interface is to arrange music. Arranging technology is a large-scale progress in music production.

In this way, a miniature music workstation has become popular in the form of an electronic synthesizer, which has led the top electronic music synthesizer production companies in Europe and the United States to launch new multi-functional electronic synthesizers every once in a while. As a result, the types of electronic synthesizers began to increase, and various functions were gradually realized. For example, common percussion pads, small octave piano-like electronic synthesizers, and more practical pedal-type electronic synthesizers.

In Europe and the United States, Boss Huang is a loyal fan of electronic synthesizers. His concerts fully demonstrated that one person is the whole band. The bottom layer of all this can only be achieved by the infrastructure and promotion of electronic synthesizers. 2: Electronic keyboard: In order to solve the difficulty of moving the pipe organ;

The electronic keyboard is essentially an electronic synthesizer. It can be considered an electronic synthesizer that does not have editing and synthesis functions, because the electronic keyboard is actually still the music popularization of integrated circuits. Electronic keyboard is a general term, which is actually essentially different from electric piano. A more accurate description of electric piano should be digital piano.

The origin of the electronic keyboard was to solve the problem of the "king of musical instruments", the pipe organ, which was too large to move. The pipe organ is different from the accordion. The pipe organ is very large, with five levels of keyboards, as well as keyboards on the feet. And Jiuyue Miracle's female instrument is even more complicated. However, the pipe organ is recognized as the early "King of Instruments" by top European and American music because it is majestic and suitable for activities such as churches.

In order to retain the advantages of the pipe organ and remove the disadvantages of the pipe organ, the electronic keyboard appeared.

In 1907, American T. Cassirer invented the electric organ that used electromagnetic coils to generate scale signals. This was the first time that electronic core music became common knowledge, but the technology here is very immature. The size has been reduced, but it is closer to the electronic accordion we know. Note that the original electronic keyboard did not look like an electric piano as we imagined, but an accordion. The original piano keyboard was also derived from the organ keyboard.

By 1939, the "Allen Organ" began to be sold in the U.S. market. This kind of electronic organ was lighter and more economical than the pipe organ. It was widely used in teaching, concert halls, etc., so it had a certain market. By 1950, the annual output of electronic keyboards in the United States reached 100,000 units, close to the output of pianos. In 1964, the American Moog invented the synthesizer, and times began to change. In our country, a common electronic keyboard worth 200 yuan had huge sales in the 1990s. This is Yamaha's stage.

Yamaha is an important presence in popularizing the style of electronic keyboards from pipe organs to pianos. The electronic keyboards we remember today are all electronic keyboards. This is the change made by Yamaha. Originally a multi-functional pipe organ with three keyboards, it has now become a single-keyboard piano style, mainly dominated by Yamaha.

From a functional point of view, electronic synthesizers are commonly used today. The music style of electronic keyboards is greatly restricted, tending to the new age, gospel and dance music styles of the 1980s and 1990s, which belongs to Old times. Electronic synthesizers began to shine, becoming a new standard in popular music production capabilities!

Electronic keyboard:

Electronic keyboard is a term invented by the Chinese. When many people talk about electronic keyboards, they think they are children's toys that they see in supermarkets outside and cost about 100 to 200 yuan or a few hundred yuan. But in fact, this kind of toy electronic keyboard does not represent the real electronic keyboard. Strictly speaking, the electronic keyboard should belong to the category of "Arranger Keyboard". It has a complete automatic accompaniment function. It has its own speakers and sound source, and can be played directly when connected to a power supply. Regular professional electronic keyboards generally cost from a few thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, and come with hundreds or even thousands of tones. Most electronic keyboards have no weights, do not have a sequencer, and the tones cannot be edited. However, in recent years, some high-end electronic keyboards have gradually become more and more powerful with synthesizer functions such as sequencers, editable timbres, and samples. The number of keys generally includes 61 keys, 76 keys, 88 keys, etc.

Synthesizer:

Overall, the synthesizer is probably the most powerful. It has a variety of controllers for a MIDI keyboard and a variety of timbres for an electronic keyboard. Moreover, the timbre of a synthesizer is generally much better than that of an electronic keyboard. In addition, synthesizers generally have built-in basic waveforms that can be adjusted to generate new timbres; built-in fully functional sequencers that can directly produce music; built-in samplers that can directly collect real sounds from nature and use them for your own use; built-in arpeggiators , can quickly generate musical phrases; the built-in MIDI controller can directly control the sequencer or other MIDI devices on the computer; the keyboard feel is generally semi-weighted or fully weighted, with pre-touch/after-touch and velocity, etc. . The price of synthesizers ranges from thousands, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands depending on their functions. They are a powerful assistant for musicians.

Synthesizers can save costs, but they are still much worse than orchestras. The old version of Dream of Red Mansions was played much better by the Beijing Film Orchestra, while Li Shaohong’s version was made with electronic synthesizers and was unpleasant. dead.

Synthesizers do not have automatic accompaniment, but have powerful timbre editing functions. What people are accustomed to calling electronic keyboards (actually should be called arranger keyboards) have automatic accompaniment and simple timbre editing functions. Electronic keyboard is a general term, and double row keys, synthesizers, and arranger keyboards are collectively referred to as electronic keyboards.