I am Looking for a Simple Musical Instrument to Start with. What should I get?

Playing music is one of the most exciting and charismatic hobbies you can pick up...compared to fishing at least. However, you would normally come across many challenges at the beginning such as where to learn and what instrument to pick up. This is, of course, alongside the costs associated with buying the instrument and classes. As a beginner, and while you are still uncertain if you want to continue, you might want to go for a budget instrument that is relatively easy to learn and from which you can grasp the basics of music, such as a keyboard!

What to look for?

When buying a keyboard, the first thing you should look for is the number of keys. Having more keys not only enables you to learn more through more octaves, but also allows you to play more songs. Normally, budget keyboards have 61 keys, so a higher number of keys for a low price is definitely of interest. Ideally, you would also like to have weighted keys that tune the sound depending on how you hit it for the same reason. These were possible to find in the budget category not so long ago, although they were rare. Nowadays, you are likely to settle for semi-weighted keys, which maybe a small compromise from thew weighted one, but you are unlikely to notice the difference as a beginner. Furthermore, the different sound modes configure the sound output to match different instruments, so consider keyboards with different sound modes. Other luxuries concern the speakers available, as well as ability to connect to external devices such as headphones, external speakers and amplifiers.

Our Product Recommendation

With all the criteria we mentioned above, we highly recommend the Alesis Recital digital piano keyboard with 88 semi-weighted keys. Above the substantially higher number of keys than you would normally see in a budget keyboard, it comes with 5 different sound modes for acoustic piano, electric piano, organ, synth and bass. It is also equipped with stand, split and layer modes which are normally found in premium keyboards. Not to mention 2 built-in 20W speakers - instead of one, and input jacks to external devices such as speakers, headphones, amplifiers and even sustain pedals for the piano players. This is complimented by a USB MIDI connection that enables you to manipulate the sound to your liking and experiment with other virtual instruments when connected to your PC.

Perhaps the most appealing among all features is that it comes with 3 months of interactive online piano lessons alongside 100 pre-recorded virtual tutorials covering different genres and techniques to pull you out of the beginners pool. All this for a rather affordable price of around 230 euros (~ 250 US $).

Comparison with other Brands

For comparison, we refer to our standard comparison graph where we compare against other keyboard models from other brands in the market. In this comparison, we consider several models from market-leading brands as well as a representative model from the budget side of the market to show how the Alesis (marked in red) performs in the price-quality trade-off.

In this comparison we consider the following keyboards, the Yamaha P-125, Roland FP-30X, Korg B2, Casio Privia PX-S1100 and Oyayo PJ88CD. The first four are considered premium keyboards while the Oyayo stands for the budget side of the market. The graph clearly demonstrates that the Recital offers a decent balance between price and quality. While the Recital may not be a complete match for the quality of keyboards on the premium end of the market, it is not far-off as its semi-weighted keys and sound modes offer acoustics of reasonable quality. This is noteworthy given that it costs half or even a third of the price of some of the premium keyboards.

The Oyayo from a less renowned brand that also targets the beginners like the Alesis. It has a similar price and quality to many keyboards on the budget end of the market. Nonetheless, it is inferior in quality rating due to its basic sound quality. Moreover, its rather limited in sound modes, key action and features while selling at a similar price to the Alesis. The real-selling point for the Alesis, esepcially for beginners, is that it comes educational content through its tutorials and lessons which keyboards - even the premium ones - often do not come with. This presents the Alesis very much as a value-for-money keyboard, for beginners at least.

If you are interested in the Alesis, you can check it out through the button below.

Furthermore, you can read more product reviews Alesis Recital through the following blogs here and here!