Yamaha has the beginner wind instrument market by the balls right now. Conn-Selmer became garbage over the last 15 years or so, and Jupiter has been known to be "the nicest dogshit in the business" for some time. Yamaha literally just had to maintain the same level of instrument quality while the former "great brands" became cheap stencil crap.
I can't speak to the quality but I'd imagine they're great. Most composers and arrangers I know use a pretty simple MIDI keyboard setup, or have become keyboard power users in their software and use a QWERTY keyboard.
Personally, I'm in group 2 (QWERTY keyboard) I have a digital piano at the workstation to test out voicings, but when I actually write I'm using keybindings on a QWERTY keyboard. Full disclosure - most of the writing I do is for schools, so I use notation software.
Yamaha has the beginner wind instrument market by the balls right now. Conn-Selmer became garbage over the last 15 years or so, and Jupiter has been known to be "the nicest dogshit in the business" for some time. Yamaha literally just had to maintain the same level of instrument quality while the former "great brands" became cheap stencil crap.
Don't they make some nice stuff too, like the Tyros/Genos workstations?
I can't speak to the quality but I'd imagine they're great. Most composers and arrangers I know use a pretty simple MIDI keyboard setup, or have become keyboard power users in their software and use a QWERTY keyboard.
Personally, I'm in group 2 (QWERTY keyboard) I have a digital piano at the workstation to test out voicings, but when I actually write I'm using keybindings on a QWERTY keyboard. Full disclosure - most of the writing I do is for schools, so I use notation software.
Yeah, over here arranger keyboards are the "wedding band special" pretty much, where the keyboard fills in for half the band.