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"So fasten your seat-belts & enjoy the read (and if you don't please don't tell me as I'm terribly insecure) About 15 years ago a client of the ad agency I worked for called me with an interesting question; "If money was no object (I wish!) What's the best professional performance keyboard available today--in terms of range and realism of sounds"? As I'm a part time musician all it took was a few calls to confirm it was the KORG m1.
So my next question was why is the owner of well known telecom products company whose stuff was sold at every local and national retailer asking me about electronic keyboards--telephone keypads, maybe but music keyboards?!?! About six months and 3 non disclosure agreements later, I got my answer, it was called THE KEY. And it was the culmination of serious amounts of R&D time and money. The KEY was a culmination of a dream. It was designed to be an air guitar "brought to life" or an "air guitarists dream machine".
Essentially it enabled ANYONE regardless how tone deaf they were to sound like the pro of their choice. Bsically the unit had "cartridges" Each cartridge was loaded with a selection of songs (usually representing a genre or artists) the guitar "part" which progressed along automatically was controlled by the "guitarist" in terms of style, rhythm, etc--in other words it was IMPOSSIBLE to play a wrong note and the variations as to how you played the right guitar parts were limited by your imagination or confidence which built along with your comfort level. If you were at all musically adept, you coud actually use THE KEY like a real guitar as the "fins" functioned as guitar strings the "rockers" on the neck functioned like the frets on a regular guitrar with the added benefit of pitch bending, classic "synth style" portimento (the note to note smooth "slide effect") and all the other stuff that was years ahead of its time. Case in point it even had "networkability: with a second KEY via a simple phone jack, plus it could even be used as a MIDI controller--right out of the box.
And because the Soul of the KEY was a sound board used in the KORG M1,(which back then was over $500, JUST FOR THE BOARD) the voices are nothing short of flawless-both in solo or in full orchstral mode, Basically the unit is layed out as follows;
1)The Neck with the touch sensitive rocker frets which aside from letting you control the "tuning" of the song being played from the cartridge also make the KEY playable like a regular guitar
2) The Body which has two rows of selector buttons for; a) POWER (obvious) b) LEAD (choose the volume of lead insrtument+switch the "choice" of the lead instrument from whatever's programmed for that song to whatever satisfies our creative curiosity--imagine the signature lead giotar on LAYLA (one of the 9 songs included on the cartridge) replaced with a bagpipe , string section or sitar --all controled by you as you play it note for flawless note,,,
c) SONG: How you choose the song from the cartridge
d) VOLUME: self explanatory
e) KEYBOARD: Guess what the "frets" can control the "strings" like a real guitar or if you want to channel your inner "Stanley Jordan" or "Andy Mcee" you can set the KEY up to play the neck as a second seperate instrument
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* SongPac Rom Cartridge (comes with 1) with U2, STP, Gin Blossoms, Eric Clapton, Melissa Etheridge, Green Day, Billy Joel, Nirvana, The Beatles
