The keyboard is a bit of an awkward instrument to travel with. It's quite large, to the point that you have to give up at least one seat in a typical car. What makes this especially frustrating is that I don't actually use the whole 88 keys:
The very lowest notes tend to be boomy, while the higher notes are just not very useful in playing the kind of music I play. I use a bit over five octaves (B0-D6, 31-1175 Hz).
At the same time I've been wanting to have a separate keyboard for taking to gigs. The ideal, really, would be to have an entire duplicate rig, which would halve the amount of setup and teardown involved, since I would only need to set up and pack away at gigs. This is enough extra effort and expense, however, that for now I'm just duplicating the keyboard (and stand).
I decided to get a Yamaha P-121:
It is the discontinued 73-key version of the P-125, which is the ~current version of my P-85. [1] Which made it a bit hard to find one, but there was one new-in-box shipping from Japan on eBay. I was a bit nervous, but it worked out fine.
The P-121 turns out to be very close to what I want: sounds and action very similar to my preferences, Yamaha's build quality and reliability, better condition than my P-85. The main downside is they didn't pick exactly the right keys to drop:
After telling it to transpose down an octave I still do have all the keys I need, but the keys below B0 are really pretty useless while I might very occasionally use keys higher than E6 if I had them.
I strongly considered telling it to transpose down a fourth and lying to myself about what key I'm playing in. In some ways this isn't too different from teaching myself to play trumpet in standard pitch, but I think it would be likely enough to cause trouble when playing other people's pianos that I shouldn't.
This is not an especially careful packing job, but it's really nice being able to put all my gear in back without folding down any seats:
I put a lot of stuff on my keyboard, and I need a way to keep it all from falling off. Because this keyboard is narrower, though, not everything fit. I made a holder for the computer keyboard I use for buttons:
Everything else just velcros on:
The box on the left is a box I made a few months ago that combines my custom switch box and my embedded whistle synth.
Here are the current p121 settings I use:
- Piano + lowest F: transpose down one octave
- Piano + third lowest E: disable reverb
- Metronome + rhythm + highest D: internal speakers off
- Metronome + rhythm + lowest A: disable automatic power off
For a case, I ordered a cheap 76-key fabric case on Amazon. It's a bit floppy because it's designed for a fatter keyboard, but there are velcro straps inside that hold it securely. I did have to tie a pair of knots in each strap to keep it from flopping around.
[1] Technically, the P-125a is the current version, but all the "a"
means is that they removed USB audio support.