A music workstation is piece of electronic musical equipment providing the facilities of:
It enables a musician to compose electronic music using just one piece of equipment.[1]
History
The concept of a sequencer combined with a synthesizer is not entirely new - the Sequential Circuits Six-Trak provided this possibility. The Six-Trak was a polyphonic analog synthesizer, which featured an on-board six-track sequencer.
In the late 1980's, on-board MIDI sequencers began to appear more frequently on professional synthesizers. The Korg M1 (released 1988) was the first widely-known and popular music workstation, and became the world's best-selling digital keyboard synthesizer of all time.[2] During its six-year production period, more than 250,000 units were sold.
Modern Music Workstations
The Big Three (Yamaha, Roland and Korg) now have sampling as a default option with the Yamaha Motif line, the Roland Fantom series and the Korg Triton family. Workstations have a relatively big screen to give a comprehensive overview of the sound, sequencer and sampling options. Since the display is one of the most expensive components of these workstations, Roland and Yamaha chose to keep costs down by not using a touch screen display, and in the case of the Yamaha Motif, not even a high-resolution display. The screen replaces what would otherwise be a lot of extra rotary knobs, sliders, and buttons, which add a lot to the cost of the machine, make the operation look unnecessarily complex, and generally aren't used in the first place.
Operation
The sequencer stores MIDI data, like played notes and controller events (pitch bend, mod wheel, etc.), and then sends the data to the sound generator, which plays back the recorded events, as audio.
Music Workstations without Keyboards
Although many music workstations have a keyboard, this is not always the case. In the 1990s, Yamaha, and then Roland, released a series of portable music workstations (starting with the Yamaha QY10). These are sometimes called walkstations.
The concept of the workstation mutated around 1996 and gave birth to the groovebox - a keyless version of a workstation, still with a self-contained sound source and sequencer, mostly aimed at dance. Again, nowadays they also feature a sampler. Roland more or less started the hype, Korg, and Yamaha followed suit. Korg created the much-used Electribe series.
Criticism
There are some points in the concept of the workstation which might be object of criticism like limitation of the number of tracks in the sequencer, lack of modularity, predetermined and not user modifiable features. However, these are overcome by general ease of use, reliable functioning, and adaptation to most requirements of music production.
References
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