Electronic Keyboards And The Church Musician

Recent technology has generated a wide variety of electronic keyboards available to the church musician. This article defines many of the technical terms that are used to distinguish the varieties of keyboards available and provides guidelines for their use. The word keyboard has taken on new meaning the last decade or so. Most of us think of keyboards in the context of musical instruments, especially the piano, we have experienced all our lives. These instruments have evolved over some 500 years, and with the appearance of the piano in the eighteenth century, have remained essentially unchanged. Today the word keyboard describes a bewildering variety of instruments. Keyboards are everywhere: small, mini-instruments that fit into a backpack, semi-portable "electric pianos," keyboards stacked one upon another like some sci-fi organ, and especially keyboards of all types as the instrument of choice for the teenager. In fact the keyboard has replaced the guitar as the instrument of th…