ooh new toy (-:

Christmas has come slightly early at our house. Have we even got the tree up? Not yet. But we did go to Guitar Center today to play with the keyboards.

We pretty much immediately decided that "semi-weighted" is a technical term meaning "half-assed". And that the mid-priced synthesizers aimed at the home market are generally pretty lame, with the lower registers of the piano sounds being particularly crap.

We wandered into the Room Of Professional Synthesizers and wandered out again pretty quickly. Expensive and complicated.

Then we found the room of Digital Pianos. Banged on a couple of keys and went "oooooooooh" a lot. Decided that THIS was what we wanted. Picked out the exact one we wanted; chatted with a nice salesdude at length about it; decided which amp we wanted to get with it (sigh). Then it was discovered that they didn't actually have one of that keyboard in stock.

Long story short, we ended up having to drive to the Hollywood branch of Guitar Center to actually get they keyboard... parking nightmare, store full of so many eager Christmas shoppers that someone should have called the fire marshal... eventually we got the thing home and set up, and have been scaring the cats with it ever since.

Already regretting the fully-weighted thing. Wrists... hopelessly... out of shape...

Oh yeah, it's an "M-Audio Pro Keys 88™ 88-Key Hammer-Action Premium Stage Piano". Even its name is imposing.