GO:KEYS 5 Music Creation Keyboard, 61-Note, Graphite

This unit is advertised as a beginner keyboard, however it packs the punch of a much more expensive unit.I play professionally and it has come in handy as a great travel unit for the style of music I play. It doesn't have a full 88 keys but I'm not playing classical music just modern so I can easily shift the octives down or up when I play a song that needs it. If you are taking lessons on a real piano, and playing more classical pieces, I recommend getting a full 88-key board. The sound options are amazing. I've been playing it for weeks and still have hundreds of sound options to try. It hooks up to a mixer very well, and even has a dedicated microphone input. The arranger feature is great, even just to view the chords you are currently playing. Really great unit to use to learn lead sheets. It also has a a couple hundred already written chord progessions with set styles and beats which you can individually mute as you please. This is great to use as a backtrack when I play my saxophone. The power cord is strong and well made with a decent length, and conveniently it can utilize batteries as power as well. The look and feel of the unit are great. You can tell that a lot of time and energy went into the design. The buttons are responsive and accurate. The turndial was a great choice to easily scroll through the options. The screen is bright and easily readable. Can't recommend this unit enough.

I purchased this for my grandchildren, 5 and 3, hoping they will play with it, begin to learn some music, and enjoy active learning. Myself, I’m a pianist/keyboard guy who loves to play his Steinway piano. I write music on that and on my Kong Kronos. My old Roland RD-600 still has beautiful sound and its weighted touch still feels great after 20 years. So I know what works for experienced adults and I wanted something fun and interesting for the kids. The big pluses are the sounds are great, the touch is good, it has its own speakers but not so loud as to drive parents nuts, and it only weighs 11 pounds, so my daughter can easily handle it. For simplicity, you just press the on button and the grand piano sound comes up. Volume is adjusted with a slider. Right then you have a 61-key instrument for the youngsters. I also purchased a keyboard stand and a seat, and the stand on its lowest makes a small appearance even with the keyboard on it. Very nice, and important because my daughter is a minimalist and wouldn’t like a big keyboard requiring powered speakers etc. The “music reading stand” I didn’t buy yet. Other reviewers commented that it’s a piece of plastic for $35 and it looked flimsy to me. I happened to have at home an extra, double-wide professional metal music stand which is perfect for the wide spiral-bound kids’ beginners books I bought for them. You can record and play back music that you play, in MIDI format, which just plays the instrument sounds back, or in audio format, which you use if the kids want to record their own singing along with the music. My grandkids really like to sing, and I’m hoping this recording feature will help them fall in love with enjoying music. Overall, I think this is a good choice for the price. Good sounds, good company, and not too complicated.

I do mostly love this keyboard. First of all it is just aesthetically pleasing. The key bed feels great and the keys feel matte and not slippery as my old Yamaha synth. As someone who started with a piano, I really wish I could have weighted keys, but the extra is just not practical for someone who would be gigging. The tones/voices are very modern and a wide range of lush tones. I love that it has some serious synth capabilities, but includes the built in speaker. It save me from finding an amp every time I just want to practice. The audio fx feature is very limited, more than I realized, but it is fun and an interesting addition. Now for the annoyances. On some instruments, like one of the violins, the touch sensitivity is not as natural between levels of impact. And for anyone who will be doing gigging with the use of a wide range of voices like me, It has already become very annoying having to turn and turn and turn until I finally find the instrument I need in the other category. There should be a number pad as well to type in a number associated with the voice. Also, if I select. certain piano voice, for example, it should STAY on that piano voice every time I press "piano" until shut off. I know there is a way to program this into the "piano" or instrument button, but it changes from day to day and I can't always remember how to get there. Lastly, I have to plug in my ac adapter, sustain pedal, and audio out every time, but I can't see from the front or the back the names of the ports. I have to lift the keyboard up on it's side every time. Other keyboards have indicators on top. I am going to add stickers on the top of the instrument to help guide me, so I don't have to lift it up every time I want to plug in, so I can work around it, but it's annoying. Another thing -the voices are very modern, so there are certain sounds I find myself missing from my old synth that just don't have a comparable sound on here, despite the huge range of sounds. Yet another thing, transpose only goes +5 and -6. Why they didn't simply go +/- 10 I'll never know. Lastly, It seems very difficult to buy a gig bag and music rest. You'd think Roland would have thought of this and made it easier to find these items, but that's not the case. All in all, it's not perfect, but I think it is the best all around keyboard on the market because of its playability, rich sound, portability, and range of function.

The GoKeys 5 requires a heavy touch and is slippery for elderly players. The sounds have layers and respond differently to the pressure applied to the keys. This could be an effect or other sound variation. There is a very wide range from soft to loud produced by the keys. There are many settings for sounds, and sound layers. You can save your customizations to memory. An example would be to create various layers with different sounds ,,layer volumes, effects and pedal assignments and save the scene (alll keyboard settings custom selected) and save them with a name you pick. Using the keyboard settings and menus is a breeze with the sharp Lcd screen. I think this. Is much more than a beginner keyyboard and a good choice for the pianist with a heavy touch to dabble with a keyboard with a keybed that doesn’t feel light. If you want a lighter keybed the more expensive Roland Juno D series might satisfy you. I am elderly and play better on a lightly weighted graded hammer action with textured keys.

Excellent keyboard. Light weight and has so many high quality features.

It is a very nice keyboard. Nevertheless, I give it 1stars because of an issue with the headphones input. Whenever I finish using the keyboard with the headphones, and I unplug the headphones, the sound does not come out from the speakers. This happens randomly, some days I can hear the speakers, other day I can't. I have to turn it off and on again. Even with that, sometimes the speakers do not make any sound and its unuseable. I dont even know what to do in terms of returning it. I live in Puerto Rico so I am not sure who takes care of the return shipping costs

It offers good sounds but without physically trying it out before purchase, I t just did measure the hype and I returned it.

I started playing bars in 1982 and over the years I have bought and sold a huge variety of keyboards and synthesizers (some very expensive) (I have never had a Kronos)... but of all the keyboards I have ever had or played, the Go Keys 3 & 5 have the best sounds of all of them... I got the 5 because of the connectivity and the Harmonist... the speakers are very good (for playing at home)... I have never played a 3 so I don't know how the speakers compare to the 5... the prices of these are crazy low for what you get... $350 for a 3 is unbelievable !! When the Yamaha Motifs came out, I was really amazed at the sounds but the 3 & 5 blow them away (the Motifs do have better acoustic pianos) but the acoustic pianos in the 3 & 5 are much better than keyboards I have owned (the Yamaha SY77 comes to mind)... the SY77 did most other sounds very well though... I'm going to be converting the MIDI in the USB to regular MIDI plugs (I've heard it works with a cable with a USB plug and a MIDI out plug and a MIDI in plug...) maybe I'll have to convert the USB plug to the type of USB plug that fits the oval USB jack... time will tell... Just like the Motifs changed the world when they came out, these will change the world much more because even kids will be able to get them (the Motifs were really expensive)... The soundset in these are so complete that you have a full arsenal of sounds... I've played quite a few synths that also had over 1000 sounds but there were so many that I would never use... not the case with the 3 & 5... I will confidently recommend these to anyone from novice to pro... Roland just did so much better of a job selecting the sounds for these and the sound quality is outstanding !!

Loving this so far after 2 weeks with it. I started teaching myself piano/keys as a bass/guitar player/songwriter, and was kind of disappointed with a 49 key MIDI keyboard. Having to rely on plugins and a DAW to be able to learn the instrument was not a great experience for me. Also wanted something portable to take to jam sessions with friends. Realizing I wanted something with speakers/sounds built in, and weighted/semi weighted keys lead me to this. The huge tone library was a big draw for me and the extra sequencing is something I've enjoyed jamming with that I could never easily do before. The speakers are a mixed bag, but mainly positive, and I really like having dedicated line outputs separate from the headphone jack, which is what made me pick the Go Keys 5 instead of 3. I love the quantity AND quality of tones included and theres just enough control over each one that I'm never unable to easily find a sound I like quickly. You can have 5 tones easily accessible as preset buttons and each "scene" has 2 tones so theres a couple ways to get to saved sounds quickly. Each scene is kind of like a song/project, where it saves your 2 tones, chord sequence and backing track style. There are over a thousand individual tones but you can scroll through them super easily by either reading the names and listening or just spin the scroll wheel quickly and audition the sounds by pressing a key repeatedly; loading new tones is instant. I really love the arranging/recording features included but there are some small things I wish were included. The chord sequencer is great and you can program entire songs or structures to jam with, with rising/lowering dynamics after a certain repeat etc. In my first week Ive programmed some of the chord progressions of songs I like/am learning and being able to experiment is super fun and a great way for me to practice improvising on this unfamiliar instrument. The built in backing tracks (named styles) are very hit or miss but you can download more and they have a lot of different musical genres already included so lots of choices. They are just drum/bass/chord tone patterns though, and there are times where I wish I could take the drums from this style, bass from this one, and accompaniment from this one but oh well. The song recording works, but sometimes when I rename the song it changes the length of the song to 2 bars or something which basically ruins that recording. I've stopped renaming songs as a workaround which is annoying but I dont record much internally anyway. I thought this keyboard could record your playing and loop it but not really. It starts recording automatically and it would be great to play a specific bassline/chord progression with one hand and hit stop with the other hand to perfectly time the ending to loop. If you try that there is a second or so gap before the song repeats which is too bad. You could use a dedicated looper pedal with the line outputs, but its too bad you cant do it inside the device. The keys feel great in general but the pressure it takes when pressing part of the same key farther away from you is all over the place, which makes does not make for consistent playing. Its almost a deal breaker for me, but otherwise I like how the keys feel and the weighting of them (but I have nothing to compare it with as my previous keyboard was not weighted at all). The speakers are good, can go quite loud, but as I read in some reviews they do have a slight buzz or rattle when using certain tones - specifically the default piano sounds but it does seem to be a tone specific problem. Not really much of an issue to me most of the time though. I dont think there are many other options in this price range for the tone and arranging capabilities in a portable keyboard so I will be sticking with this for the foreseeable future but this is really great for someone wanting a portable synth/digital keyboard that does it all. I love it as someone learning play simple songs and improvise on keys!

I am beginner in playing the piano. This keyboard is just right! Good sound, perfect for small apartments, and aesthetically pleasing. Love it!

Soy músico profesional dueño de muchos otros teclados de alta gama y colección, pero quería algo con sonidos buenos, ligero y portátil y definitivamente fue una excelente opción a un increíble precio. Suena increíble y sus teclas son suficientemente decentes para llevártelo a tocar a un bar los fines de semana y dejar tus teclados caros en casa.

Product and packaging, all as expected, very good 👍

Es un excelente teclado, me gusta mucho el sonido que tiene y la sensibilidad de las teclas. Tiene muchos efectos, aun no termino de probarlos todos. Se pueden crear muchísimas combinaciones.