The Development of Electronic Keyboards in China （Alternative Version）

From: 洪啸音乐教育工作站

As the global economy recovers, people are finding themselves with disposable income. As a result, parents who hope for their children's success are increasing their investment in education, with electronic keyboards once again becoming a hot spot for art education investment. According to industry insiders, the consumption of electronic keyboards in the next two years is expected to recover to historical peak levels. However, recovery does not mean simple repetition. While facing many positive factors, it's necessary for us to re-examine electronic keyboards and their teaching methods. After all, an electronic keyboard is not a simple commodity or a tool that can be used by anyone with healthy limbs and senses; it's an instrument that requires specific training to master.

Electronic keyboards have been a part of the musical instrument industry in China for over twenty years. The electronic keyboard market has developed from non-existent to unregulated, and then to orderly, achieving remarkable success. At the same time, as a derivative of musical instruments, electronic keyboard education has become an indispensable part of music education as a whole, making great contributions to creating a musically literate population. However, when we examine electronic keyboard education rationally, we deeply feel its defects and hidden dangers, which have prevented electronic keyboards from achieving the status they deserve as musical instruments. The existence of these defects and hidden dangers has at least slowed down the development of electronic instruments in China. To some extent, it has become a second-choice, reluctant option for parents, and to a certain degree, has become synonymous with cheap art education.

In developed countries of popular music such as Europe, America, and Japan, electronic keyboards and synthesizers exist as an independent instrument category - keyboard (KEYBOARD), with their own unique teaching concepts and methods. According to an American survey, benefiting from the world's most developed electronic instrument manufacturing industry, Japanese children have become the group with the highest average level of musical literacy in the world. However, when electronic keyboard education was first introduced in China, it immediately went astray.

The vast majority of electronic keyboard teachers in China were originally engaged in piano performance and education. Most of them have a strong sense of professionalism and responsibility as teachers. In a situation where the entire society had no knowledge of this new type of musical instrument, they gradually established a set of electronic keyboard teaching models with Chinese characteristics. However, due to the bias and deficiencies in their own knowledge structure, when they became professional electronic keyboard teachers, they could not truly understand the connotations of electronic keyboards. Because these teachers themselves had not received comprehensive education on electronic keyboards as an independent instrument, and had only undergone some short-term training to become professional electronic keyboard teachers, they naturally transplanted a set of effective methods from piano teaching to electronic keyboard teaching. This made electronic keyboards in China a substitute for pianos rather than an independent instrument category. This teaching mindset has led to people's (especially parents') current misconceptions about electronic keyboards.

Due to the large price gap between the cheapest electronic keyboards and the cheapest pianos, and because of the apparent high efficiency of existing electronic keyboard teaching, many parents consider low cost and quick results when choosing instruments for their children, rather than the characteristics of the instrument itself. Dominated by this teaching concept, teaching leans heavily towards skill training while neglecting to cultivate students' understanding and expressiveness of music. When teachers choose teaching methods and recommend instruments, they often prefer models with simple functions. Indeed, from the perspective of finger function training alone, there is no essential difference between complex and simple models. On the contrary, choosing a simple model can save teachers the trouble of mastering it themselves.

For a period, YAMAHA's KB-200 model electronic keyboard (a third-rate product from a first-class company) was hyped up to a high price of 3,600 yuan, a price that seriously mismatched its value. This phenomenon is the most ruthless reflection of this teaching concept in the market, causing manufacturers and suppliers to earn unexpectedly huge amounts of money. We must see that manufacturers tirelessly develop new functions, not only out of the need for their own development but also to continuously enrich the expressiveness of electronic keyboards. This point is precisely what has been seriously neglected in our teaching, and this teaching method is in danger of degenerating into finger calisthenics. This has led YAMAHA to continuously design and manufacture its mediocre KB series products specifically for the Chinese market. We should now recognize that YAMAHA's most excellent electronic keyboards are the PSR series. Their superior quality is beyond doubt, but their complex operating functions make our teachers dizzy and overwhelmed.

The author once witnessed firsthand at the Frankfurt Music Fair how a service worker employed by YAMAHA made a PSR series electronic keyboard display astonishing expressiveness. This level of expressiveness is unimaginable in China, reflecting to a certain extent the problem of teaching orientation.

We can divide the performance techniques of electronic keyboards into two main parts: finger playing techniques and function operation techniques. The latter issue has been discussed to some extent earlier. For entry-level and general performance requirements, the difficulty of finger playing techniques required for electronic keyboards is incomparable to that of pianos. In other words, its threshold is indeed much lower than that of pianos. Our teachers have indeed made unique contributions in this part of the teaching and have achieved remarkable results. However, does the lower threshold of electronic keyboards diminish its value? The answer is no, and to really find the answer to this question, we need to rely on our level of understanding of it.

The true charm of electronic keyboards lies in the rich musical elements they contain, which is unparalleled by any traditional instrument. What do these rich musical elements include? Anyone with a little understanding of electronic keyboards knows that even the lowest-end electronic keyboard has rich and diverse timbres, and each timbre is an instrument. Not only that, any electronic keyboard has an automatic accompaniment (AUTO ACCOMP) system that is unimaginable for any traditional instrument. This system is composed of a series of automatic chord rhythms of different styles. And each automatic musical rhythm is itself a type of musical style. As you can see, the amount of musical information that electronic keyboards can provide us is enormous.

Since electronic keyboards contain such a huge amount of musical information, what kind of musical knowledge can we learn from them besides mastering finger playing skills? Take timbre for example. Piano is the timbre most familiar to our electronic keyboard teachers, and they can certainly teach students to play like a real piano. But have our teachers taught their students to play like a real guitar, rather than just a piano with a changed guitar timbre? In fact, mastering the playing techniques that simulate various instruments is an important teaching content of electronic keyboards as KEYBOARD, and after students master this playing method, they will naturally become qualified keyboard players. The severe shortage of keyboard players in the entire popular music industry is largely because our electronic keyboard teaching has not played its due role.

Another point to note is that our teachers tend to emphasize the authenticity of traditional instruments such as piano, trumpet, and clarinet, while ignoring the existence of other timbres. This is due to the teachers' ignorance of popular music knowledge, which is the internal driving force of electronic keyboards, and because of this ignorance, they have seriously misguided manufacturers and students. In fact, it is unnecessary to artificially distinguish between primary and secondary timbres. It's unimaginable that an electronic keyboard with outstanding piano timbre but poor other timbres would become an excellent product. The overall quality of timbres is an important aspect of evaluating the quality of an electronic keyboard.

From a technical perspective, although the accuracy of traditional timbres is rapidly improving with the quick progress of sound source technology, the difference from real instruments will always exist and cannot be overcome. However, electronic technology can create sounds that don't exist in nature, and it's precisely these electronically synthesized timbres that best reflect human creativity and most inspire the player's imagination.

The automatic accompaniment system further demonstrates the perfect combination of human electronic technology and art. The band effect it presents is unattainable by any traditional instrument. Once students begin to learn how to use automatic accompaniment, they immediately enter the realm of multi-part music. What a wonderful concept this is! However, its charm doesn't stop there. As we mentioned earlier: the automatic accompaniment system is composed of a series of automatic chord rhythms of different styles. And each automatic musical rhythm is itself a type of musical style. For example, when choosing a JAZZ style rhythm to accompany a piece of music, students can learn some knowledge about JAZZ music, and at least master how to vary an existing piece of music to make it a real JAZZ piece, rather than just mechanically putting on JAZZ music accompaniment. Similarly, the same piece can be varied into Latin style or dance music style. What an interesting work this is! The question is whether our teachers themselves have this ability.

Let's look at the artistic level that electronic keyboards can achieve!

There is a category of people in the world known as electronic keyboard performers. What qualities should they possess? They should have the skills of a pianist, the talent of a composer, and the sensitivity of an engineer. However, such requirements seem a bit out of reach for an ordinary student. But in the teaching process, incorporating knowledge of harmony, counterpoint, musical form, and orchestration as part of the teaching is the fundamental way to extend students' performance life. Because students learning electronic keyboards are not as lucky as students learning piano - even if you spend your whole life playing by the book, you won't worry about running out of sheet music, because masters have prepared ready-made works for pianists of all levels that can't be played in several lifetimes, as long as you have the corresponding skills and sufficient energy. So for general piano students, creativity is not a fundamental requirement.

However, electronic keyboards are instruments whose content (including musical elements, function settings, and many other aspects) cannot be completely solidified. They are updated along with the development of electronic technology and musical styles, so it's essentially impossible to produce sheet music that is universally applicable to any type of electronic keyboard. Therefore, imagination and creativity become the life of electronic keyboard performance. Hence, cultivating students' imagination and creativity for music is a fundamental purpose in electronic keyboard teaching. This way, it won't lead to many students ending their performance career after completing level ten and leaving their teachers.

It's worth mentioning that there is currently a strong demand in China to incorporate Chinese folk music elements into electronic keyboards. This demand itself is not wrong, as Chinese folk music is a huge treasure trove, and it would undoubtedly help enrich the content of electronic keyboards. However, we should clearly recognize that electronic keyboards are actually an industrialized product of popular music. They are suitable for expressing musical vocabularies with strong rhythms, tight structures, and high repetitiveness, which are precisely the strengths of popular music. So as far as the characteristics of Chinese folk music are concerned, the Chinese folk music that electronic keyboards can express must be a kind of folk music that has been popularized, which is to say it can only be a kind of pseudo-folk music. We can say without hesitation that popular music is the main musical language of electronic keyboards, and we should not artificially impose the mission of promoting national culture on electronic keyboards.

Any attempt at folklorization, at least for now, is only part of the market strategy of various manufacturers, and folklorization can never become mainstream, in any country or region, not just in China. Perhaps this is its flaw, but electronic keyboards were destined from the day they were born not to become an all-powerful instrument. Like any other instrument, they inevitably have both their own advantages and disadvantages. Electronic keyboards should let us hear internationalized musical vocabulary and feel the beating pulse of popular culture. As long as we don't hold narrow concepts and stubborn prejudices about this, we can gain rich knowledge and endless fun.

Here, we don't intend to offend those teachers who have made great contributions with their painstaking efforts. We are just always looking forward to a more perfect situation: electronic keyboards should play a bigger role in our music education.

When we talk about the current state of electronic keyboards, we cannot avoid discussing some technical content of the hardware equipment itself, and some technical characteristics and differences between various brands will inevitably be involved. We will make a cursory scan of this.

Currently, the electronic keyboard products on the market are diverse and varied, and it is indeed quite difficult to choose a satisfactory model among them. Understanding these varieties to a certain extent from a technical perspective may help with our choice.

Without a doubt, YAMAHA is the number one brand in the domestic electronic keyboard market today. Internationally, even if it's not always ranked first, it's at least always in a leading position. Among other foreign brands, only CASIO still guards its own territory in the Chinese market, but it has always been at a disadvantage in competition with YAMAHA. Brands like TECHNICS, KAWAI, JVC, ROLAND either always play supporting roles or have simply disappeared. It's worth noting that ROLAND, as a supreme brand of electronic instruments, has never gained corresponding recognition in the field of electronic keyboards in China, while internationally, it has an indispensable position in this field. These phenomena are certainly factors of the manufacturers' market strategies, but there are also technical reasons.

It's worth noting that a well-known European brand, GENERAL MUSIC, has also quietly landed in China. Although it's hard to predict its market prospects, its European musical taste, which is quite different from Asian brands, will show us another kind of charm.

At this point, comparing YAMAHA and CASIO, the two major brands, has become an unavoidable topic for us.

YAMAHA, as a famous international company, has a wide range of products, but in China, its most well-known and widely used product is electronic keyboards, although it also has a good reputation in traditional instruments, audio equipment, motorcycles, and other fields. In its early stage of entering China, the main technology used in its electronic keyboards and synthesizers was FM (Frequency Modulation) sound source technology. This was YAMAHA's proud patent; other companies could use this technology but had no right to display the FM label. This is a technology that can create something out of nothing, relying only on thorough analysis and calculation of the spectrum of timbres, without the need to store large amounts of sampling data in chips.

Products using this sampling technology launched in the Chinese market included electronic keyboard models such as PSR-22, PSR-26, PSR-32, PSR-36, while the DX series (such as DX-7) synthesizers were the highest achievement of this technology, which once had its moment of glory worldwide. At the Seoul Olympics, audiences around the world witnessed the brilliance of the DX-7: it had the honor of being the live accompaniment instrument for the famous song “HAND IN HAND”. The characteristics of the timbre produced by this FM sound source are pure, clear, and bright, completely free of the mechanical noise inherent in the performance of real instruments, and excel at creating timbres and sounds that don't exist in nature. However, the defects of this sound source were also exposed at the same time. Because the timbre it produced was too clean, it made its listening experience cold, lacking in authenticity, and lacking in human touch, easily causing auditory fatigue. Imagine if a violin had no mechanical friction sound between the bow and the strings during performance, would our ears still be able to get used to its sound? Thus, this sound source technology was destined to be eliminated.

However, just as FM sound source technology was about to exit the historical stage, Creative Technology used YAMAHA's discarded sound source chips YM226 and YM3812 to manufacture a computer built-in accessory called a sound card, and made a fortune from it, establishing its leading position in this field. Its representative product was SB16, giving YAMAHA a way to utilize its waste. But even in this field, FM sound source cards still didn't last long, and they retreated to the second line two years ago.

In the mid to late 1980s, YAMAHA adopted PCM and FM dual modulation sound source technology. The representative products of this period were PSR-37, PSR-47 electronic keyboards and TG series sound sources, and its highest achievement was the SY series synthesizers. Although these timbres seem so crude and inadequate by today's standards, they did indeed make our auditory nerves vibrate with excitement at the time. However, this sound source technology played a transitional role and briefly completed its historical mission.

With the continuous improvement of chip manufacturing technology, PCM sound source technology has become the mainstream sound source technology today. It should be pointed out that FM and PCM sound source technologies have never been completely isolated in use; they only played main and supporting roles in certain historical stages. Even today, when PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) sound source technology occupies an absolute leading position, FM sound source technology still plays some irreplaceable roles in creating special timbres.

Simply put, PCM sound source technology is an algorithmic technology that can compress real timbre samples, but it's not a simple compression method. It can creatively transform the original timbre to produce entirely new sounds. While adopting this technology, each company has its own differences in the compression algorithm of timbre samples, thus making their products show distinctly different personality characteristics.

PCM sound source really began to dominate YAMAHA's electronic keyboard products in the early 1990s. But YAMAHA named its sound source AWMplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_big高级波形记忆技术

AWM(Advanced Wave Memory)是YAMAHA在20实际90年代之后逐渐开始主要使用的一种音源技术，其本质上是PCM采样技术。 to show its uniqueness, and this label continues to this day. However, we shouldn't be confused: it is indeed PCM sound source. In China, the product that really made us see this sound source was the PSR-300 electronic keyboard. However, this product did not leave a prominent impression. Although it had some breakthroughs in appearance compared to previous YAMAHA products, the timbre was still rough, and the functions had no major improvements. Subsequently, the PSR-400 made a brilliant debut, truly giving us a refreshing experience. Compared with recent products, the overall performance of PSR-400's timbre is still mediocre, but its CLEAN GUITAR and percussion timbres delighted us. During this period, YAMAHA consecutively launched PSR-500 and PSR-600, which were basically under the same concept as PSR-300 and PSR-400.

Then, YAMAHA solemnly launched PSR-410 and PSR-510 in China. Compared with the previous generation of products represented by PSR-400, these had significant improvements in terms of timbre, automatic accompaniment system, and functions. At this time, the sound source began to be compatible with the GM standard and laid the foundation for the XG standard. During this period, YAMAHA explosively launched the EL series double-keyboard electronic keyboards, of which the representative was EL-90. Its excellent quality, noble taste, and expensive price gave our senses a strong stimulation.

In the mid to late 1990s, YAMAHA successively launched PSR-520, PSR-620, PSR-640, and now it's already PSR-740. It has undergone revolutionary changes in timbre, function, accompaniment system, and even sound effects. This is a series of products that began to make our consumers feel dizzy, not only because of their hefty prices but more because of their menu-style operating functions, which require operators to have a computer-age way of thinking. However, these products are far from the highest representatives of the product concept they embody. The author had the fortune to see PSR-6000, PSR-6500, PSR-7000 at FRANKFURT MUSIC MESS, which once made the author worry unnecessarily about how YAMAHA would break through itself in the future. These products have blurred the line between electronic keyboards and synthesizers. However, considering the acceptance level of the Chinese market, these products appeared briefly at a global musical instrument exhibition in Shanghai and then disappeared without a trace.

It should be mentioned that, from a technical standpoint, from large sampling machines and synthesizers to small sound modules, electronic keyboards, and even computer sound cards, their technical cores are exactly the same. The core is sound source technology, and the differences lie only in the operating interfaces open to users and their focus. In other words, if cost and market factors are not considered, the timbre of electronic keyboards can be as perfect as that of sampling machines.

It should be pointed out that if we emphasize the authenticity of the timbre itself, YAMAHA is not flawless. Even in the PCM era, its timbre still can't shake off the shadow of the FM era. After all, in the FM era, YAMAHA had thoroughly analyzed the origin of timbre; otherwise, how could it create FM timbres out of thin air? In our view, lack of personality has always been the main drawback of YAMAHA's timbre. Its timbre can be described as neutralized, which is probably the technical reason why YAMAHA often falls behind ROLAND in the competition of top products. But YAMAHA has never made pursuing authenticity its ultimate goal; it has always pursued being different. So YAMAHA's seeming lack of personality becomes, to some extent, some of its advantages. Its timbre is clear and warm, and although individual timbres may have weak expressiveness, they perform exceptionally well when composing multi-part music ensemble, and can imperceptibly cover up its shortcomings, which shows YAMAHA's profound foundation and accumulation.

We should admit that ROLAND's timbre performs well both individually and overall, but it still has many unsatisfactory aspects. Moreover, ROLAND's timbre leaves a lot of room for post-production in recording studios and does not pursue perfection in the timbre of the sound source itself. At the same time, we should recognize that currently, no company has mastered a sound source technology that works perfectly in all situations. Any timbre compression algorithm has its advantages and disadvantages in expressing different timbres.

In an electronic keyboard, timbre and automatic accompaniment system are two fundamental contents. All other functions are subordinate to these two, reflecting the wisdom, foundation, and taste of manufacturers and designers. The rich musical elements contained in the automatic accompaniment system provide us with a large amount of musical information in a concentrated way.

In the FM era, the timbre had no authenticity to speak of, and YAMAHA's automatic accompaniment music sounds hardly worth mentioning today. Due to timbre reasons, and also because there wasn't enough technical space for musicians to fully express themselves, the automatic accompaniment music of this period often showed many helpless aspects: it sounded thin in texture, had little room for variation, lacked a sense of presence, was not much better than the music of low-end game consoles now, and was far from comparable to the effect of a band. However, we got a preliminary understanding of YAMAHA's rigorous style at this time. Because there wasn't much room for development, it forced its arrangement personnel to use the minimum number of notes to express the most basic characteristics of a musical style (for example, using 24 notes to express the basic characteristics of SWING). What a profound musical foundation and tight musical thinking this requires! At the same time, YAMAHA's musicians designed a set of strict operating rules for the automatic accompaniment system. Although it seems primitive and simple by today's standards, these operating rules became a kind of standard, laying a basic framework for later development. Even today, many other brands of electronic keyboards can't match the level of YAMAHA from this period in terms of formulating and implementing automatic accompaniment operating rules.

In the era of FM and PCM dual modulation sound sources, the helpless situation improved significantly. Technological progress gave musicians more room to play, and the automatic accompaniment music of this time had the possibility of being compared with live bands. However, the PSR-37 of this period was indeed a quite unsuccessful product. Probably while musicians were happily enjoying the freedom brought by technological progress, they didn't think much more, so this product filled our ears with a large number of flashy note flows. Our ears no longer had extra space to feel the pleasure brought by music. The direct consequence of this situation was: because the automatic accompaniment music already had too many note flows with strong melody and overused chord tones, it inevitably produced serious conflicts with the main melody of the performer, causing performers to complain. It was like at a party where the guests were too enthusiastic, making it impossible for the host to get a word in edgewise. The PSR-47 had some improvements and was more standardized. At least it could turn off some parts to prevent it from overshadowing the main melody. We believe this situation was not entirely the fault of the musicians, because the improvement in timbre had not reached the point of being able to simulate the effect of a band. Musicians were still unable to design a light but full harmonic background with these timbres, so they could only use notes to fill the gaps brought by poor timbre. And the automatic accompaniment operating rules of this period still did not see major breakthroughs, still following the technical specifications of the FM era.

It wasn't until the real PCM sound source era that the automatic accompaniment music truly approached the live effect of a band. If we can say that the PSR-300 was still barely satisfactory, then the PSR-400 made us feel real and substantial progress. Moreover, YAMAHA's musicians must have had some epiphany during this period. They truly understood that automatic accompaniment is just accompaniment and should leave room for the main melody. Too many notes are sometimes futile. At this time, the automatic accompaniment operating rules also added some new content. Musicians racked their brains to imagine the actual performance state of the band and implemented it in program design. But after all, the PSR-400 was just the beginning of substantial progress, far from the end. It still seemed too flashy in accompaniment music, and the subjective ideas of creators often left people at a loss.

It wasn't until the PSR-510 that the situation had a fundamental improvement: not only did the design of automatic accompaniment music truly reflect the value and role of accompaniment, but the operating rules of automatic accompaniment also reproduced the actual performance state and needs of the band as much as possible. Moreover, different musical styles adopted different processing rules, and at the same time, the number of chords increased to 32, covering almost all types of harmony in modern popular music. The unavoidable poor connections of harmony in electronic keyboards were further reduced.

The PSR-620 was a continuation of the PSR-510 in terms of timbre and automatic accompaniment system, with only minor improvements. Its progress was mainly reflected in the concept of sound effects and functions, especially its functions changed from the original straightforward operation method to a menu-style operation method, which was a conceptual change. The PSR-640 and PSR-740 were basically continuations of the PSR-620 and were not updates to the product concept. They more reflected the progress in sound effects, with a stronger sense of presence. The SR-320, in terms of both function and music, was a simplified version of the PSR-620. And starting from the PSR-620, we began to appreciate the charm of YAMAHA's XG sound source standard on electronic keyboards.

It's worth mentioning that the PSR-640 and PSR-740 have the function of chord inversions. As far as the automatic accompaniment function is concerned, the BASS part is no longer limited to appearing only as the root note of the chord. This processing method was not pioneered by YAMAHA; we saw this function in ROLAND and some European brand electronic keyboards many years ago, and it's not technically difficult to implement, requiring only a simple rule. However, for the performer, their harmonic knowledge needs to be at a certain professional level to fully utilize this function. This function reduces poor harmonic connections to a minimum and allows the BASS part to form a certain melodic line and create counterpoint with the melody. Of course, this comes with higher requirements for the performer.

YAMAHA's automatic accompaniment music is professionally and rigorously arranged, rich in musical elements, with diverse processing rules. It also has a notable feature compared to other brands: rich instrumental parts. However, it doesn't always achieve the best effect by opening all parts at any time. These rich parts only provide diverse orchestration materials for the performer's accompaniment background, but these rich materials need to be reasonably combined by the performer, so basic knowledge and concepts of orchestration are indispensable.

Indeed, YAMAHA deserves its good reputation, but it's not perfect. Its KB series is a mediocre example; the PSR series truly shows its profound foundation. YAMAHA's electronic keyboard program design is reasonable and rigorous, not overly entangled in minor details, so it's rarely found to have errors in program design. The author only occasionally discovered a deeply hidden error in the recording function of PSR-510 that could lead to its crash. In short, every progress of YAMAHA is worth our attention.

As YAMAHA's old rival in China, CASIO has always played a second-tier role in the competition. This is fundamentally due to CASIO's market strategy, but the defects of its products themselves are also an unavoidable main factor leading to this result. Essentially, we can't categorize CASIO as a professional electronic instrument manufacturer. Worldwide, its creativity is mainly reflected in the design and manufacture of toy electronic keyboards. Although we saw quite a few CASIO electronic synthesizers on the market for a period, we could never clearly understand its product concept. On a global scale, CASIO as an electronic instrument manufacturer is at most a third or fourth-tier player (after all, its market share is not small), but because it entered the Chinese market relatively early, it still occupies a considerable share in it, which is also the reason why we need to spend some words on it today.

CASIO never went through a FM sound source stage, meaning it adopted PCM sound source technology from the beginning. Although I believe CASIO still inevitably uses FM methods for some special timbres. In the era when YAMAHA's FM sound source was popular, CASIO had an electronic keyboard CT-670, which competed with YAMAHA's products for a while. Indeed, the timbre of this product was relatively more authentic and had a stronger sense of presence compared to FM sound source products. During this period, in the eyes of ordinary consumers, YAMAHA and CASIO were almost on par, but because PCM technology at that time was far from as perfect as it is now, the PCM sound source did not show much advantage at that time.

The subsequent CT-770 model, in my opinion, had the highest overall technical standard among CASIO's electronic keyboard products sold in China: its timbre reached CASIO's highest standard for electronic keyboards, and the harmony background processing rules in its automatic accompaniment system were the most complete, even surpassing YAMAHA's contemporary products in some aspects. However, this product had a fatal problem: the chord response was sluggish. Unfortunately, CASIO didn't seize the advantage of being the first to enter the PCM sound source market, nor did it show the expected follow-up strength. In the subsequent CTK-650, signs of regression appeared. Although this product began to be compatible with the GM standard and the types of automatic accompaniment styles were greatly enriched, its overall timbre regressed rather than progressed, the operating rules of the automatic accompaniment system were unbelievably simplified, and some habitual errors existing in CASIO products were not corrected.

Overall, CASIO's timbres might have some good quality individually, but the overall expressiveness is poor, especially its percussion instrument group is a weak point. This also limits the space for CASIO's musicians to perform. It seems crude and unreasonable in formulating the operating rules of the automatic accompaniment system, rarely carefully examining the needs of performance. The automatic accompaniment music has simple parts and little variability, leaving little room for performers to match and choose, and program design errors are not difficult to find. It seems to have lost the motivation to progress, and the designers' wisdom is merely reflected in making some confusing changes to some functions.

We often hear teachers complain that CASIO's automatic accompaniment music is too flashy, with too many non-chord tones, often causing serious conflicts with the main melody. This phenomenon is certainly related to our music concepts (the author once witnessed a service staff playing a wonderful FUNK music piece with CT-650 at CASIO's exhibition area at FRANKFURT MUSIC MESS), but it also reveals CASIO's stubborn disregard for performance needs.

At this point, we feel a certain sense of guilt in our hearts: it seems we have been too harsh on CASIO. But while affirming CASIO's undeniable contributions to China's electronic keyboard market, we also hope it can come up with truly convincing products.

After more than twenty years of development, we see that the domestic electronic keyboard industry has become a force that cannot be underestimated in the market. Under the heavy pressure from imported brands, it has won a considerable share for itself.

In the late 1980s, the number of electronic keyboard manufacturers in China once reached a record 114. The initial products were those called reed keyboards, where the keyboard was solved by reed switches; the timbre was generated using analog filters; and the automatic accompaniment was achieved by using simple pulse signals to trigger a simple drum generator. This electronic keyboard, which now seems too low-end even as a toy, became a consumption hotspot for ordinary people at that time, which seems inconceivable. There is a fact: there was a time when domestically produced Huaxing brand electronic keyboards sparked a buying frenzy in major department stores in the city, causing merchants to frequently report shortages to manufacturers. This is an event that can evoke beautiful memories for Huaxing people! Unfortunately, such a grand scene quickly dissipated after that.

None of these numerous manufacturers had the ability to develop what we now consider electronic keyboards controlled by single-chip computers. It was impossible to survive on reed keyboards alone, and the market's principle of survival of the fittest determined that only the best among them could survive. To date, among the many electronic keyboard manufacturers of that time, only Huaxing has truly made an impact in the market. The rest have either been eliminated or remain in a scattered state. The Medeli electronic keyboard, which currently shows strong momentum in the market, is truly a rising star, and its development trajectory is exactly the opposite of Huaxing's.

Let's list the names of a few companies that have or have had real significance in the electronic keyboard market: Huaxing (Shanghai), Deli (Hong Kong), Shihui (Hong Kong), Anda (Guangdong), and Jiahua (Hong Kong). Among them, Jiahua started the earliest but quickly weakened and is now nowhere to be found. Anda has experienced multiple splits and mergers, never forming a significant presence, and electronic keyboards are now only occasional products for them. Shihui split into three companies: SBS (which started anew in Hong Kong, manufacturing toy electronic keyboards for export in an OEM manner), Eiffel (reportedly manufacturing small household appliances in Shanghai's Chongming), and Jianhua. Among them, Jianhua (MULTAK) has achieved a leading position in the field of VCD design in China, and its MIDI VCD can be seen as an extension in the field of electronic musical instruments. It has grown into a home appliance development company of initial scale.

Huaxing and Deli are the two major domestic brands that form an opposition to imported brands in the Chinese market, and they are worth our attention. This article will spend some words on them.

The name Huaxing has probably become synonymous with domestic electronic keyboards to some extent. For a considerable period, it occupied nearly half of the domestic electronic keyboard market, although people could easily find various defects in it. Although it is now increasingly challenged by Medeli, we cannot ignore its existence in any case, nor can we deny its contributions to Chinese electronic instruments.

In its early days, Huaxing was just a street collective enterprise, but it has now grown into a star enterprise in Shanghai's Huangpu District. Its success mainly relies on its flagship product - electronic keyboards. At the beginning of this brand's creation, Huaxing did not have the ability to develop electronic keyboard software. It mainly relied on Shihui Company and Deli Company to provide the main chips, among which Shihui Company was its main chip supplier at that time. In the FM sound source era, its representative works were H-616 and H-818, whose sound source chip was H-882 developed by Shihui Company. In the PCM sound source era, its representative works were H-6000 and H-6500. From the product itself, H-6500 was undoubtedly a more complete product with high cost-performance ratio. The sound source chips of these two products were 9233 and 9407 from the French company DREAM, and the control software for the products was initially developed by Shihui Company, but now they have their own replacement software. During Huaxing's development process, they also used sound source chips from the American company ENSONIQ, but due to its complex circuit structure, production costs increased accordingly, which ultimately made Huaxing abandon this solution. However, in the market, Huaxing has an electric piano that is the only work adopting this solution, which is a product with high cost-performance ratio.

In the mid-1990s, while establishing a firm foothold in the market, Huaxing gradually built up a software development team, beginning to break free from the constraints of chip suppliers. This allowed it to form a business model integrating development, production, and sales, thus gaining the ability to stand out among domestic electronic keyboard manufacturers. This sounds like “In Shu there are no great generals, so Liao Hua has to serve as the vanguard,” but for the current state of electronic keyboards, it's not an allusion, but reality.

Huaxing is a faithful follower of YAMAHA, which also means it has always been under YAMAHA's shadow. The functions of Huaxing's products are almost a copy of YAMAHA's, but the copy is very superficial. The operation of YAMAHA's product functions is based on a set of refined and complete rules, while in comparison, the operating rules of Huaxing's products appear crude, simple, and have many loopholes. It's only a surface imitation of some of YAMAHA's features, far from touching its essence. The surface imitation and in-depth development of a product are two different levels of concepts.

The timbres of Huaxing electronic keyboards are basically purchased from its chip supplier DREAM company. It does not have the ability to produce timbres itself. However, although DREAM company's chips have good hardware quality, because its chips are mainly supplied to the multimedia and MIDI VCD markets, and the requirements for timbre in these products are much lower than those for electronic instruments, and DREAM company itself does not have very strong timbre production capabilities, the timbres it produces are quite different from the requirements of electronic instruments. However, it provides a set of timbre production systems to customers. However, because Huaxing does not have its own timbre development personnel, it can only be subject to chip suppliers, unable to form its own timbre characteristics and concepts. Moreover, since DREAM company's development momentum has been weakening since it was acquired by ATMEL, Huaxing is inevitably constrained, and the consequences are predictable. Huaxing should understand: there is no unchanging standard timbre in the world, otherwise, there would be no need for different brands, manufacturers, and tastes of pianos and violins in the world. The so-called GM standard is only a timbre sequence standard, it does not and cannot specify sound quality. But it is precisely because of the differences in sound quality and taste that it is possible to build one's own timbre concept, not to mention that music is developing and new timbres are constantly emerging. The production of timbres is a task that every electronic instrument manufacturer must do.

Huaxing also does not have its own fixed music personnel, so its automatic accompaniment system's musical materials are either provided by foreign merchants who place orders, or written by some musicians who are not familiar with the key points and do not master various musical elements skillfully, or simply buy some second or third-rate goods from Europe. These hard-collected musical materials may not be suitable for its music and cabinet, and Huaxing does not have the ability to adjust them on its own, so the quality of its music cannot be guaranteed. Moreover, due to the lack of music personnel to design a set of detailed automatic accompaniment operating rules that meet the needs of performance for its products, the musical expressiveness of the products is greatly discounted. Huaxing should also understand that without in-depth research by music design personnel, it is impossible to improve its product taste, nor can it form its own music concepts and styles, and its products thus have no soul.

Huaxing persists in following a low-price strategy in the market, which is its most proud strategy. But in our view, this is precisely its fatal weakness. It at least weakens Huaxing's motivation for development, because electronic keyboards can never reach the scale of production and sales of TVs, refrigerators, or VCDs. The low-price strategy is tantamount to slow suicide.

As a rising star in domestic electronic keyboards, Medeli has shown strong momentum. Huaxing's dominance in the domestic electronic keyboard market is facing severe challenges. From this year's market sales situation, these two major brands have formed a situation of equal rivalry in the domestic market. From a development perspective, Medeli has stronger potential.

The Medeli brand was founded in the mid-1990s by Hong Kong's Deli Electronics Co., Ltd., but the company itself was established more than ten years earlier. Now its development center has been moved to Shanghai in the mid-1990s, and at the same time, it has established production and sales bases in Shenzhen.

In the early days of its establishment, Deli Company mainly focused on developing control software and chips for various electrical appliances, with electronic keyboards being just one of its projects. However, its most successful product was the MC-3 electronic keyboard chip. It sold 1 million electronic keyboards with this chip as the core in the form of OEM for various European brands globally, laying a solid foundation for it in the field of electronic keyboards. In China, for a time, electronic keyboards with MC-3 as the core in various shapes and different packaging filled major department stores across the country. During that period, almost no domestic manufacturer producing electronic keyboards did not use this chip, including Huaxing. At the first National Electronic Keyboard Golden Sound Award selection meeting, MC-3 electronic keyboards occupied almost half, while the other half was shared by products with chips designed by companies such as Jiahua, Shihui, and Anda, showing how strong MC-3 was at that time. It's ironic that our experts could distinguish essential differences between many products with MC-3 as the core, which is both laughable and lamentable.

When Huaxing's whole machine products were at their peak, Deli quietly accumulated its energy, and the Medeli brand was a result of this natural progression.

The great success of MC-3 in the market gave Deli the foundation and determination to further develop in-depth in the field of electronic instruments. Next, Deli launched its classic work MC-10. If we say that MC-3's greatest success was reflected in its securing a place for Deli in the global toy keyboard market, then MC-10 was a sign of Deli stepping into the field of professional electronic instrument manufacturing. In this product, some of the most professional performance keyboard function frameworks and automatic accompaniment system processing rules were used quite completely and reasonably. Even now, other brands of domestic electronic keyboards still haven't reached the height of MC-10 at that time in these aspects. MC-10 used the H-882, a substitute for YAMAHA's FM sound source YM-3812, which was developed by Shihui Company at that time. Later, Deli also developed a sound source 9008 with the same function and replaced H-882 with it. For a time, various domestic electronic keyboard manufacturers were eager for MC-10, successively using MC-10 chips to make products. The scene was no less lively than that of MC-3. Medeli's whole machine product using the MC-10 chip was MC-108. At the same time, due to fierce market competition, the more than 100 domestic electronic keyboard manufacturers at that time had been reduced to very few by this time, and market share began to concentrate on a few brands, which were the survivors of the competition.

Even from today's perspective, the MC-10 electronic keyboard is still a very good entry-level instrument for learning electronic keyboard performance. Although after it, various Hong Kong and mainland companies (including Deli itself) designed many types of FM sound source electronic keyboards, none truly surpassed the level of MC-10. From all aspects, MC-10 was a quite complete and excellent learning keyboard.

In the mid-1990s, Deli Company completed its strategic shift. Its development center moved from Hong Kong to Shanghai, beginning to explore and utilize mainland talent resources. At the same time, it established its own production base in Shenzhen, and the Medeli brand was also created at this time. At the development center in Shanghai, Deli equipped itself with a music department that other similar companies in China still don't have today. This addition strengthened Deli's development in the field of electronic instruments, ensuring the musical quality of its products. This was Deli's proud move, and we can't help but admire the foresight of its operators: under the condition that the technical standards of various companies are roughly the same, the autonomous control and reasonable use of music resources undoubtedly enhanced the professional quality of its products and widened the gap with other companies' products. Their music personnel conducted meticulous research on the musical materials of various imported brands and cooperated closely with the engineering department to establish a complete set of product design specifications, in which the leading role of music personnel was evident and effective.

At the end of 1995, Deli launched an electronic keyboard called MC-150. It was the first PCM electronic keyboard independently designed and developed in China, with milestone significance. It marked the beginning of domestic electronic keyboards entering the PCM stage, and this product won large foreign sales orders for Deli. At the same time, as this was the first PCM sound source product, its defects were inevitable. The two fatal weaknesses were rough timbre and slow response of automatic accompaniment, which were purely caused by insufficient technical preparation (including both engineering and music aspects). However, at that specific historical stage, this was probably unavoidable.

It's worth mentioning that the sound source used in MC-150 was the second-generation product 9203 from the French company DREAM, with DREAM company providing the sound library. However, 9203 was initially designed as a sound source for computer sound cards, and its timbre and underlying programs were mainly suitable for multimedia products, making it somewhat inadequate for electronic keyboards. So the various defects of MC-150 were inevitable. The author once had the fortune to play an Italian SOLTON MS-50 high-end performance keyboard, which used the 9203 sound source, but its timbre and underlying programs were redesigned and produced by SOLTON's engineers and musicians, making MS-50 an outstanding product. So the hardware quality of DREAM's products is unquestionable, but its software (including timbre) is much inferior. To make good use of DREAM's products, modification is inevitable.

Subsequently, Deli successively launched its PCM series, among which PK-7 was a high-end performance keyboard developed and produced in cooperation with GENERAL MUSIC, equipped with a floppy drive. It's worth mentioning that among Deli's PCM series electronic keyboards, MC-100 is a product that should be in the same position as MC-10. Its value lies in that it's not the highest-end, but the most complete in all aspects. We believe it is the first choice for learning keyboards among domestic electronic keyboards.

Deli's products have always tried to break free from YAMAHA's shadow, but they often get bogged down in some functional technical details, causing the program framework of their products to be disrupted, ultimately making their functions seem cumbersome and lacking in coordination. They should pay more attention to the actual needs of performance.

Deli's timbre production work has just started, and this work is of far-reaching significance, but they still lack necessary accumulation and experience, so they haven't been able to form their own style and system yet. Deli should understand that timbre production personnel are like the conductor of an orchestra, who must integrate the timbre of each instrument into a whole. It's unreasonable to simply emphasize the timbre of a certain instrument. People who produce music all have this experience: combining YAMAHA's best timbre with ROLAND's best timbre doesn't necessarily produce the best effect. Therefore, the unity of timbre texture is a crucial factor, which is a prerequisite for forming a style. In this respect, YAMAHA is a successful example.

Deli's products show a trend of simplification in the operating rules of automatic accompaniment. Indeed, ordinary performers find it difficult to quickly appreciate the subtleties, and the good or bad performance effects are gradually revealed. YAMAHA's success lies in its unremitting efforts to enhance performance expressiveness, making its products always a cut above the rest.

Deli hasn't reached a state of ease in the design of automatic accompaniment music yet. This requires their musicians to go through a process of continuous accumulation and updating of musical materials, and to carefully analyze and study the materials. They should try to shorten the process of imitating imported products as much as possible. In the design process, the needs of performance should still be the first consideration to be addressed.

The progress made by domestic electronic keyboards is evident. Even on a global scale, although it hasn't produced a recognized brand, it still occupies a certain market share in various OEM forms. Domestically, domestic electronic keyboards have formed a counterbalance to imported brands in mid-to-low-end products. However, to make domestic electronic keyboards truly complete the leap from quantitative to qualitative change, there is still a long way to go, and some inherent defects of the products themselves should also be fully addressed.

First, domestic electronic keyboards, like other domestic electronic products, don't have their own concept. Key technologies are still controlled by chip suppliers. This is because no domestic electronic keyboard design and production company masters the ability to design sound sources forward, knows nothing about timbre algorithms, lacks creativity in product function design, and still takes imitation of imported products as its guiding principle. We know that first-class is built on the basis of one's own product concept. Without conceptual creativity, one can at best become second-class.

Secondly, in terms of music, they should establish a strong design team. Their music practitioners should complete three aspects of work: first, for timbre production; second, for music production; third, for conceptual planning of functions. They don't need those who are casually called musicians, but those who can skillfully master and use various musical elements, and have a fairly high technical sensitivity, possessing thinking abilities in both music and engineering aspects. In Europe and America, because of their large music population and higher level of musical foundation, popular music teaching has been standardized and scaled, and the popularization rate of computers is high, such personnel are not difficult to find. But in China, constrained by the overall music environment, we may have masters of certain types of music, but such all-rounders are almost non-existent. Our music education also lacks the conditions to cultivate such music talents, so self-cultivation according to their own needs is almost the only way out for manufacturers. In this respect, Deli has gone far ahead and has shown some advantages, but it will take time to achieve a qualitative leap.

Third, because the speaker is an important component of the electronic keyboard, they should conduct acoustic research and experiments on the keyboard body itself to improve its acoustic quality. As far as we know, such research and experiments are a neglected link in domestic electronic keyboards.

For a period of time, we have been thinking about the issues of music education and popularization. This article is a result of this thinking. We believe that electronic keyboards should have their corresponding, higher status in our musical life. For our ancient country with a weak musical foundation, the role of electronic keyboards in popularizing music cannot be underestimated. It should attract more of our attention.

The progress made by domestic electronic keyboards is evident. Even on a global scale, although it hasn't produced a recognized brand, it still occupies a certain market share in various OEM forms. Domestically, domestic electronic keyboards have formed a counterbalance to imported brands in mid-to-low-end products. However, to make domestic electronic keyboards truly complete the leap from quantitative to qualitative change, there is still a long way to go, and some inherent defects of the products themselves should also be fully addressed.

First, domestic electronic keyboards, like other domestic electronic products, don't have their own concept. Key technologies are still controlled by chip suppliers. This is because no domestic electronic keyboard design and production company masters the ability to design sound sources forward, knows nothing about timbre algorithms, lacks creativity in product function design, and still takes imitation of imported products as its guiding principle. We know that first-class is built on the basis of one's own product concept. Without conceptual creativity, one can at best become second-class.

Secondly, in terms of music, they should establish a strong design team. Their music practitioners should complete three aspects of work: first, for timbre production; second, for music production; third, for conceptual planning of functions. They don't need those who are casually called musicians, but those who can skillfully master and use various musical elements, and have a fairly high technical sensitivity, possessing thinking abilities in both music and engineering aspects. In Europe and America, because of their large music population and higher level of musical foundation, popular music teaching has been standardized and scaled, and the popularization rate of computers is high, such personnel are not difficult to find. But in China, constrained by the overall music environment, we may have masters of certain types of music, but such all-rounders are almost non-existent. Our music education also lacks the conditions to cultivate such music talents, so self-cultivation according to their own needs is almost the only way out for manufacturers. In this respect, Deli has gone far ahead and has shown some advantages, but it will take time to achieve a qualitative leap.

Third, because the speaker is an important component of the electronic keyboard, they should conduct acoustic research and experiments on the keyboard body itself to improve its acoustic quality. As far as we know, such research and experiments are a neglected link in domestic electronic keyboards.

For a period of time, we have been thinking about the issues of music education and popularization. This article is a result of this thinking. We believe that electronic keyboards should have their corresponding, higher status in our musical life. For our ancient country with a weak musical foundation, the role of electronic keyboards in popularizing music cannot be underestimated. It should attract more of our attention.