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Electronic keyboard

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Electronic keyboard

An electronic keyboard, portable keyboard, or digital keyboard is an electronic musical instrument based on keyboard instruments. Electronic keyboards include synthesizers, digital pianos, stage pianos, electronic organs and digital audio workstations. In technical terms, an electronic keyboard is a rompler-based synthesizer with a low-wattage power amplifier and small loudspeakers.

Electronic keyboards offer a diverse selection of instrument sounds (piano, organ, violin, etc.) along with synthesizer tones. Designed primarily for beginners and home users, they generally feature unweighted keys. While budget models lack velocity sensitivity, mid-range options and above often include it.  These keyboards have limited sound editing options, focusing on preset sounds. Casio and Yamaha are major manufacturers in this market, known for popularizing the concept since the 1980s.

An electronic keyboard may also be called a digital keyboard, or home keyboard, the latter often refers to less advanced or inexpensive models intended for beginners. The obscure term "portable organ" was widely used in Asian countries to refer to electronic keyboards in the 1990s, due to the similar features between electronic keyboards and electronic home organs, the latter of which were popular in the late 20th century.

In Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, most types of electronic keyboards (including digital pianos and stage pianos) were simply often referred to as a "synthesizer" (Russian: синтезатор, sintezator), usually with no other term to distinguish them from actual digital synthesizers.

The term electronic keyboard may also be used to refer to a synthesizer or digital piano in colloquial usage

The major components of a typical modern electronic keyboard are:

Keyboard instruments trace back to the ancient hydraulis in the 3rd century BCE, later evolving into the pipe organ and smaller portative and positive organs. The clavichord and harpsichord emerged in the 14th century CE, Technological strides brought more advanced keyboards, including the modern 12-tone version. Initially, instruments like the pipe organ and harpsichord could only produce single-volume sounds. The 18th-century innovation of the pianoforte, with hammers striking metal strings via key pressure, enabled dynamic sound variation.

Electric keyboards began with applying electric sound technology. The first was the Denis d'or stringed instrument, made by Václav Prokop Diviš in 1748, with 700 electrified strings. In 1760, Jean Baptiste Thillaie de Laborde introduced the clavecin électrique, an electrically activated keyboard without sound creation. Elisha Gray invented the musical telegraph in 1874, producing sound through electromagnetic vibrations. Gray later added a single-note oscillator and a diaphragm-based loudspeaker for audibility.

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