When I was a young girl my family owned a keyboard, although I think we referred to it as an organ back then.
I used to love to play with it every chance I had. We did have music sheets for it, but I couldn’t read music, so I just made up my own songs.
My sister taught me how to play the Marine Battle Hymn (our brother was in the Marines back then). I also learned how to play Silent Night, but I honestly don’t remember how I learned it. Maybe my sister taught me that too.
A friend of mine in high school taught me how to play the theme to the Godfather on our organ as well.
I only knew how to play a few songs. Most of the time I just made stuff up.
Our organ/keyboard didn’t have any “bells and whistles.” It was as basic as it gets. Today’s keyboards a light years ahead of our keyboard. Today’s keyboards are truly amazing with their capabilities.
I was sent to review a brand new keyboard. I received to review the Casio CT-X700 portable keyboard.
We’ve had this keyboard all summer and I can honestly say we still haven’t scratched the surface of all it’s amazing capabilities. Talk about “bells and whistles” – WOW!
This affordable keyboard could easily sell for thousands with all it can do.
Let me start with the basics.
This is a portable keyboard, meaning you can take it with you where ever you go. It’s not very heavy at all. It’s large size might be a bit cumbersome for “vertically challenged” (short) people like myself, but it’s light weight enough to take it from place to place.
The keyboard runs on both a plug or batteries (6 AA batteries, which are not included). I LOVE that it uses batteries so I am not confined to placing it next to an outlet in order to use it. Most outlets in our home are not readily accessible or they already had things plugged into them. I like that I can literally enjoy this in any room of our condo.
You can start enjoying this right out of the box. There is no assembly or set up required. Just find a comfy location to play with it.
The built in speakers are phenomenal. You can get this to go pretty loud, so much so that my husband was worried that we might be bothering our downstairs neighbors with it. I wasn’t worried. I wouldn’t never play this on a loud setting anyway. Besides, their large dog parks non-stop all day and night. I think a little “payback” would be acceptable. Ha Ha.
The keyboard has a large panel where you can access all the features. I will admit that I was (and still am) a bit overwhelmed by it all. There are so many things I am really not very knowledgeable about such as splits, beat metronome, and working with tone and rhythm. To be honest, whenever I play with this I just play around with the various buttons. It’s fun enough just to come up with my own music. I’m sure over time I’ll learn what all the buttons really do. That is why I said that I barely scratched the surface of what this incredibly piece of musical equipment can do.
There is a keypad that allows you to punch in the numbers/codes for the various features you want to utilize. The codes are printed right on the keyboard so that you have easy access to them and you don’t have to stop what you are doing to look them up in a book/manual.
There is a tremendous variety of instruments you can play on this keyboard, including instruments that most people don’t play anymore, like a harpsichord, to really funky instruments/sounds. It’s like you can play music that sounds like it’s from the olden days all the way up to modern/funky sounds. There are even drums and string instruments! The possibilities are endless with what you can create with all these instruments to choose from.
What impressed me is how incredibly realistic the instruments sound. There is nothing “fake” about them. If you closed your eyes you would truly believe you were listening to a guitar, or a drum or even a string instrument. The sounds are so lifelike that it’s hard to believe they are coming from a keyboard in your home.
There are hundreds (if not thousands) of possibilities when you utilize the instruments, tones and rhythms together. Again, I’m still learning how to use this so I haven’t even been able to see all that it can do.
One of my most favorite features, aside from the realistic sounds, is the display where you can learn to play music. The keyboard comes with 100 songs that you can learn to play by watching the display. The screen will tell you what keys to press on the keyboard.
I think the lessons are a GREAT feature, but for me, it takes time to learn where to put your fingers. There are so many keys and it takes me time to count over from the ends so I know which key specifically to press. There might be an easier way to do it, but I haven’t figured it out yet.
I think I am missing out on telling you about more of the great features this instrument has. There is just so much it does!
What I love about this is that it’s something myself, and my family, can enjoy for a very long time. It will take a while for us to figure out all the features. It’s great that we can learn it at our own pace. It’s also fun just to press buttons and make our own music.
Our daughter recently commented that we have something fun to do if/when we lose electricity rather than just sit there. Because this runs on batteries, it would be fun to use to entertain ourselves until the power comes back on.
Whether you are an experienced musician, or a “newbie” like me and my family, the Casio CT-X700 is the perfect piece of equipment to use.
For more information about this and other Casio products, visit Casio.com. You can find the musical instruments category on the top menu bar for “products.”
What do you think about this AMAZING keyboard? Does it sound like something you would enjoy playing with?
Kimberly
*I received a free product sample to review. There was no compensation. The opinions expressed are my own and not influenced in any way.