The ONE Smart Keyboard Pro lets you tickle the ivories with ease
While the ONE Smart Keyboard Pro doesn’t have a sweet demo tune nor can it play barking dog Jingle Bells without some help, it can teach you or your kids how to play piano. The elegant keyboard has 88 weighted keys that simulate a true mechanical piano and connects to your phone so you can […]
While the ONE Smart Keyboard Pro doesnât have a sweet demo tune nor can it play barking dog Jingle Bells without some help, it can teach you or your kids how to play piano. The elegant keyboard has 88 weighted keys that simulate a true mechanical piano and connects to your phone so you can learn to play at your own pace.
The Keyboard Pro costs $799 and is essentially a compact teaching keyboard. It can connect to your iOS or Android devices via an oddly shaped USB B cable and once itâs paired with the app you can run through simple songs â think Greensleeves â and more complex sheet music. This keyboard is weighted but not progressively which means that each key offers the same resistance, a consideration that might be important to some more experienced players. Further, you can connect a USB cable and connect the keyboard to your computer to use it as a MIDI controller.
Again, this is a very austere keyboard. It doesnât do much aside from teach you how to play which, in the end, is what most of us need. Because it doesnât have the expansive bells and whistles of a Casio and because most of the smarts are in the app itself, itâs a bit of a hard sell for most people. However, if youâre looking to learn, the ONE works.
This larger and more complete version of the One Smart Keyboard offers quality workmanship and design. The entire system is surprisingly sparse with nothing but a power button and volume on the front of the keyboard. There is an input for a sustain pedal as well as a few output jacks for headphones and thatâs about it. Donât expect to pick out instruments or pitch shift with this keyboard. Once you fire up the app you have access to teaching exercises and games that let you follow along on the LED-lit keyboard as you run through songs and scales. Finally, you can buy sheet music for $3.99 or so that you can learn to play on the ONE. There is also free sheet music available for those who want to play a little classical.
I found the entire system to be quite usable and my kids, once they figured out how to slow down the music, jumped right in learning little songs. Nothing can quite teach you how to play piano like a human teacher â there arenât enough smarts in this app to make adjustments based on your skill â but itâs the electronic equivalent of buying a Teach Yourself Piano book and sitting down in front of grandmaâs old upright. Iâm especially pleased with the quality of the keyboard. Iâve already had a few MIDI keyboards over the years including models from Casio and Yamaha and this one is on par with those. The teaching feature is the main draw here, as I noted before, because there is little else you can do with this keyboard right out of the box. However, if thatâs what youâre looking for in a keyboard and you donât want to sample bodily noises so you can play Farting Clair De Lune at the school talent show, this might be the model for you.