Keyboard is a musical instrument played using a keyboard. The term Keyboard is restricted to instruments in which sound is produced from strings, whether by plucking, striking, or rubbing, or from pipes or reeds.The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches. any musical instrument on which different notes can be sounded by pressing a series of keys, push buttons, or parallel levers. In nearly all cases in Western music the keys correspond to consecutive notes in the chromatic scale, and they run from the bass at the left to the treble at the right. This large group of instruments has assumed great importance because the keyboard enables a performer to play many notes at once as well as in close succession. This versatility enables the modern pianist or organist to play, in transcription, any work of Western music, whether it involves chordal harmonies, independent contrapuntal parts, or only a single melody.
The keyboard is originated from the organ, which is a mechanical set of panpipes in which the air flow is produced by bellows which are controlled by the keyboard. Electric organs first appeared in the 1940s, and by the 1960s and 1970s the electronic organ was the instrument of choice in the keyboard market.
The first organ incorporating drum machines was also introduced in the 1970’s. Full accompaniment sections, which allowed entire orchestrations to be played as notes on the keyboard. Original organs used analog technology, but when pianos went digital, so did organs! This meant that electronic keyboards could sound like any instrument. During the 1980s, as electronic circuitry became more compact, portable modern music keyboards were introduced.
The days of playing the piano are long gone, now a days; keyboards are the way to go. They provide the same benefits and pure sound of a full sized piano or Grand piano along with extra sounds and instruments that can make anyone who is willing to learn into one person keyboard band. Keyboard instruments therefore describe the range of sounds that electronic keyboards are now able to produce through various settings.