When choosing equipment for use in a studio or for live applications you'll find many options available and open to you, so here's another one, the CMS 61 Computer Music Station. It's a wonderful creation that promises to become, among other things, the perfect solution to a problem facing almost everyone who is building or who works in any kind of MIDI studio. Space!

As you may notice from the picture above, the computer and mouse pad actually fit into specially shaped recesses which means that everything is exactly where it needs to be for maximum comfort and convenience.

Another plus, for all you live performers out there, is that it's actually lighter than one of those "classic" disco style keyboard controllers that were so popular in the early eighties (used by those who for some reason weren't perfectly happy holding the fort in the back corner of the stage), and if you don't think weight is an issue for a touring performer just wait until you have to a move a keyboard and a rack of gear from the hotel lobby to your room and back again for a few weeks because you got assigned to programming the next album that goes into pre-production at tours' end (I know....it happened to me!).

So those are a few considerations considered, the unique space saving design and the lack of that pesky weight thing. And just in case you're not familiar with the company that makes it, Fatar just happens to be the biggest manufacturer of MIDI controller keyboards in the world.

We found the keyboard itself to be responsive and very well made, with none of the sponginess often associated with unweighted keyboards. We also found the controls to be intelligently layed out and extremely easy to use with most operations consisting of the press of a button and then the press of the key which corresponds to the parameter or instruction that is printed on the strip that runs the length of the keyboard.

All the usual realtime controllers such as modulation and pitch wheels are present, and each of the expression wheels can be programmed to controller almost every function that your hardware or software based sound engines/recording devices are capable of recieving.

All in all we can't think of a better controller to use on stage or in a CPU based digital studio environment, and remember that there are two keyboards sharing almost equal billing in such a studio so what could be better than having one right on top of the other!

Technical Specifications

61 unweighted keys
Full size Velocity Sensitive
Pitch Bend Wheel and Programmable Wheel
Two Parallel Midi Outputs
Sustain Input Jack
Volume Input Jack
Program Change, Midi Channel Change, Transpose
Programmable Wheel
External Adapter 9V DC 5OOmA included
Dimensions: 38" x 15.75" x 3.25"
Weight: 11 lbs. 8 oz. (Yes, that's right. A 61 note keyboard weighing less than 12 lbs.!!)

To contact Fatar check out their entry in our Manufacturers department.

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