Music Workstation - Modern Music Workstations

Modern Music Workstations

Yamaha, Roland and Korg now have sampling as a default option with the Yamaha Motif line (introduced 2001), the Roland Fantom series (introduced 2001) and the Korg Triton (introduced 1999), Korg OASYS, and Korg M3 Workstations have a fairly large screen to give a comprehensive overview of the sound, sequencer and sampling options. Since the display is one of the most expensive components of these workstations, Roland and Yamaha initially chose to keep costs down by not using a touch screen or high-resolution display, but have added such in later models.

Another path of music product development that started with the feature set of music workstations is to provide entirely software-based products, using virtual instruments. This is the concept of the digital audio workstation, and many of these products have emulated the multitrack recording metaphors of sequencers first developed in the music workstations.

Open Labs introduced the Production Station in 2003, which changed the relationship of the music workstation and the personal computer from a model where the music workstation interfaces to the PC into one where the music workstation is a PC with a music keyboard and a touch screen display.

A variation on Open Labs' approach, Korg released the Korg OASYS in 2005. OASYS housed inside a keyboard music workstation housing a computer running a custom operating system built on the Linux kernel. OASYS was an acronym for Open Architecture SYnthesis Studio, underscoring Korg's ability to release new capabilities via ongoing software updates. OASYS not only included a synthesizer, sampling, and a sequencer, but the ability to digitally record multi-track audio. OASYS was discontinued in 2009, and Korg Kronos, an updated version built on the same concept, was introduced in January, 2011.