Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Keyboards for cheaters

Roland BK-5 with an FC-7 pedal board would be a good choice.

BK-5
FC-7

The BK-7m & FC-7 with the your keyboard of choice is another good choice especially if your looking for 88 weighted Keys.

Many of the Roland boards like the Roland Stage which I believe can only be found used, had some support for wav & mp3 playback but not using a foot switch like the FC-7.

I haven't used one but the Behringer FCB1010 seems very popular as a pedal midi system, eg:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Behringer-F..._1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341503360&sr=8-1
And should be rather cheaper than the FC-7

The CP5 can be used as a playback system. I use Band In A Box and save the wav files to a USB stick. It's very easy to adjust volume and call up the specific file you want on the CP5.

Also, a microphone can be directly connected to the CP5, also with its own volume control\mute and range of effects. This is an overlooked feature but makes controlling the mic a piece of cake.

If you're creating the backing tracks outside of the keyboard, the CP5 might be in the running for you. I've used it with backing tracks (BIAB) and it worked smoothly and easily for my needs.

I second the BK5 if you can get by with 61 keys. I've not played it but I did have the BK7M for several months (the BK5 had not been released yet). It does everything you've asked and you can load even more styles than it comes with via thumb drive. Plus you can load the drive with your MP3s and play along with them. The tones are what you'd expect from Roland and the styles are numerous but there are tons of disco and latino which I don't use at all. Being a table top module I found it awkward to use and never found a convenient place to keep it.
If the BK5 were 88 keys, I'd have bought it.

I like the software route, myself. What keyboards give ya are inevitably
a bit limited.
Unfortunately, researching the software takes some effort...
Good luck to ya

And that's not cheating !!
If it is, then playing in a band is too.

It's not cheating to use software to replace real live musicians, it's morally reprehensible.

I don't think anyone on pianoworld would ever want to replace live musicians with software. That's just dumb - software can't make music as well as people. My point was that practicing with backing tracks is perfectly cool. And it was off topic - sorry bout that.

good luck with the keyboard search.