Hi and thanks in advance for any suggestions.

My middle daughter is a film production student and has expressed a need for a keyboard to help with her music scoring for her film projects. She also enjoys playing piano casually for relaxation and has missed not having an instrument while away at school. We have used a 20 year old Korg synth (DX-7) and we purchased a Yamaha P-120 for my eldest daughter when she went to music school in 2006 - but I am a quite out of touch with what's best these days. The Korg was a bit of a superstar in its day, and the P-120 has turned out to be a very solid piano taking all that a multi-program student on her third different university can dish out.

My daughter uses a top-end 2011 iMac for her video editing, but typically bootcamps into Windows and uses Mixcraft for her initial sound capture and editing. She has also used Finale for some of her other composing work.

I would like to keep the total spend under $1,000 - which I think is quite doable. Obviously the keyboard to computer bit is most important, I assume that MIDI over USB is pretty standard these days. I confess to being drawn to an 88 key digital piano as the best bet over a synth or MIDI controller.

Any and all advice welcome and appreciated.

Thanks

If this daughter had tried and had liked the eldest daughter's P-120, I might recommend having her try out of a P-155 which is the current upgraded version of the P-120 (though some might tell you otherwise). It's what I use and enjoy playing on very much. It's also in the upper realms of your price range, but still completely do-able.

Recommendations? Always have a back up plan in place in case composing doesn't pay the bills.

Beware telling your children to "follow their heart" /s