A music workstation is piece of electronic musical equipment providing the facilities of: An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. ...

• a sound module,
• a music sequencer and
• (usually) a musical keyboard.

It enables a musician to compose electronic music using just one piece of equipment. A Sound module (sometimes referred to as tone generator) is an electronic musical instrument without a human-playable interface such as a keyboard, for example. ... In the field of electronic music, a sequencer was traditionally a device or piece of software that allows the user to record, play back and edit musical patterns. ... The layout of a typical musical keyboard A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers on a musical instrument which cause the instrument to produce sounds. ... “Instrumentalist” redirects here. ... Musical composition is: a piece of music the structure of a musical piece the process of creating a new piece of music // A piece of music exists in the form of a written composition in musical notation or as a single acoustic event (a live performance or recorded track). ... It has been suggested that Electronica be merged into this article or section. ...

The sound module is generally a sample-playback synthesizer. The concept of a sequencer combined with a synthesizer is not entirely new - the Sequential Circuits Six-Trak provided this already in a crude form. All parts of it were purely based on subtractive synthesis; so no preset drum kits, a thing every sample-playback synthesizer since the Roland D-50 featured. Synthesizer as used in music, is a term derived from a Greek word syntithetai < synthesis (συντίθεται < σύνθεσις) and is used to describe a device capable of generating and/or manipulating electronic signals for use in music creation, recording and performance. ... In the field of electronic music, a sequencer was traditionally a device or piece of software that allows the user to record, play back and edit musical patterns. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... Roland D50 is a polyphonic 61-key synthesizer by Roland. ...

However, the incarnation of the idea reached its maturity, and a boom in sales (250,000 sold), with the Korg M1. Besides just a sequencer, it also provided a large enough display, a vast array of sounds (with the woody Piano sound and the "Universe" patch being the most famous), and built-in effects. Floppy disk drives were included on later machines, making it easy to store the sequencing data (either as proprietary or Standard MIDI File format). The Korg M1 The Korg M1 was the worlds first widely-known music workstation and is the best-selling digital keyboard of all time, surpassing even the Yamaha DX7. ... A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible (floppy) magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. ... MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is an industry-standard electronic communications protocol that enables electronic musical instruments, computers and other equipment to communicate, control and synchronize with each other in real time. ...

Nowadays, workstations have evolved to the point that they can either include a DSP-based synthesizer upgrade (Korg MOSS board for Trinity and Triton workstations, Yamaha AN-PLG and DX-PLG plugin boards), more multisamples and preset-memory locations (Roland JV/XP and SRV/XV series expansion boards, Korg EXB-PCM expansion boards, various Yamaha PLG-boards) and even a complete sampler (Korg sampling expansion for the Trinity) or a possibility for treating audio via the external inputs (Yamaha VH-PLG plugin board). A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor designed specifically for digital signal processing, generally in real-time. ... Korg Trinity V3 Korg Trinity is a commercially successful synthesizer music workstation released by Korg in 1996. ... Korg Triton Classic Korg Triton is a music workstation synthesizer featuring digital sampling and sequencing created by Korg. ...

The Big Three (Yamaha, Roland and Korg) now have sampling as a default option with the Yamaha Motif line, the Roland Fantom series and the Korg Triton family. Workstations have a relatively big 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 chose to keep costs down by not using a touch screen display, and in the case of the Yamaha Motif, not even a high-resolution display. The screen replaces what would otherwise be a lot of extra rotary knobs, sliders, and buttons, which add a lot to the cost of the machine, make the operation look unnecessarily complex, and generally aren't used in the first place. Yamaha redirects here. ... Roland Corporation TYO: 7944 is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. ... For comic book character, see Korg (comics). ... Yamaha Motif ES6 The Yamaha Motif is a series of music workstations, first released by Yamaha Corporation in August 2001. ... The Fantom-X6/X7/X8 are a series of music production workstations produced by the Roland Corporation. ...

The sequencer stores events like notes and controllers (like pitch bend), and then replays them into the sound generator, which then makes the music.

Although many music workstations have a keyboard, this is not always the case. In the 1990s, Yamaha, and then Roland, released a series of portable music workstations (starting with the Yamaha QY10). These are sometimes called walkstations. The Yamaha QY10 is a hand-held Music workstation produced by the Yamaha Corporation in the early 1990s. ... The Yamaha MU15 walkstation music synthesizer with built-in keyboard has 6mm key spacing (between adjacent white keys), so it is ideal for people with smaller hands. ...

The concept of the workstation mutated around 1996 and gave birth to the groovebox - a keyless version of a workstation, still with a self-contained sound source and sequencer, mostly aimed at dance. Again, nowadays they also feature a sampler. Roland more or less started the hype, Korg, and Yamaha followed suit. Korg created the much-used Electribe series. The term Groovebox was originally used by Roland corporation to refer to their MC-303, but is now in more general use. ... Electribe is the name given to a group of electronic musical instruments by Korg that essentially resemble the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 in appearence and in function. ...

There are some points in the concept of the workstation which might be object of criticism like limitation of the number of tracks in the sequencer, lack of modularity, predetermined and not user modifiable features. However, these are overcome by general ease of use, reliable functioning, and adaptation to most requirements of music production.