Greatest Keyboard Demo Music


(work in progress)

You may have come across this page because you have heard an old keyboard tune which you want to hear again. Or perhaps you would like to know the composer of aforementioned tune.

This page is only beta, but hopefully, sometime in the future, it will be host to some of the most memorable keyboard demo tunes ever created - everything from Korg to Yamaha, Casio to Roland.

Q: But why keyboard demonstration music? What's so special about that?

The main reason manufacturers originally included demo music with keyboards was so that the potential punter would buy that keyboard after hearing the music demo in the shop. From a marketing perspective, it makes total sense. But this also gave birth to real musical quality - some even bought a keyboard based soley on the catchy demo tune that came with it. From my experience, many of the keyboards (particularly circa '80s-90s) have music with a higher quality than 99.9% of commercial 'mainstream' music today! Okay, so some of the tunes were a bit 'cheesy', but the quality ratio of good to bad music is higher than almost anywhere else, no matter how hard you look.

Q: What can I do to help?

If you - or anyone you know has created a piece of music designed as as demonstration to accompany that particular keyboard, then I would love to hear from you. Ultimately, I would like to see this page become an archive of the greatest electronic keyboard demo music with (possibly) music in mp3 format available for download. Each tune would be referenced with the keyboard, composer, and would be reviewed with a quality evaluation too.

You can contact me via email here

Q: Have you personally composed demonstrations professionally for keyboards?

Not as yet, although it's certainly one possible avenue in the future for me. I do however create electronic synthesizer music that has much of the inspiration behind this forgotten realm of music. If you are interested, then visit my Soundburst Music Shrine page to hear.

Q: How about modern keyboard music created within the past 10 years?

From what I've heard, /generally/ the more modern keyboards don't have music demos with the atmosphere and melody that the old keyboards offered. Obviously, there's still great music being produced today, but perhaps on /average/ - the quality isn't as high as it once was. I would also be more likely to refrain from putting any recent music online due to potential copyright problems. That's not to say there woudln't be copyright issues with the older music too, and ideally, it would be good to receive permission from the original composer. Finally, the older keyboard music isn't as likely to be digitally recorded originally, so this page is also dedicated to these tunes before they are lost forever. I would be grateful for any feedback and opinions on these issues.