Now I know what you’re going to say, you’re a keyboard player. What would a keyboard player be doing with a portable guitar/bass recorder? I’m glad you asked. First, ask yourself if you were a manufacturer and you had to market a product, who would you want to market it to? The guitar market is by far larger than the keyboard market and purchases more accessories than the keyboard market does. Although there are currently only a few keyboard accessories like the “Pedal Stop” www.pedlastop.com , it doesn’t mean that we, as keyboard players, can benefit from some of the accessories marketed to guitar players. The TASCAM GT-R1 is such a product.

I rehearse with a church band. If you know anything about modern gospel music, some of the rhythms and chords can be very difficult to play. I wanted a digital recorder to capture the music so I could take more time to better learn and practice it at home. The GT-R1 is perfect for this. It is very easy to understand out of the box. The manual is very well written and within a few minutes of reading it, you’ll be on your way. It features pretty cool features like effects, a built-in drum machine and the ability to digitally record music. This enables you to slow down a tune to get all the riffs, etc. without changing the pitch (I absolutely love this feature)!!

The record feature is pretty simple. It has its own mic which is directional. You can also use an external mic if you chose (3.5mm jack). You simply press the “record/pause” button once and it will flash, press again, and you’re recording. You can adjust the record levels with a level control on the side of the unit. TASCAM even thought of the need for overdubbing which is also a pretty cool feature (you cannot overdub in the MP3 setting only the WAV setting).

It also features a “mic in”, “line in”, “line out” (for headphones) and a ¼ inch jack (mono, unbalanced) “in” to connect directly from your keyboard into the unit. The GT-R1 can even connect to a USB port in your computer enabling you to copy WAV or MP3 files from the computer to the unit. You can also erase files and manipulate folders on the GT-R1 from your computer. The unit will work on a Windows; 2000, XP and Vista or Mac; OS X, 10.2 or higher computers.

It comes with a 1 GB SD card and a 3.7V 1800 mAh rechargeable lithium battery that TASCAM says will last about 7 hours using the MP3 format. You can also charge the unit through the USB cable using your computer. I purchased the external charger for about $50 (TASCAM PS-P520) for those times I have a long rehearsal and I don’t want my unit to die on me.

It has more features that I haven’t played with yet but if you need something to record practice, rehearsals, etc, I would recommend the GT-R1 as a great choice. You can find them on-line from $250 -$300.

-John W.