Music Workstation

Music workstations are electronic musical instruments, which consist of a sound module, a keyboard and various other components, such as sequencers, effects units, samplers or drum machines. A workstation is designed to enable a musician to produce a single device quite a bit. The first workstation was the Korg M1, which was presented in 1988 at the Frankfurt Musikmesse. At that time, software-based music production was not yet widespread; the innovation was to combine various hardware components into a single device.

The sounds are controlled in real time, usually via potentiometer or fader. The tone frequently relied on PCM samples that are on ROM memory chips and can not even be edited. Since the 2000s, workstations usually have also built sampler; since 2001, the integration of own WAV files is partly possible. Often workstations can also be extended via so-called expansion boards.

Important manufacturer of workstations are Korg, Roland and Yamaha.