There was a time, perhaps ten or twenty years ago, when schools started to adopt keyboards as a way of teaching music. Midi gradually became part of consumer electronics from around 1983 onwards - see https://www.midi.org/articles-old/the-history-of-midi
By 1991 a standard bank of virtual instruments was defined, and started to be incorporated into consumer electronics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI - this was General Midi - GM1. By 1999 GM1 was extended to become GM2, though it looks as though the instrument bank was essentially the same, but GM2 allowed more polyphony. At the current time, 2020, there are plans to update Midi to form Midi 2.0, which may have some impacts on equipment and music production.
One view of Midi, is that all it does is code up notes on a keyboard, to allow "equivalent" sounds to be produced, and indeed that is perhaps how many people viewed it with the development of consumer keyboards. However, Midi allows other aspects to be measured and controlled, such as the velocity at which keys are struck can be encoded and used to vary the effective volume of the sound produced. It is also possible to control the "knobs" on a synthesiser - which might be an essentially analogue device with a digital interface by the use of CC - Continuous Controller messages. This may have been a feature of Midi early on, but would not necessarily have been a feature of early consumer electronic keyboards.
More recently keyboards or other electronic controller instruments have been made with knobs, switches, sliders etc., and these can be used dynamically to do things like increasing or decreasing the volume of individual parts of the music mix, varying the pitch of a note - to give a pitch bend effect, and also changing the actual sounds produced. Although many Midi controllers are keyboard based, there are others, for example based on string instruments and wind instruments.
Since around 2006 onwards there have been developments in virtual instruments, and there are companies which specialise in recording sounds for use as virtual instruments, which have more "realistic" (or perhaps just more interesting, tonal characteristics), than those in earlier sound banks. Of course different manufacturers could produce different sounds for use in their own equipment, and these could be coded up using the General Midi codes, so that would mean that different hardware would be compatible and would broadly give the "same" sound as other kit, but some might sound better to some people - there would be individual preferences. These would be exploited by manufacturers and marketeers to give their products a competitive edge over others.
Limitations on consumer electronics - the cost of cpu chips and memory chips - would mean that producing consumer level equipment to do much of what is now possible would have been uneconomic twenty or even ten years ago.
One feature which is now possible in consumer electronic devices is the ability to download updates, or integrate new data with existing software and data banks. It should now be possible to make a consumer level keyboard device which can be used to install new sets of virtual instruments, other than the ones installed by the manufacturer. Actually this has been possible for quite a while, but I'm unaware of many consumer level keyboards which do this. Possibly many people who want to do this kind of thing will use a standard Midi controller (probably, but not necessarily, a keyboard) and connect it to a computer and sound system. Then the changes in instruments - downloading new instrument libraries etc., can be done within the computer, rather than "on the keyboard". Note that the data required for a virtual instrument could be quite large, though this depends on how things are coded and other factors. Some VI data banks require gigabytes of storage, and it is only in recent years that large amounts of memory have become cheap enough to make this a realistic possibility. Many of the earlier keyboards would have used ROM based memory, with data which could not be changed. This would have allowed cheap mass production, and specialist chips were developed specifically for this purpose.
I do wonder if there are any newer consumer level keyboards which already offer such an opportunity to incorporate new virtual instrument banks in addition to the ones provided by their manufacturers. There might be commercial reasons why some manufacturers would not want to do that, but some manufacturers might see such a development as an opportunity, rather than as a threat. I think such equipment has been made, but it's perhaps not widely available at low prices, as manufacturers want to segment the market and keep their own share of it.
To return to the opening lines though, many schools now seem to have moved away from using keyboards. The latest trend seems to be to use ukeleles, I hear. Is this because of cost, or just because music is now seen as not very important in schools? Singing isn't fashionable, recorders which were used in the 1950s for learning/teaching music were gradually replaced by other instruments. There might have been a period (which I missed/didn't notice) when electric guitars were popular for teaching and use in schools. Now it seems that music is just something which the government and others in power don't really want to make available for those who aren't rich enough to acquire their own instruments and kit, and buy in their own tuition.
By 1991 a standard bank of virtual instruments was defined, and started to be incorporated into consumer electronics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI - this was General Midi - GM1. By 1999 GM1 was extended to become GM2, though it looks as though the instrument bank was essentially the same, but GM2 allowed more polyphony. At the current time, 2020, there are plans to update Midi to form Midi 2.0, which may have some impacts on equipment and music production.
One view of Midi, is that all it does is code up notes on a keyboard, to allow "equivalent" sounds to be produced, and indeed that is perhaps how many people viewed it with the development of consumer keyboards. However, Midi allows other aspects to be measured and controlled, such as the velocity at which keys are struck can be encoded and used to vary the effective volume of the sound produced. It is also possible to control the "knobs" on a synthesiser - which might be an essentially analogue device with a digital interface by the use of CC - Continuous Controller messages. This may have been a feature of Midi early on, but would not necessarily have been a feature of early consumer electronic keyboards.
More recently keyboards or other electronic controller instruments have been made with knobs, switches, sliders etc., and these can be used dynamically to do things like increasing or decreasing the volume of individual parts of the music mix, varying the pitch of a note - to give a pitch bend effect, and also changing the actual sounds produced. Although many Midi controllers are keyboard based, there are others, for example based on string instruments and wind instruments.
Since around 2006 onwards there have been developments in virtual instruments, and there are companies which specialise in recording sounds for use as virtual instruments, which have more "realistic" (or perhaps just more interesting, tonal characteristics), than those in earlier sound banks. Of course different manufacturers could produce different sounds for use in their own equipment, and these could be coded up using the General Midi codes, so that would mean that different hardware would be compatible and would broadly give the "same" sound as other kit, but some might sound better to some people - there would be individual preferences. These would be exploited by manufacturers and marketeers to give their products a competitive edge over others.
Limitations on consumer electronics - the cost of cpu chips and memory chips - would mean that producing consumer level equipment to do much of what is now possible would have been uneconomic twenty or even ten years ago.
One feature which is now possible in consumer electronic devices is the ability to download updates, or integrate new data with existing software and data banks. It should now be possible to make a consumer level keyboard device which can be used to install new sets of virtual instruments, other than the ones installed by the manufacturer. Actually this has been possible for quite a while, but I'm unaware of many consumer level keyboards which do this. Possibly many people who want to do this kind of thing will use a standard Midi controller (probably, but not necessarily, a keyboard) and connect it to a computer and sound system. Then the changes in instruments - downloading new instrument libraries etc., can be done within the computer, rather than "on the keyboard". Note that the data required for a virtual instrument could be quite large, though this depends on how things are coded and other factors. Some VI data banks require gigabytes of storage, and it is only in recent years that large amounts of memory have become cheap enough to make this a realistic possibility. Many of the earlier keyboards would have used ROM based memory, with data which could not be changed. This would have allowed cheap mass production, and specialist chips were developed specifically for this purpose.
I do wonder if there are any newer consumer level keyboards which already offer such an opportunity to incorporate new virtual instrument banks in addition to the ones provided by their manufacturers. There might be commercial reasons why some manufacturers would not want to do that, but some manufacturers might see such a development as an opportunity, rather than as a threat. I think such equipment has been made, but it's perhaps not widely available at low prices, as manufacturers want to segment the market and keep their own share of it.
To return to the opening lines though, many schools now seem to have moved away from using keyboards. The latest trend seems to be to use ukeleles, I hear. Is this because of cost, or just because music is now seen as not very important in schools? Singing isn't fashionable, recorders which were used in the 1950s for learning/teaching music were gradually replaced by other instruments. There might have been a period (which I missed/didn't notice) when electric guitars were popular for teaching and use in schools. Now it seems that music is just something which the government and others in power don't really want to make available for those who aren't rich enough to acquire their own instruments and kit, and buy in their own tuition.