Keyboard Skillz

I was wondering if any of you lot could recommend any online resources for keyboard learning. I'm working with a monophonic synth at the moment, and using a keyboard controller, so I'd like to work on scale work and modes, for those times when I'm not trying to create tracks.

Fingering patterns for both left and right hands would be ideal.

Not that I can't google of course, but just checking for positive experiences here, and also any related recommendations...

Thanks.

LJG

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/

You can go here to learn some chords and scales, it's quite useful for those.

  Captain Cooper said:

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/

 

You can go here to learn some chords and scales, it's quite useful for those.

Thanks much, Cap'n! Good links from there too.

Cool. I think its just a question of experimenting with shit. That said I can't play the keyboard for shit. I really want to become a solo Herbie Hancock jazz specialist.

as far as playing the keyboard goes and getting better and such, I can recommend a few things.

A. play live with other people. maybe not in front of an audience but you know, try 'jamming' with someone else.

B. get a real keyboard. having a 2 octave controller for a soft synth isn't helpful. The knob assignments are ambiguous. Try getting a real keyboard with real aftertouch, weighted keys, 88 keys or something. you need to divorce yourself from latency.

C. remember, the keyboard is an instrument. learn to play an instrument. (duh)

first, I'd really recommend getting at least a 5 octave keyboard. I have one, it's not the greatest, but i couldn't imagine playing on anything less. You really need that many octaves, it's fucking hell to switch octaves up and down all the time, and if you want to use one instrument as both bass and high lead it works great. Plus those huge pads. and generally, you need a bit of space for chords and melodies. it's imperative if you're even going to hope to play those bigass piano VST's

I'm really lucky having a proper piano in the house, and there's nothing that compares to playing on it. much of my finger practice has been done on that, its a bit bigger, but playing it is good for improving your fingers muscles since theres alot more resistance.

First tip I'd give is the first mistake my piano teacher, that i went to for a month or so (he was shit but taught me the basics), noticed that i did.

If you start on C, use the thumb for C, not your main finger. same thing with your left hands smallest finger, use that one for C. i could go on explaining the 1-5 system but its pretty useless, i think you see what i mean. try slowly going up and down from C to G, keeping your fingers lightly on the keys (not above, keem them where the are, and dont move any finger except the one thats going to play anote), and slowly going up and down. it helps for your finger muscles, at first it'll be piss hard with your ring fingers for instance.

And study scales on sites like the one Cooper mentioned. I find this one abit quicker though.

http://www.pianoworld.com/fun/vpc/piano_chords.htm

this one has some good examples of popular major and minor scales: http://www.musictheory.net/

Find a scale you like and (the C aeolian/natural minor one is my favourite and i can play it tons better than most other scales.) and play it alot, make tunes and stuff in it. After some time you should work on finding new scales, modulating and all that shit, but trust me, it comes automatically. first i thought I'd never be able to modulate properly and recognise scales in other keys than the ones i was used to, but really, it just becomes second nature eventually. If you want a really simple cool scale on the white keys, that isnt typical c major, try going from A to A (natural minor) or E to E (lydian)

Learn chords! As a basic, learn major and minor on the 7 white keys for a start. Major is 4 + 3 (four semitones up, then three semitones) . Minor is 3+4. really simple system. later learn 7th chords, and experiment abit. Changing chords rules. But it'll generally be easier to work chords out when you learn scales and keep yourself within them

When you want to dive into more advanced stuff, i really recommend this page: http://www.andymilne.dial.pipex.com/Scales.shtml

it also treatises on cadences and stuff. wikipedia also has tons of stuff on this

put on a metronome or beat and just jam a bit.. it will help you tons.. try getting away abit from the stiff program+record+quantise+loop system and just jam.

but for making electronic tunes, scales is probably the most important thing. if you know scales you can make any kind of tune, and finger skills come second to that, especially now with the age of midi and all.. but being able to actually play your shit and not just program it, trust me, it is so worth it and can be fun as heck. I'd recommend getting this minimoog VST (its free) http://glenstegner.com/MinimogueVA.zip and play around with the pitchbend as you play some squealing leads, its tons of fun!

if there's any secret i'd give you on getting keyboard/piano skills, it'd be playing, playing and playing, until your fingers ache from RSI :grin:

and secondly, its really not that hard. a keyboard is just twelve tones repeating over and over again, keep that in mind and it wont feel so overwhelming to learn this stuff.

Thanks for the input lads!

I'm currently using a 4 octave controller (hell, it might be 5, I had'a count dem bitches again *displays his ignorance*), which is doing fine for me so far- I'll probably be looking into a more full-fledged keyboard later on, as well as some proper lessons.

I use an EMX-1, which I'm ecstatic to have, but it's difficult to play melodies on those buttons, so I went out and got a keyboard. I have a background in some middle eastern stuff, so I was trying to play along with an odd meter, (and it was sucking hard) but when I got the keyboard hooked up it really opened everything up for me. Gave me a much better way to hear shifting timbres up and down the sonic range whilst programming synth sounds as well.

Ironically, in the days following the keyboard purchase, I found that my entire approach was changing- and becoming more live, with or without the keyboard.

I'm with you on that, Derelic7- live is definitely alive!

I'll be working on this stuff, and probably working hardest on the left hand- I'm a string player and percussionist primarily, so it is going to feel very wierd on the left hand- the technique will be completely backwards from anything else I've ever done, lol.

find piano music that you actually like, and learn it, is my advice.

erik satie and debussy have got really nice piano pieces that are well nice, and definetely easy enough to be able to play them nicely, i can recommend stuff if your interested in this way

it depends wether its compositional or more for playing, but id say fuck scales in the ass, theyl put you right off, i been playing for 10 years and i only started scales 6months ago.

  کhamanix said:

find piano music that you actually like, and learn it, is my advice.

 

erik satie and debussy have got really nice piano pieces that are well nice, and definetely easy enough to be able to play them nicely, i can recommend stuff if your interested in this way

hell yeah

Yah, piano music isn't really so much where I'm coming from as much as organ stuff... or at least in terms of learning the keyboard. Not trying to be close minded per se, but also trying to keep my precious little spare time aligned with my passions as closely as possible. You are totally right though, Shamanix- do what you want to do directly, and first!

Coming from a dominant nonwestern music background, scales are actually the heart and soul of music to me- not straight scales of course, but more like maqam mode modulation or raga or dastgah stuff- I have always used chord work rather sparingly, and as I'm not set up for polophony right now, i'm not tooooooo concerned with that.

I sat down last night and dialed in this brilliant organ sound and put whopping delay/chorus/flange on it, and came up with a really simple ditty, with just interlocking rythms between left and right hands. Honestly, I almost feel as if I might not have gone there, were it not for the fact that I'm limited to monophonic stuff predominantly right now- the timing of the individual notes coupled with the delay gave a sense of overall harmony that didn't actually come from playing "harmonically", so to speak.

For years I have been an oudist, and one of the great things about the instrument is that while the player doesn't often "chord" on it per se, the player will always hint at the chords with the other open strings. It has quite an impact when most of the material is melodic rather than harmonic. It also capitalizes on the human mind's tendency to "complete" things/patterns. Sometimes hinting at a chord at the right time will really leave some of the harmony up to the listener.

But I digress into philosophy... name some good piano pieces for me to hear!

debussy - in terms of a beginner learning pieces, try:

Six epigraphes antiques - these are a set of slightly obscure pieces whcih i love, but theyre incredibly difficult listening, slow, dissonant, unresolved harmonies and melodys that mean that they are not widely appreciated

as far as technical abilty playing them goes, they are piss, but they are such interesting pieces tonaly that you will find reading the notes well difficult, good practice for sight reading.

preludes

check out numbers :

Book I

2 voiles (sails) okay piece, quite easy

3 Le vent dnas la plaine ( the wind on the plain) trickier piece, but it doesnt sound like your a somplete beginner, and really fun to play

4 Les sons et les parfumes tournent dans l'air du soir ( sounds and perfumes swirl in the evening air) difficult to read, easy to play, nice piece

6 definetely, beatiful piece and very very easy, which is called des pas sur neige (footprints in the snow)

8 is quite a plain, tonal piece, and one of the more famous, The girl with the flaxen hair.

9 is quite hard, 10 is long and dull, 11 is hard

12 you could have a look at, but i mean its far from easy

Book II

this is the better set of preludes, i think, check out

number 1, mists, very experimental piece, quite hard to read, but slow moving and very very expressive in its technical demand.

2 is immensely hard to decipher the notes, this one took me months to master, even though its a slow moving and easy piece in terms of technical abilty.

3 is hard, i posted a vid of that a few weeks back, 4 is hard,

5 is a well nice piece, bruyeres, which means moors, or bracken, no two sites seem to agree, but a beatiful, simple to read, and not exxessively difficult piece, a few bars which can cause problems though

10 is your best bet, Canope (canopic jar)http://www.sheetmusicarchive.net/dlpage_new.cfm?composition_id=1500 very slow, and one of my favourite sombre pieces of piano music, the rest unmentioned are all over grade 8 standard.

liszt's consolations are nice, quite simple, i wouldnt bother with anything else liszt wrote, he writes the hardest music of any composer

gymnopedies by erik satie are painfully easy, but also nice pieices, albeit dull.

chopins preludes and nocturnes will require alot of effort but are far from immpossible, even a beginner, and will be well satisfying finished

rachmaninoff has some nice easy pieces, but they are all jumbled between his incredibly difficult stuff and quite hard to recognise.

www.sheetmusicarchive.com for notation of most of these works.

3

sry, ive just realised if your using a non weigthed keyboard playing debussy is essentially useless, no offence or anything, but you wont be able to do it atall

half of the skill of debussy is the emotive and expressive appeal, non weighted instruments completely eliminate te abilty to do this.

Lolly lol lol I posted in stereo. Whoops. See below.

  کhamanix said:

half of the skill of debussy is the emotive and expressive appeal, non weighted instruments completely eliminate te abilty to do this.

I sincerely doubt that a non weighted keyboard can render an artist incapable of emotive expression. But it may not be fruitful to play debussy on it. I wouldn't try really, as I've said, not really my arena.

Thanks for the extensive list though, holy shit, that will keep me busy for a year. Listening is half of musicianship, if not most of it, imho.

  کhamanix said:

half of the skill of debussy is the emotive and expressive appeal, non weighted instruments completely eliminate te abilty to do this.

thats stretching it abit.. imho, as long as theres velocity sensitivity, youre not losing out too much

  کhamanix said:

debussy - in terms of a beginner learning pieces, try:

cheers for this, maybe i'll dust off the ol midi controller again.

  Captain Cooper said:

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/

 

You can go here to learn some chords and scales, it's quite useful for those.

cool link, cheers

  کhamanix said:

find piano music that you actually like, and learn it, is my advice.

 

erik satie and debussy have got really nice piano pieces that are well nice, and definetely easy enough to be able to play them nicely, i can recommend stuff if your interested in this way

 

 

it depends wether its compositional or more for playing, but id say fuck scales in the ass, theyl put you right off, i been playing for 10 years and i only started scales 6months ago.

chopin, if not too difficult

yeah i did mention chopin, but hes not atall easy

the hard thing to get used to with chopin if your not used to it (and liszt too((and rachmaninoff and brahms heh))) is the massive amount of spreads chords between a 10th and a 15th across the keyboard, theyre not easy.

if you fancy a challenge, try this chopin study slowly and repeatadly, see if you can get the hang of the pivotal style of playing the left hand from your third finger.

i played that for my a level and got pretty good marks though

this one is the sickness though, liszt, the arrpeggiated chords are menacingly hard. beatiful piece mind you.

Weighted piano keys and velocity-sensitive keyboards ain't the same thing at all.