Keyboard Strategies For the Un-Holy

Many of us scramble with our MIDI-Controllers to create music.

What are some of your tips, techniques, pearls, etc., that benefit your music? (No rules here). I'll begin:

1) Forget virtuoso skills and site-reading. Fall in love with basic piano theory and only play by ear. Basic piano theory plus a music-loving heart is everything you need to know be a piano player and an excellent composer in S7.

2) Know the 12 Major scales, the 12 major chords, the 12 major-7 chords, and the 12 minor chords, and the 12 Major signatures (with the Circle of 5ths). Buy 2 or 3 Adult Beginner Piano Books.

3) Know exactly where the fingers belong on the keyboard (for #2 above) ... for each Major Signature and learn how to play a simple song (i.e., "Amazing Grace") 12 different ways thus, with 2 hands (without peaking much at your hands).

4) Contrary to popular misconception; any of you 'absolute beginners' (as it were) are able to learn to avidly play most songs you know (12 different ways) in just a week or 2. Piano is not intimidating Its easier on the fingers than guitar. Its easier to learn than touch typing. And you could be a grandmother and still learn it thus.

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5) Never strive for piano virtuoso as this will hinder your holistic thinking in S7; you won't see the jungle from the trees if all you can do is piano-man.

6) Always vocalize as you play; harmonize your chords with your own voice and/or make the keyboard your voice.
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OK, I've confused you enough. Any of you .. please share some of your un-holy strategies for playing the keyboard.

ORIGINAL: bitflipper
You're absolutely right: scales and chords, scales and chords. Everything revolves around scales and chords. Master those and you're on your way. It takes a lot of work and repetition.

That's why I'm not yet the keyboard player I want to be. I'm too impatient to get on to the fun stuff.

ORIGINAL: bitflipper
Of course, if practicing your chops is too much work, you can just switch to Techno.

GAH!!! OK, you convinced me.


I'm off to practice scales and chords...

Well, there is one synth technique I've almost mastered:

1. You wake up with an idea/melody.

2. You boot the synth and start searching for a patch close to the sound you heard in your head. While doing that, you hear a sound that gives you a different idea than the original one. You play with the new idea for a few minutes and realize it's not really a good idea, so you go back to the old one. Continuing the search for sounds for the original idea, a sound comes up that you think will work well as counterpoint to the original idea. You save it and create track 2 to hold the sound for the original idea. You find a sound that isn't quite what you had in mind but it works. You save it and record a few bars of the original idea. You loop that and go back to the first track that's going to be the counterpoint for new idea and start to play along with the recorded track of the original idea and realize those two patches clash. Now, you start loading various vsti's and searching for the patch that fits better for the counterpoint. But then you hear a patch that would work well as a pad underneath the original idea and the countepoint idea that's still in your head. You save that to track 3 and continue looking for the counterpoint sound. But now you're getting tired of listening to the original idea that's been looping for an hour so you take a break. Later, you play back what you've got and realize it wasn't such a good idea after all and go to bed.

3. Go to step 1.

ORIGINAL: dstrenz

Well, there is one synth technique I've almost mastered:

1. You wake up with an idea/melody.

2. You boot the synth and start searching for a patch close to the sound you heard in your head. While doing that, you hear a sound that gives you a different idea than the original one. You play with the new idea for a few minutes and realize it's not really a good idea, so you go back to the old one. Continuing the search for sounds for the original idea, a sound comes up that you think will work well as counterpoint to the original idea. You save it and create track 2 to hold the sound for the original idea. You find a sound that isn't quite what you had in mind but it works. You save it and record a few bars of the original idea. You loop that and go back to the first track that's going to be the counterpoint for new idea and start to play along with the recorded track of the original idea and realize those two patches clash. Now, you start loading various vsti's and searching for the patch that fits better for the counterpoint. But then you hear a patch that would work well as a pad underneath the original idea and the countepoint idea that's still in your head. You save that to track 3 and continue looking for the counterpoint sound. But now you're getting tired of listening to the original idea that's been looping for an hour so you take a break. Later, you play back what you've got and realize it wasn't such a good idea after all and go to bed.

3. Go to step 1.

This waking up with a hauntingly good melody and toying with it quickly ... is excellent. I've had great success with this and linking the melodies to offshoots of other 'good melodies'

"the piano guy" is sponsored by

"the Roland guys" who now own the majority of

"the cakewalk guys"


go figure

His show is cool,
i have no idea what im doing,yet he makes alot of sense.
and i always am learning something...