I want to learn keyboards.

Learning to play piano the traditional way (um, old-fashioned lessons from someone you know for free or Youtube videos I guess, take your pick) is always key in my book, it broadens your horizons so much you'll swear it's vertical.

Half-assed jokes aside, and in all seriousness, actually learning to read sheet music and playing will take all the concentration and talent you've ever mustered up before if you've never played an instrument before. But it's not as hard as it might seem.

I'm a percussionist (jazz trap kit, mostly, and occasional marimba player) and pianist, so yeah. I'm not an expert, just someone with some experience, at the very least.

Ebay might be your friend, you never know. Or garage sales... Really, these things are pretty expensive. I think my electric piano's retail cost was around $500 or something.

 

It could, yeah. Though there's a definite difference between the traditional piano piece and a keyboard part in a song, I think.

Seriously, if you don't really want to delve deep into the hassle of actually reading notes but just want to get the gist of it, look into a free program called Synthesia.

Otherwise, this might be bad advice.

 

7 different notes, arranged in octaves. For example the most common scale, C Major, is C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. Starting and ending with C.

Its really complicated, so if you are serious about this at all it really is to google to learn how to read music. Like, now. Also synthesizers FAIL when you try to play them so stay away from that if possible.

 

well if synthesizers are what he's looking for then shouldn't he be playing them?

Mikrokorg's are really nice, and if you check craigslist you should be able to find those for just about $250, the thing is you'll need an amp or something to project the sound since it doesn't have built in speakers.

 

No, synths are hard to play, unresponsive, and laggy. They also require studio level chords and hook-ups to record. Not worth it in the long run, you would be better off getting a marimba and using a mic to record that.

Definatly get a keyboard, they are much more flexible.

 

Take it from a musician. I play guitar, bass, drums, and piano (which was my first instrument). My band passed out our first cd at summerfest and perform regularly at restraunts. I know what I'm talking about, so listen up, and listen good. If you don't know how to read music, nobody wants you. Period. People come to me and ask me if I have any advice for them, and that's what I tell them. And when people come to me and ask if they can play with us, I throw them a packet of sheet music for all of our songs and tell them to play what's on the front page. If they can't, I tell them to gtfo. You see, someone who cannot read music can only play with themselves. This isn't to say that you can't be successful playing by yourself, but if you want to be in a band, you can't. So don't take the half assed easy way and learn how to play back in black after hours of playing random notes and memorizing the correct ones, and then embarrass yourself by telling someone you can play. Take lessons. It will give you an understanding of which notes go with which, allow you to clearly understand what someone wants you to play, and it makes it 1000x easier to play by ear. If you don't believe me, ask TheSilenceBroken. I'm sure he would agree with me.

In the meantime here is one of my favorite videos on youtube.
YouTube - System Of A Down - Toxicity - piano cover [HD]

 

Well if we are going to pretentiously display our musical knowledge then I should as well eh? I have been playing piano most of my life, and along the way have picked up guitar, saxophone, banjo, bassoon, bells, xylophone, bass, and drums, as well as I'm going to college as a music major.

Being able to read sheet music IS NOT the most important part of playing, being able to understand which notes are which on the keyboard is. But that is just the first step, a big part of playing with a band is music theory, and that's recognizing keys, and how to play in them, you'll just end up mashing random notes if you don't understand all the keys (by keys I mean key signature of course). After intense work with understanding keys you are gonna need to learn the important part of applying it, by figuring what chords go after, from simple I IV V style to more difficult by adding sustained chords, minor chords, etc.

Sure sheet music is important and being able to read it is great, but I don't think it's completely necessary, when my friends were starting a band to mess around in one of my friends can't read sheet music, but he was probably the most talented musician there. All he needed to do was find out the chords being played and he was able to get a whole song down.

 

What Randle is saying is a bit more correct. You can learn every chord, every key, and what every note on your instrument is, and be able to play with others as well. So me saying that, if you don't know how to read sheet music you are basically written off as one of "them", isn't exactly true. However, what Randle is basically describing is knowing music theory in every possible direction EXCEPT sheet music. So in a way, you can read notes; because if I put a Dm on a piece of paper and held it up, I could make you play what I want you to play. It is simply rare for me to find a person that can name every single key, play every single chord and note and name them, that somehow cannot read them in sheet music. However it is VERY common for me to find a person that can read sheet music, yet not be able to name the chords they are playing, or the key.

So basically you want a bit of both. You don't want to be the kid that can only read notes, because then you can't solo or do any sort of improv. But you don't want to be the kid that can read a chord progression and only do improv the entire time, because then you can't play more complex things such as bach's inventions.

 

Just to be clear, I write almost 90% of the music in my band... Bass, Guitar, Drums and even some of the Keyboard parts...

What I will disagree with is everything Zander said to you. I've been playing in bands since I was 14. Thats 10 years. I cannot read a single bit of sheet music. I dont know scales. I never bothered to. I did learn individual notes for the most part, but thats only in a better effort to work more realistically with Myka. [my keyboardist]

So if you don't believe that you can do great without the bullshit knowledge backing it, take a look at our ****. It's not complex, but its all there.

YouTube - The Silence Broken - "My Widow" (Instrumental)

 

Also, i don't know how much this will help you, but here's the keyboards that Myka uses.

His top keyboard is a KORG X-50. Its cheaper and a solid keyboard. He uses this one for most of the simple string, choir and piano effects.

His bottom keyboard is an ACCESS VIRUS TI, which he mostly just uses for the synth effect found in the intro and breakdowns of the song above. I don't know if this keyboard is still being made and sold, but it was expensive. He got his off of Ben from Still Remains/Blessed by a Broken Heart after they split.

 

Even though you CAN get by in life without ever learning how to read notes and signatures and all of that, I wouldn't advise that you don't at least try it first. It's useful. It allows for easy learning in the long run. And sometimes it's a lot easier than learning by ear or eye.

And even if you do already know your stuff, I find it's always nice to go back to the basics once in a while and see if I've forgotten anything worth rediscovering.

 

Well I guess there's just two ways of going about it then. Really though, music theory is your friend.

 

When I was first learning music, I payed no attention to theory whatsoever. I got by, and after taking piano lessons for 3 years, I taught myself to play guitar, bass, and drums. As I was looking into playing harder songs, I realized how helpful it would've been if I'd payed more attention to learning music theory when I was younger. I had to go almost all the way back to square one and teach myself some music theory. Now I can play more songs.

Thats mah storeh. I agree with some of ZANDER's comments and thesilencebrokens comments... but I don't think there's necessarily one way to go about learning to play a musical instrument.

@thesilencebrokent: BTW, I listened to your song "The Widow" while I was typing this... Freaking awesome job on that song. I like.

 

Not that I know a lot about music but after listening to that three things come to mind.

1) The Keys in the chorus should be mixed a tad higher.
2) Every "musician" who plays an instrument lets it do their talking for them, that being said mix the bass down becuase he "talks" and comes off like a douche.
3) The guitarist should have the latest versions of song if you do!!!

See you Sunday