How good of a keyboard player are you?

[TITBAG]

I am probably the best "Keyboard Player" in the world.

[UKRuss]

Revealed! TITBAG is....

[ChiDJ]

I am probably the best "Skin Flute Player" in the world.

Fixed

[TITBAG]

_________________
If you can't let Ableton beat match for you whilst mincing around the EQ knob pilled off your bald belgian head, you wouldn't understand.

http://www.buttminer.com

FIXED

[ChiDJ]

Any day I can be Pwnd by TitBag is a good day!

Hugs, (with your crab infested ball sack far away)

[macmurphy]

I only know how to play Right Here Waiting by Richard Marx.

If you now have that song stuck in your head, you're welcome.

You UTTER BASTARD! I had that stupid Noisettes song in my head and was looking to replace it with a nice Tom Waites medley, and then i read that!

I was going to say something about keyboards but i'm too pissed off now

[aqua_tek]

I took piano lessons as a kid. Maybe for about 2 years? But my heart wasn't in it at the time. I just wanted to play with my Nintendo Entertainment System, Legos, Hot Wheels, and assorted action figures. Later on, it evolved into wanting to be part of the basketball jock crew... for all the wrong reasons. Well maybe the right reasons. Definitely not for love of the sport.

Anyways, now I wish I'd stuck with my piano lessons. I can play a few chords/scales just by ear. But I'm going to go ahead and say that overall, I'm a crappy keyboard player. In my defense though, at least over the past year or so, I've continued to break farther away from mousing or editing riffs/chords on the piano roll. I now record all my MIDI keyboard tracks in real-time... though of course it usually takes me a few passes to get them right.

I've always told myself I'd try and learn again properly, but I've kept on procrastinating on that front. I'm an expert on the field. If anyone needs some courses on how to keep putting shit off, I'm your man.

[robotsound]

find a local jam band and wiggle your way in, then play 3 hour shows every weekend for 5 years. worked for me.

[drez]

I'm an accomplished Piano player of 25 years, but I really don't enjoy playing piano anymore. I write ballad's with my daughter and things like that, but now its not my bag baby. One of the interesting things to note about accomplished piano players is that it doesn't necessarily translate into being a great producer or arranger. The reason is that you can't just play everything like a piano. You don't play funky bass lines like you do a piano, or comp brass parts the same way. Knowing how an instrument is "voiced" makes a huge impact as to how you play it. But, the saying goes...

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

I think having a good appreciation for music and understand how instruments are arranged is as important as being able to play the parts. I mean, if you play the piano great, but everything you sequence sounds like crap because you don't know how to "not" play everything with two hands, chords, arpeggios, thick comp'd phrases, etc, then it won't matter how good a piano player you are...its gonna sound like crap. Further, in an electronic vain, the stigma of voicing stuff as a pianist would is actually a detriment! Its more the "sounds" you create then the ability to play a trick-lick

That said, having both skills makes a big difference and keeps creativity from being stifled because you aren't looking at your hands trying to find middle C . I'd like to think I've got a pretty good handle on the arrangement aspect, so I can keep creating and not have to poke around in a grid view all the time. I play all my parts and don't grid them. I do tend to write more "dense" music because I can play string parts easily (do separate cello parts, violin parts, etc) and not take forever. I think some people write sparse music, not because they actually like minimalistic music, but because it would take them 6 months to "draw" in all the parts instead of correcting the few parts that you didn't get right on the take that you played live (nothing against minimal, its just an example). Personally, if I had to literally program every note or couldn't play what I heard in my head, I'd sell my music software and never do it again. The joy would be gone. My buddy does it and is fine with it, but I'd have to call it quits.

[Silwolffe]

I'm hardly decent, but I really enjoy the sound of pianos so I try very hard to learn.

I've been watching these tutorials on YouTube from the user named Lypur, and they've proven invaluable so far. http://www.youtube.com/user/Lypur

He's a bit quirky, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing!

[aisling]

I'm hardly decent, but I really enjoy the sound of pianos so I try very hard to learn.

I've been watching these tutorials on YouTube from the user named Lypur, and they've proven invaluable so far. http://www.youtube.com/user/Lypur

He's a bit quirky, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing!

those vids were cool. Thanks for the link

[Tone Deft]

piano lessons on youtube, great idea!

can't play at all. I can play Imagine on guitar, lately I've been learning it on piano by ear.

I was inspired by the '4 chords 40 songs' thing and started playing with that, works GREAT! in hindsight the 'trick' with that is that with 4 chords you have most of the ones you need in any key. you can throw out the diminished chords.

So, you can just always play in the key of C (all white keys) and use pitch plugin to change what key you're in, and the scale plugin to go major/minor or whatev. As you're fingers and mind get comfortable with one key, i think it can be easier to start addin stuff.

I love doing stuff like that. I've jammed with other non-players by both of us using the same scale plug in setting, lots of unexpected fun. skip the lessons and theory, just use your ears.

[gurumonkey]

I'm a solid keyboard player. I would recommend that if you really want to make good music that theory is more important than technical skill. not just theory in terms of chord progressions and the such, but also compositional theory and mixing theory and the like. If you can start to understand more of how chords and scales are built, and how rhythms interact with each other, you could continue to be as lousy of a key player as you want. Heck, you could draw in your notes.

[gerard]

I'm an ok-guitarist and a crappy keyboard player. But I ordered an Akai mpk49 tonight and I set myself the goal to become an ok-keyboard player. I love to play music and I couldn't settle down with only composing. The better your skills the better you can express yourself.
I think the best way to evolve is to play in a band or at least to play with other people even if it's not for concert or CD purposes. Because playing with other people "forces" you to play regularly and that's truly the only way to progress.
I don't remember which violinist (who played every day) said this but anyway this is how it approximately goes: "If I don't play a day I notice it. If I don't play a week my wife notices it. If I don't play for a month the crowd notices it."
That's the amazing point with everything I guess. The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know. For those of you who know the band Nevermore and its guitarist Jeff Loomis, you know that the guy is a beast on the guitar and sounds perfect ( to me at least). But in interviews he always points out when he is asked "do you feel you have accomplished everything on the guitar?"... "there's so much I need to work on and I'm so far away to be the guitar player I would like to be".

Okay I admit I'm a little drunk, so consider this a badly written monologue

Cheers everybody, I can just say that if you would like to play an instrument and don't feel confident about realizing your aim, HOLD on to it, work it every day and you won't regret it. Even if you don't become the new Rachmaninoff or Satriani or whoever, you will have fun

[BBScience]

+1 for playing only black keys