/PKG/ - Piano and Keyboards General >Let's try this

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>that moment when I compiled this pasta, but don't even play piano anymore

Last thread had 6 posts before 404-ing.
Let's go for 7.

>>71540867
>tfw this general will never be popular
>>71542064
Why'd you quit?

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>>71540867
Good idea for a general, I'll try and generate some discussion.

>Post gear
Pic related, Yahama PSR-S670, bought about 6 months ago. I'd say it's a very good workstation keyboard (and the best at its price point), in particular the onboard effects are very good and it's easy to make tons of unique and digital-synth quality sound simply by experimenting with different combinations of patches/settings/synths. The main drawbacks are it is only 5 octaves and perhaps isn't "professional" enough for really serious gigs and the touch is not sensitive enough for 19th-20th century classical music, but it's great for local/uni gigs.
>Post desired gear
I guess the ogical progression would be to get an analogue synth (probably a microbrute) and I'd like to eventually own a clavichord but I don't have the money right now.
>Fav pianos/keyboards/synths
Pic related, and early keyboard instruments.
>Fav pianists
Glenn Gould, Vladimir Ashkenazy, the list goes on...
>Projects?
I've been procrastinating over recording an EP of noise "rock" (no non-bass guitars) and I still need to start work on my contribution to that david bowie cover album. Trying to look to start a band but everyone I've tried with has been really flakey. One advice I would give future performers (esp in college) is always have a decent amount of materials ready to perform, a few months ago, I had to turn down an opportunity to play that I would have killed for today because I simply didn't have anything ready beyond unstructured jams. My main difficulty has been learning to sing while playing, it's a lot harder to do when playing keyboard than when playing bass.

>>71542865
5 octaves would be a dealbreaker for me desu. How many people are you playing with, typically?

OH YEAH
MY THREAD FINALLY HAPPENED!!!

I'm gonna bump this shit

>>71543289
Only myself atm. Had a psych rock group with a guitarist and a part-time drummer (we used the onboard drum machine, which was OK, when he wasn't there) and a jazz project with a trombonist, but both groups fell apart a year ago and haven't been able to find anyone reliable since.

I'd say 5 octaves is OK for most rock music and pre-1750 classical music (which is mostly what I play) especially because the octave up/down button can be easily reached, but I'd agree it's a dealbreaker for most classical/jazz music.

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anybody use these ax48 keyboard stands? I have one with three tiers and love it except for the floor area where my pedals should go. Any suggestions for a pedal board that might fit over the legs of this stand?

My gear: Hailun 161 grand piano, Nord Electro 5d 61 key, korg sp250 88 key
I've been using Monoprice 15" active pa speakers for amps for a few years now and they kick ass. only like $120 USD and they make excellent keyboard amps.

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a pic of my kids

After being obsessed with subtractive synthesis for 5+ years I have reached the conclusion that it sounds like dogshit most of the time.

A square/saw thru a lowpass filter is only capable of a handful of pleasant sounds and they get stale pretty quickly and tend to be pretty lifeless in the first place.

I've been playing classical piano for 20 years and I will be the first to admit that a 76 key board or anything in the 70's would be perfect for me.
88 keys makes for a VERY long keyboard, just large in general. I find that I use the uppermost octave of my acoustic piano ~5% as often as I do the lowest octave. I would be completely fine chopping off the top octave. but then again I don't usually resort to playing frilly jazz arpeggios

how do I, as a keyboardist, find groups to jam with?

I've asked a few people who say they play music at work if they want to jam, only to find out during the jam session that the guy knows like three chords on guitar and they're not even closely related. happened with a bass player and a drummer also.

I think I really just want to jam with a bass player, but I'd had to resort to stacking keyboards so I can just cover the bass part myself.
so, how do I not be a loner, and actually include other real musicians? how do I find these people?

>>71543732
I can relate, feel like I grew out of subtractive synthesis years ago. For their time, the basic synthesizer sounds were revolutionary. There were full LPs of just pads. Now that I've become desensitized to it all, I don't find them that appealing.

>>71543949
Just keep looking. Try local FB musician groups.

why would a guitarist even bother learning only three chords if they're not even closely related?

>>71543732
Yeah, acoustic sounds are going to be better 99% of the time.

>>71543738
This may be the worst opinion I've ever seen.

What's the best way to practice chord attack?

>>71543949

What >>71544442 said is a good place to start.

If that fails, you should try craigslist and /mu/ itself.

If that fails, go to LOCAL shows (like local bands within 30mins of where you live) and ask around in the audience. If you are good and if there is a piano/keyboard, try rehearsing and playing 10-20mins of your own material at open mic nights, if you are good, people will ask you to play with them. But I'd try craigslist and facebook before going that far.

someone should make a discord

>>71544601
boards with less than 88 keys can usually play a larger range than 88 key boards by gameing the octave transpose keys.
what piano music have you played that has even required you to be hitting the uppermost octave while simultaneously playing the lowermost octave? I can't think of any that didn't just do it for glissando effects, which have the same effect on shorter boards.

I hardly think it justifies another 12 inches of keyboard and a whole octave of keys just to completely max out the digitally reproduced physics of steel strings and acoustics on your digital piano. Thats the only reason acoustic pianos are 88 keys, because the physics prevent the instrument from being in tune beyond that. There are huge concert grand pianos with 97 keys and notable music written for such pianos, but you don't see anybody shitting bricks trying to get a 97 key midi keyboard

So I find it hard to believe its the worst opinion you've ever seen

>>71540867
man I wish I could play a keyboard.
is it just trying notes until you get good OP?
what do I do?

>>71542386

I'm mostly a guitarist. I was never really that good at piano, but I thought it'd be cool to start a general, with the hope that maybe I'd get back to it. Glad to see the general still goes on. I kept seeing people asking for a while if there was a general for it.

As to why I stopped, a mixture of life happening, being lazy, and not having a proper space to play.

>>71544601
I might add that in my 12 years as a piano technician I've observed hundreds of pianos that get tons of wear in the lower octave and minimal wear in the upper octaves. I'm talking pristine top notes of pianos that have been heavily used. Its just something i've noticed, not every plays the same way. If you don't use the top notes on whatever keyboard or piano you have now, you might not want to spend the extra several hundred dollars for the 88 key version of your next keyboard

>>71545383
look up circle of fifths progressions and copy them note for note until your feeble mind begins to recognize the patterns involved

thats the most musical way to brute force it imho

>>71545518
Of course you're going to use the lowermost octave more, but practicing with the top octave cut off tends to lead to bad playing habits.

>>71545538
Ok. But is that going to help me think up melodies and arrange them in music programs or will it just help me play the keyboard?

>>71544867
so that the notes all land at the same time?
very quietly and slowly. its not hard to achieve this at high volumes but maybe because i practiced low and slow

>>71545654
its just going to help you play keyboard. you might learn a bit about harmonic progression.
but for the most part it just builds neural networks in your brain that make it easier for your hands to move by 4ths and 5ths

>>71545383
No. Practice scales, arpeggios, and chords. Learn a bit of theory, it actually helps for keyboards and pianos. And I disagree with what the other guy said, you should practice scales and stuff chromatically, not in fifths.

>>71545719
Oh. Thanks for the info btw.

>>71545752
Cool. When I get to practicing keyboard again I'll do those too. Guess it depends on what genre I'm aiming to learn, right?

>>71546045
scales, arps, and chords encompass all genres
not a bad place to start

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=snmLxzCU4Wo
This is ridiculous. Why didn't I start when I was a kid

>>71546179
hory shet

>>71546179
Why have her play absolute bullshit?

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Since I'm a keyboardist and something of an amateur expert on keyboards, I'll pitch in as much as I can here. Not that it will matter since this is a guitarist board, barely anyone here plays keys (though a lot of people seem to mistakenly think that they can)

Not much to say on piano since that's pretty self-explanatory, but it's worth keeping in mind that there can be significant differences between the way different pianos sound and feel. Grand pianos and upright pianos will tend to have different key feel (grands feel better) because of the mechanism and the way the hammers are positioned; uprights in my experience also tend to have a somewhat brighter, less rich sound. They're great for blues, ragtime, boogie-woogie, etc. and sometimes cut through a mix a little bit better. Grands are superior in just about every way, but of course a real grand is even more inconvenient than a real upright. Grands can vary greatly in sound due to characteristics such as string resonance, soundboard resonance, body material, hammer felt hardness, etc. Some digital pianos will allow you a degree of control over this. Piano in general is quite versatile and you can usually find a way to fit it in to almost anything if you have to, but of course it's always important to be flexible.

Organs: The prod wiki link gives some good info but it doesn't talk about drawbars, one of the most important elements of the hammond. Tonewheel organs are astoundingly versatile because the drawbars give you control over the harmonics, letting you make the sound darker or brighter as you choose. You can hollow it out with just the bass and treble bars out or focus just on the mids. Tons of combos so make sure you're comfortable with them. Leslie is a classic combo, the rotation sound is great, but organs also sound awesome with distortion. a good example of awesome organ use is "green eyed lady" by sugarloaf. cont

the wiki is very good on electric piano info but some more detail on their differences is good. The Rhodes piano is a more bell-like tone, whereas the wurly is darker and grittier. They're both very well suited to adding effects; tremolo is particularly nice on the Rhodes whereas Wurlies were born for distortion. But don't hold yourself back from experimenting; Rick Wright from Pink Floyd uses a wah pedal with a Wurly to great effect on Money. There are other electric pianos too, of course, but those two matter most. The Yamaha DX-7 EP sound is classic, though it seems to have gotten most of its use in R&B.

Clavs deserve more love but they require a fair amount of skill and tastefulness to use effectively. They usually work best with a staccato sound and can sound muddy if you try to do too much block chording with them, but let your ear be the judge. JPJ from Led Zeppelin made very good use of the clav and it's a great way to get an idea of how it sounds outside of funk music. Like the EPs they're very, very good with effects; IMO phasers and distortion are the way to go, but experiment to your heart's content.

Synths are a huge subject in their own right so I won't get into them much. The most important things to understand about synths, imo, are oscillators, wave forms, and envelopes. Research those and you'll be off to a good start but it's a very, very deep subject.

>>71546348
How is that bullshit? Dude says his daughter likes scales.

>>71546348
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm5vo9vR-kI

>>71546434
Do you think that sounds good?

>>71546547
Yeah, for a seven year old I think it sounds great.

>>71540867
Question for y'all. Can I learn to play keyboard competently on a 49 key midi controller?

>>71546566
You like the sound of 2 completely unassociated scales being played together?

>>71546628
Unlikely, unless you just want to do synths

>>71546639
No, but that's not the point. You don't practice scales because they sound good

>>71546668
Well yeah you do. Scales are selected because we like the way those notes sound together. We practice them because they're the foundation from which most music (that you might actually want to listen to) is built from.

Instead of this kid using her amazing abilities to express something her autistic dad has her doing absolutely shit sounding creativity-destroying drills. She may as well be a robot. It's totally detached from art.

What's the best classical style for general improvement? I like contrapuntanal baroque stuff because it's very easy to tell good playing from bad

>>71546179
>>71546487
oh look, another trained monkey
This shit stopped being impressive years ago

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>>71546179
>tfw you didn't learn piano autism skills at an absurdly young age