Wow.
Thanks for taking the time to write such a complete reply and thanks for kindling my inpiration to keep progressing.
I´d say 49 keys is the absolute minimum. I can live with that,
but I´d recommend more keys for actually playing piano style.
I´d also recommend to find good basic sounds (piano, e piano, organ …)
you like and stick to that when practicing. don´t get distracted by
presets, knobs, filters…
I´d also recommend getting a hold pedal.
edit: a music stand is very helpful, too
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Reviving this thread.
This is Johnatha Bastos. Multi-instrumentalist, who plays drums, guitar and keyboards.
See his YT channel here.
An arranger keyboard can be fun and useful for learning.
The auto-accompaniment provides drums, bass, etc. while you play, in a style of your choice. Arrangers typically come with hundreds of musical styles to choose from. Your left hand is used to specify the harmony. If you don’t know any chords, one left hand note will default to a major triad (chord). The more chords you learn, though, the more fun you’ll have.
So while you’ll need to develop some hand independence to get good use out of an arranger, you won’t need as much as someone who has committed to playing the Bach Inventions, Chopin etudes, or anything like that, in front an audience. You just need enough to be able to change your left hand chord shape in time with the auto-accompaniment, while playing the melody or whatever with your right hand.
So if your goal with the keyboard is just to upgrade from the hunt-and-peck style of note entry on a keyboard, to a more efficient skill level - and you don’t aspire to be a world class concert pianist - this could be a useful investment.
Oh and a lot of arranger keyboards double as linear MIDI sequencers.
I’m in the same boat. Long time guitar player, but want to learn synth since I just invested in a Prophet. My plan is to get the Bach pieces but also Bartok Microkosmos which is 153 progressive pieces. Between Bartok and Bach you’ve covered quite a bit of ground and the Bartok is closer to the sound I’d be looking for.
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The name alone makes this sound like I should look into it! (Also keen to improve my keyboard skills.)
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I reckon if I can play Bach with my left hand and Bartok with my right I can open a portal.
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I have bad news for you… If you can play Art Tatum with both hands, only then you could open a portal.
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Keyboard knowledge is underrated and keyboard entry is overrated, imo. I’ve played a lot of piano in my life. It helps me understand how to enter notes and chords on my Digitone. But I use the DN as a standalone device. No keyboard connected.
To anyone wanting to learn piano: Make sure you are also learning how to read music.
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Random Youtube recommendation find. The Twinkle Twinkle Little Star examples look fun to play with. After some time with those, maybe I can start working on the Quincy Jones song he recommends - the Vidami pedal is so useful for this kind of stuff, btw.
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I decided to go a different way and learn playing on an isomorphic keyboard. Progressed way faster than I did on a piano, but quickly hit a wall as a Launchpad was too small for two hands. Got another one recently, gonna play them like a poor man’s Linnstrument now.
Linnstrument is the ultimate keyboard imo.
This is an excellent point. And lovely.
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Feeling is for wimps. Show me bucket-loads of notes at top speed, and I’ll show you a good musician.
Actually, I believe music is big enough to accommodate both deep-hearted feeling and cold, calculated virtuosity.
I performed on a pops concert with Marvin Hamlisch. I would characterize his piano playing as an interplay between unsentimental rushing through transitional bits…and expressive slowing on the more thematic parts . Rubato. His playing would’ve been far less interesting had he attempted to emphasize everything. Everything = Nothing.
Maybe, now that we have so many machines to play music, we’ve lost our interest in humans playing like machines. Back in the day there were fewer machines. No one would accuse you of playing like a soul-less machine.
Speaking of Mikrokosmos, I was going to use that to upgrade my keyboard skills, but my coworker who is also a piano teacher talked me out of it. She felt my last formal piano teacher had me on the better path by having me work through the Alfred’s All-In-One for adults books. I don’t recall her exact comments, but a good music teacher strives to use lesson materials that are appropriate for each individual student, so I think her reasoning was along those lines.
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Here’s an interesting thread:
Promoters of isometric layouts frequently talk about how easy it is to transpose a chord or scale up or down. While this is a logical setup, I question whether it is a musical setup. Parallelism, in western music theory, is considered bad. Because the individual voices lose their independence and voice-leading goes out the window.
That doesn’t preclude you from playing with proper voice-leading / counterpoint on an isometric keyboard. However, many of the videos of isomorphic keyboard performers featured them shifting chords and motives in parallel. And I only found a couple examples of voice-independent playing in the videos I watched. One of them featured someone playing a Bach 2-part invention with an isomorphic layout on an iPad.
For better or worse, western music and western music theory are tied pretty closely to the traditional piano keyboard layout. I’m trying to imagine how much work it’d take to approach my current piano-chops…on a different keyboard layout. Seems like mental gymnastics, the kind of thing you would do to avoid getting Alzheimer’s.
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I use Melodics. Yeah there’s definitely cheaper (or free) ways you can learn, but it has a nice structure and it’s interactive (like a game), which is the main selling point for me.
Some people say it’s a scam while others say it’s the most amazing thing ever. It’s neither. It’s simply just another tool amongst all the others out there. I do think it is a very good product though.
What I really like is the interactive practice session before each song (or scale) that shows you what finger is supposed to be used for each note. This almost instantly made me a better keys player. It sounds simple, but I used to be ‘finger pecky’ when playing on the keyboard and would rarely use my pinky/thumbs. I am much more fluid (and faster) now.
You can try it free, but are limited to only a few sessions a day I believe.