The Keyboard Player - Advantages of playing the keyboard

One man band!
If you own a professional arranger keyboard, you can easily replace an entire band. In fact, you become a one man band if are a Keyboard player and if you can sing as well. At a lot of functions or parties, the band is usually one person who sings and plays a professional arranger Keyboard.

Any Style of music
Piano and keyboards can be used to play practically any style of music. But when it comes to playing classical music, piano is the thing, a keyboard falls somewhat out of place just because of its size and the synth action keys.

Advantages
As a Keyboard player or a Piano player, over a period of time, you will become good at all aspects of music, be it melody, harmony or technology. You will develop a very good sense of how various instruments play together in a musical arrangement.

I have listed below some more advantages of playing the keyboards/Piano.

• You can play solo or with the accompaniment on.
• You can use 10 fingers to play 10 different notes. Develops sense of harmony.
• Does not take too long to learn. You can give impressive results on the home keyboard in a few weeks.
• Use headphones. Play any time you like without disturbing your neighbours.
• Built in sequencer. Learn to record tracks and improve arranging skills.

Musical growth
As you embark on your journey to become a better keyboard player, you will find yourself going through various stages of learning and development. Each stage has its challenges in terms of figuring out how to keep on improving as well as finding out what instruments to buy. It becomes easier if you have a mentor or a teacher who will guide you during the initial stages. As a keyboard player, you will find yourself passing through these three stages:

Learning Stage – At this level, you will be more concerned about learning to play the instrument. The instrument you are most likely to buy will be one of the Casio CTK series or the lower models in the Yamaha PSR series. These are known as Home keyboards.

Home keyboards have lot of features to keep you busy with your learning process for quite some time and are reasonably priced.

Performing Stage – At this level, as a Keyboard player, you will in all probability be playing for an audience and you will need professional sounds in your keyboard. The home keyboard which you had bought earlier will not be enough.

You will need a professional arranger keyboard if you intend to play as a one man band or if you are not going to have any percussionist to accompany you. The professional arranger keyboards have such superior built in accompaniments and sounds that you can do a show all by yourself, if you can sing as well. Yamaha’s higher models in the PSR series and Korg have some very good sounding professional arranger keyboards.

If you have a proper band with a drummer, bassist and guitarist then you can opt for a synthesizer as well. Synthesizers do not have built in accompaniments but they have very good sounds. You can tweak most of the sounds and create new ones. It will also be a great asset in your studio.

Composing and Arranging Stage – This is where you need things like workstations, samplers and synthesizers. In this stage you need lots of varied loops, sounds and effects. A single instrument called Workstation, which is a portable studio, may serve all your purpose but once you reach this stage your ears are constantly in the lookout for new sounds. And that is the reason you end up with additional gears called samplers and synthesizers in your studio. Of course, if you are getting paid for your work you should not mind spending on your gear -:)

Bottomline
Though keyboards is fun, it can get expensive as well. A lot of times you will be tempted to upgrade your keyboard as technology changes so fast. Unless you reach the stage where you are getting paid for your work, you should concentrate more on developing your skills with whatever gear you have. Ofcourse, at times you will have to upgrade but do not get addicted to buying new gear just because you like it.

For beginners, my only advice to you would be to put in that initial effort and get yourself to a stage where you can play songs on your own. This way at least you make sure that you are not going to give up on your keyboard. In fact, if you are able to reach that stage, your keyboard will become one of your best companion and will give you immense pleasure throughout your life. Wish you a Happy Keyboard playing -:)

Further Reading
• Learning to play the Piano or Keyboards? Things to know.
• Find out the benefits of music - how does it affect you.
• Do you know what it takes to be a complete musician?
• Are you on your way to become a professional musician?
• List of Piano & Keyboard Magazines

• Go back to the Home page from the "Keyboard Player" page

Social Bookmark this page