Learning to play keys for composition not performance

[elektrohansen]

Let me suggest a different approach:

1. the only theory stuff you REALLY need to know is the basic chord shapes. I. e. major chord = 1-3-5, minor chord = 1-b3-5, M7 = 1-3-5-b7 and which keys this means to press on the piano.
2. then print yourself a sheet with the circle of fifths and the corresponding minor keys.
3. Get a free app like Ultimate Guitar, where you have millions of chord progressions for a lot of songs.
4. Learn to “play” your favorite songs there with the piano and sing along. Playing here REALLY only means stupidly press the chord keys on every down beat like someone strumming a guitar really badly
5. Check the Circle of fifths sheet to see how the chords of the songs relate to each other in a geometrical shape.
6. Quite soon, you’ll realize which chords work together and that these progressions mostly mean only changing one single note to move from one chord to the next.
7. You’ll also discover that it doesn’t need crazy progressions to make a good song. Most songs rely on the same few progressions more or less, but it’s the combination of chords, rhythm and a great melody that makes a song unique.
8. Finally, you’ll find that your habit of listening to music makes it quite easy to improvise with your voice over these progressions! Just let it flow and you’ll soon find cool melodies you can develop to new songs!

That’s it!

[elektrohansen]

@brisket

I’m an untrained player who has got more into keys and learnt to play - a little - enough to fool people who can’t play themselves, but not enough to fool real players

That’s exactly the only piano level you need to take full advantage of it as a compositional device! From my experience, it doesn’t take long to get there in self studies/YouTube etc

[chaocrator]

i love scale mode when composing. (writing this with Launchpad X in scale mode on my right side)
it was invented for a reason and really speeds things up.

but yeah, learning scales certainly helps a lot, because things become much clearer when you’re aware what you’re playing and why.

every scale has its character, and some notes are more important than others. so i certainly can highly recommend learning that stuff.

[g3o2]

@alexwasashrimp

The lights help you see the key pattern, but with practice you get it in your fingertips.

It is better, for visual reference, not to change the light pattern too often. Same applies for the tuning. The guitar tuning is not isomorphic in the two upper rows but for a guitarist it will be instantly familiar.

[lopodyr]

Came here to say this: unless you are already trained for keyboards, pads are more intuitive. I strongly recommend them.

[alexwasashrimp]

It makes sense for the Linnstrument for sure. I assume you are a Linnstrumentalist.
I’ve only used the Launchpad, and with its limited size it pushes me towards the “change the scale every time” paradigm, as keeping a static C Major pattern would break (and by break I mean force a different way to finger then) different chords for different root notes due to them being on the left/right edges. If I had the luxury of 16/25 rows, I probably would’ve have to do it.
Hopefully, one day my Linnstrument finally gets delivered. I’ve been waiting since November lol.

[SoundRider]

@Thespa

So, where do I start?

If you want to do more than only knowing which key on a keyboard corresponds to which note …

maybe to acknowledge that it takes some time and committment to learn playing a keyboard or any other mechanical instrument fluidly and I’m not speaking about to be ready to go on stage.

If you want to compose on a keyboard you should get to a point, where your ideas flow to the instrument and you hear in reality, what was in your mind, without always thinking about how to do it on the keyboard. And this will take some time to grow.

Yes, it’s about practicing … do it at least for 30 minutes per day and you will enjoy success. Once it’s learned - it will last a lifetime.

@Thespa

Learning chords by memory? Learning scales?

Yes and no … confusing?

Example: A piano teacher educating advanced musicians told the following story, which might explain, what is really important if talking about chords and scales.

She told, that asking her students what a E7#9 chord was, almost every student listed the single notes correctly - BUT - almost nobody told her, how this chord is “feeling”, which “emotion” it has. She concluded that her students were surprised and had not been used to see it from this angle.

My advice for composition would be:
Yes - it’s good to have a couple of chords and scales in mind and beeing able to reproduce them - after practicing - without much thinking, but it will be much easier, if the “feeling” and “mood” of the chord is in our mind as well. This will help to grab the right chord or scale - at least if we do not copy “well known genre style clichès” - which is not a bad thing, after all.

@Thespa

Learn the chords of a specific key and then transpose that key? What would you suggest?

For transposition I would suggest to listen to the advice given above about isomorphic keyboards. It’s a historical/mechanical load that a standard piano keyboard forces us to have for all 12 keys an almost different fingering.

You may be able to play a simple children’s song in Cmaj and it becomes a challenge for a non-pro pianist to play it in C#maj, which is one semitone apart only.

Isomorphic systems require the re-positioning of our well-trained hands on the surface of the instrument only - done. Like on a guitar. Play something in E and later in F means to move your hand one fret higher - done - no extra practicing required.

[toot]

One of my favourite things that made music theory click for me is this lecture series by Leonard Bernstein (his Young People’s Concerts series is great too).

He guides you through the development of western harmony from plain song (no harmony) to 20th century harmony with passion, eloquence, musical examples and a little bit of pseudoscience

I’d also recommend going through the lessons on something like musictheory.net - Lessons.
There are loads of apps with the same sort of thing available too. You’ll end up with a decent grasp of all the basics.

A slightly strange app iPad that also helped me a lot with understanding how harmony works is https://mdecks.com/mapharmony.phtml
It maps out the 3 areas of western tonal harmony Tonic, Subdominant & Dominant and helps you to understand how they function together as well as how they can be extended.
It took me a while to make sense of this app but once I did it helped a lot.

If you want to learn jazzy stuff you can ‘find’ pdfs of Berklee’s music workbooks online. You’ll learn about secondary dominants, chromatic substitutions, upper structures and modes.

The main thing though is to listen and feel as you play. While you’re learning new concepts always be fooling around with them on the keys. Take note of how a particular chord extension or sequence makes you feel. How does adding a 7th to a minor chord change it’s flavour? What does adding a 9th make you feel? What is the characteristic sound of the dorian mode? etc. etc.

I used to think music theory was mysterious and impossible to learn but I pretty much get it now. I still suck as an instrumentalist but I can compose and with some perseverance you’ll get there too.

[g3o2]

@alexwasashrimp

I’ve only used the Launchpad, and with its limited size it pushes me towards the “change the scale every time” paradigm

Granted. Position on an isomorphic layout, given a permanently chosen tuning, is not as important as shape. So you won’t ruin your muscle memory in the absolute by applying a few tricks here and there.

But if you want to play your instrument without looking at it, position does count. If you turn off pitch quantisation on the Linnstrument, the experience will shift even more from eye to ear for continuous pitch correction - this is more interesting for melodies though and can be tedious for chords. The Continuum, which is also laid out isomorphically, pushes this to the extreme.

[SoundRider]

BTW … many modern songs and genres use a couple of chord progressions, which have been successful over decades and generated great selling hits.

It’s in a book like: “Chord Progressions For the Songwriters”, by Richard J. Scott

and I have the impression that the uTuber David Bennet is just using it’s content and helps to ge quickly the head around, providing the theory behind, and having a lot of examples for listening. His channel is: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidBennettPiano

[SoundRider]

@toot

I used to think music theory was mysterious and impossible to learn but I pretty much get it now.

Just a note about “theory”. Once I played my style of piano-playing and a friend playing keyboards asked after looking on my hands for a while, what chord inversions I was playing all the time and why.

TBH - I couldn’t answer, because I didn’t know. My fingers did, what I was feeling. Afterwards I went to a book, because I was curious. Quite nice jazzy progressions answered the book

[Mistercharlie]

@SoundRider

Example: A piano teacher educating advanced musicians told the following story, which might explain, what is really important if talking about chords and scales.

She told, that asking her students what a E7#9 chord was, almost every student listed the single notes correctly - BUT - almost nobody told her, how this chord is “feeling”, which “emotion” it has. She concluded that her students were surprised and had not been used to see it from this angle.

I love this story, and it would be the complete opposite with guitar players. They’d all know the “Hendrix chord,” but nobody would know what notes are in it.

Not that a guitarist would be taking lessons anyway…

[aMunchkinElfGraduate]

Interesting discussion. Several people have pointed out that switching keys, on an isomorphic keyboard, is as easy as moving the pattern up or down. This is a bit like using a transpose button while playing in C Major. Are you learning twelve scales or only one scale in twelve transpositions? The distinction is important, because it affects how we think about (or don’t think about) musical relationships.

I read the Linnstrument forum thread about “playing without looking at hands”. LinnStrument: Playing without looking at hands (Sightreading) - Roger Linn Design Forum - KVR Audio Sounds like it “depends”. If you’re playing simple melodies, maybe. If you’re an intuitive right-brained jammer, then there are no wrong notes, so you’re good.

I just spent the last 20 minutes listening to YouTube clips of people playing the Linnstrument. Pretty much all improvisational stuff. I would much rather hear someone play an established piece, like a Bach fugue. It is easy to imagine you can do anything on an instrument, but what about doing something (as in something particular)? Standards.

One of the posters on the Linnstrument forum lamented that there was no established technique for the Linnstrument. Maybe this is because it is a relatively new instrument. Or because most people using it are just jamming. If the focus of the Linnstrument was to play transcriptions of pre-existing works, I think that’d precipitate a discussion about proper technique. By proper, I mean technique that allows you to play hard stuff (or anything). It is too easy to believe an instrument has endless possibilities when you’re working within a limited framework of technique and understanding.

If I had a Linnstrument, I have an idea of how I’d approach the technique. First of all, I’d start right off NOT looking at the pads. I learned the accordion years ago, and with the Stradella left hand buttons, there is no possibility of looking at the buttons. I’d practice scales and practice isolating the left or right hand. Then I would build triads (and their inversions), from the top down, from the notes of the scales. I would move around the keyboard by indexing position from one key to another and by switching fingers on the same pad. I would also probably play it guitar-style, with each had coming from a different side of the unit.

[g3o2]

@aMunchkinElfGraduate

I would much rather hear someone play an established piece, like a Bach fugue.

Bach C Minor Prelude BWV 847 on Linnstrument

@aMunchkinElfGraduate

It is easy to imagine you can do anything on an instrument, but what about doing something (as in something particular)? Standards.

The Linnstrument comes with its own limitations and strengths and this is true for every instrument.

[alexwasashrimp]

@aMunchkinElfGraduate

I would much rather hear someone play an established piece

Check out this guy, both on the Linnstrument and on dual Launchpads: https://www.youtube.com/@JesseWashmon/videos

@aMunchkinElfGraduate

Maybe this is because it is a relatively new instrument.

Not just new, but prohibitively expensive for most people. I think there are about 4-5 thousand Linnstruments in the world. That said, there are people teaching their techniques, such as Jeff Moen and Stephen Barnard. I think it will take time to settle on a number of stable techniques.

[Hlecktro]

Boring as hell. But might I suggest just taking some traditional classical piano lessons? Or if budget minded… just buy a really cheap video course or book on playing piano. Yeah… I know it’s boring compared to electronic music or buying shiny new gear, but if you want ACTUAL musicianship skills you have to start at the fundamentals.

Me? Been making music for 20 years. Pretty much resigned myself to being more of a composer than a player… Crowds honestly don’t give a shit what I’m doing in a technical sense. So I don’t bother. Half the time I’m sitting behind a DJ facade anyways lol

[holonology]

@Thespa

I can play to an intermediate standard on guitar but it’s by ear and I don’t know any musical theory (I’m not averse to learning though).

I was in this exact spot a few months back. Got a MIDI keyboard, thinking my knowledge of guitar would translate to keys. Oops. The problem I found, was that the second I sat in front of a keyboard, all that musical feel completely disappeared.

Personally, I wanted to learn some techniques rather than relying on scale modes and whatnot to keep me in key. I went for Melodics. Essentially it’s a daily practice thing where you start at the basics and work up to playing arpeggios, passing notes etc. The one feature I find really helpful is that it shows you where to put your fingers on the keys and how to switch when playing more complex patterns.

I’m by no means a player, but I can now play rough ideas into piano roll and edit what I played from there. And somehow doing this for the last half year or so now feels like my musical feel from playing guitar is somewhat connected to what I’m doing on keys. Not fussed about learning music theory etc, as I didn’t do any of that when playing guitar. I do need crib sheets for what notes are where and whatnot - but yeah, with a bit of work you can do enough to write tunes with.

[g3o2]

@alexwasashrimp

prohibitively expensive for most people.

It is not cheap, although at 1k eur the L128 remains affordable, as much as any other master keyboard. Less notes for the buck perhaps, but beyond this it is a feature-loaded portable MIDI/MPE controller.

[alexwasashrimp]

I’m not saying it’s not worth it, it’s just that most people can’t afford it. I suspect there isn’t a single Linnstrument in my country.
Then, there’s the issue of availability. If I ordered a new Linnstrument 128, not only would I have to pay for delivery, I’d be struck with $200-500 in import fees and taxes.
Launchpads are dirt cheap in comparison due to the virtues of mass production (and cheaper materials and probably worse quality control), and they are sold all over the world.

[Matmcr]

Can Push 3 do what the Linnstrument does or is it a different experience in context to the pads/MPE/playability?