Keyboard

[Buttermilk]

Has anyone taught themselves to play a keyboard without any lessons. How did you go about it? How did you get on?

 

[Hands&Feet]

Learn scales and chords and their relative theory. Looknohands.com/piano shows you every scale and chord imaginable, as well as what scales work with what chords.

As you progress, imagine that you are tapping out rhythms with your fingers--like a finger drum--which is essentially what a piano is--a melodic finger drum.

Get your favorite music with guitar chords above the notation. Play the chords and mess around with the scales or melody patterns that coincide with the song. If youwant to learn to read the lines and spaces of the treble clef (the melody line) you can play that over top of the chords and just improvise however it sounds the best to you.

Use your emotion more than your mind. Let it flow from your heart. It's really no that difficult if you don't try to make it that way.

If you have any more questions, you can send me a private message. I'll try to help you. I realize what I said is like taking a drink out of a fire hydrant, but it really is about all there is to it unless you want to be classical pianist.

I am self taught on ten instruments and have played pro or semi-pro for many years and I don't think I have more than half a brain.

 

[Buttermilk]

Oooh 10 instruments which ones? I play the violin (not self taught), so I can read the treble clef and have a slight idea about the bass clef. I bought myself a couple of teach yourself books for the keyboard, but never quite get round to doing anything with them yet! I will visit the website you sugest as well at some point.

Thanks for the info. If I think of anything else I will PM you.

 

[sr. scholls]

I taught myself the basic blues, minor, major chords and worked my way from there. Err...try doing runs, that helps with fluency, learn the basic major chords and you'll be able to do that. It's the cheaters method, but I've not learned it yet. Teaching myself the hard way, but it also helps if you play by ear. Helps alot actually lol. I'm still trying to get down simple syncopation, but I've not practiced in some time either. *sigh*

 

[Bohemian]

Actually I didn't learn to play by ear ,that came naturally to me, but the hard part was learning technique. Notes, Scales, Triads, All necessary but all such a pain!

 

[peanutbutter12]

I am completely self taught apart from instruments taught to me in school band (Woodwind and Brass) cause I had to teach other people how to play those.

As far as piano, drums, vocals, percussion, violin, and many others, I am all self taught. The only thing I can't play is guitar and thats cause I never gave it the dedication it needed to be learned. I might do that sometime soon but who knows.

I am also thinking of taking piano lessons to help build my skill so I can play some classical stuff like Bach. ...maybe not.

CJ

 

[Buttermilk]

If you guys can do all that then so can I . Well I will try anyway

 

[ps139]

I can play the keyboards...my only "lesson" was my aunt writing down the patterns for major and minor chords.
I could easily explain it to you if you were in front of me of if I could draw on this post. But I cant .

Like Hands and Feet said, learn chord theory (for your left hand) and scales (for your right hand)

Chord theory is the most important, the rest will come in time.

Easy Trick: If you know which chords usually are in the key of C major (another hint: Amin, C maj, Dmaj, Emin, Fmaj, Gmaj) you can play them and do a melody with your right hand on ONLY the white keys. All the white keys are all the notes in the Cmaj scale.

 

[Buttermilk]

Someone posted details of websites detailing chords and things and I can't find the post

Can anyone point me in the right direction or sugest some sites

Thanks

 

[Hands&Feet]

Someone posted details of websites detailing chords and things and I can't find the post

Can anyone point me in the right direction or sugest some sites

Thanks

THat website is looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano you might have to put /index_rb.html after it, but I'm not sure.
They have a page for chords and one for scales. The same address with guitar instead of piano on the end of url will give you all the guitar info.

 

[Buttermilk]

THat website is looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano you might have to put /index_rb.html after it, but I'm not sure.
They have a page for chords and one for scales. The same address with guitar instead of piano on the end of url will give you all the guitar info.

Thank you ever so much for that