So this thread is designed for MSers who play the piano, keyboard and synthesizer to talk about playing techniques, what brand of pianos, keyboards, synthesizers they use, what pieces they think are the hardest, what kind of music they like to compose, etc, etc...

In one thread? Why not make keyboard/piano/synth players create new threads for their issues, like everyone else?

I play a lot of piano, and some keyboards as well, though I haven't got a keyboard at home. A piano or keyboard is probably the best tool for song writing, no matter what instrument You're supposed to play in the song, You can always create melodies, harmonies and stuff on keyboard.

I play a great Casio and use a Behringer amp. The amp doubles as a PA which is useful because I also sing.

I have looked for (and never found) sheet music or chords from metal bands. Guitar tabs are everywhere for purchase in books or to download but everyone seems to forget about us pianists. Do you guys know if this stuff ever gets published? Thanks!

I've also had some trouble finding sheet music for metal songs (or non-metal songs by metal bands), I currently use Guitar Pro for learning the piano parts I want to, but there is a limited amount of Guitar Pro tabs, so it doesn't work out all the time.

I also play Casio but i really need a new because its to small and simple for me. Playing keyboard in a heavy and power metal band. Its really fun now that we are writing our own songs and i can make up my own solos. I hated when the band wanted to play a song and they had to skip the solo because it was to hard for me to play.

BTW: Any one have seen or got the Jordan Rudess DVDs. They seem very good and i want then badly. So i can learn from the master

The only tool I have for learning piano parts is The Amazing Slow Downer. It's hard for me to listen to a song and just go play it (yeah right) so I need to slowly transcribe it. The Amazing Slow Downer slows it down (duh) but keeps the original pitch. I have gotten a lot of miles out of the free demo I downloaded and might buy the whole thing. I'd recommend this to any musician.

right now im playing a peice of shit keyboard and i prefer to play the piano over it. i love keyboard, it makes some things so easy. i also play guitar and bass and i find that the more instrumenst you play, the more you understand music and how to make instruments work together. learning other bands songs on the keys is totally a bitch caus often the keyboard isnt mixed very loud, and thers also the problem that theres no keyboard "tabs" (at least i dont think there is, cant imagine what they'd look like). for keys its gotta be in standard notation , which is soooo anoying.

Oh yeah, I forgot to even mention what I play...I play a Roland XP-10 synth out of a 500 watt peavy keyboard amp...

@Silhouette: I just thought that it would be a good idea to simply create a general thread for now...once this thread gains some weight with some fat posts, we'll see what happens...

hey there
I play a Casio ctk-731 which is getting old, but i play a lot more on the pianos anyway (because of the wider range or I just jet the rhythm of the keys run and improvise). I don't really play a lot of metal since I'm not in a band (though I wish I was..) and I get the stuff from listening to it. I have the amazing slow downer somewhere on my computer, but I don't really use it. it's easy picking out the melodies and the main solos without it, but it's pretty hard to get all those scalar runs and stuff (for example COB). I got some key parts from guitar pro as well, but after I found some mistakes, I gave up on it. I really love taking the guitar chords and playing from there - mostly melodies and then I "translate" the solos from guitar to keys (which is mostly just for the starting note)
I was interested if anybody actually records what he/she is playing. I love having some chords and just turning on a rhythm and improvising over it. recording makes all that stuff a lot easier I think.

I enjoy playing the piano very much nowadays ...even if in the past it wasn't much of a pleasure. Don't have a keyboard still I wish I did...:(, some songs sound much more better on this type of instrument than on a piano...but o well, for now it will do. I found a site with piano sheet music, not too much metal but it's a good site. www.my-piano.blogspot.com , if you know any other good sites please post, I'm really interested.

I've got an 18th century stand-up Grand piano, I don't really play metal on the piano, I love playing classical music on the piano. In my opinion, the best technique for playing piano is learning notes and theory. One cool thing I'm trying is playing classical piano music on the guitar (with the exception of the bass clef)

I have a (neo)classical playing style and I love to play melodic stuff. Sometimes I hook my keyboard to my sound system and play along to Melodeath bands like Children of Bodom, Kalmah, Norther and In Flames. It's always been my dream to play in a band like those guys.

Written by [user id=1160] on 12.06.2006 at 05:12

I have a (neo)classical playing style and I love to play melodic stuff. Sometimes I hook my keyboard to my sound system and play along to Melodeath bands like Children of Bodom, Kalmah, Norther and In Flames. It's always been my dream to play in a band like those guys.

That sonuds exactly like me I play in a band but we dont play that kind of music

Written by [user id=7126] on 12.06.2006 at 23:20

That sonuds exactly like me I play in a band but we dont play that kind of music

Me and my friend both play keyboard and sort of formed an "all keyboard metal band" and made a few songs. We weren't exactly that style either (only because of our lack of members and instruments and equipment.) One of our songs became so popular throughout our school that we made a single and played live with real instruments accompanying us (guitarist, drummer, ect.) Well, it was live... but it was in a garage. My friend decided to make a MySpace page on us. We called ourselves "Tyrannica".
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=32832576
Tell me what you think of our song I know you will love my crappy singing.
It was just too catchy of a song, I couldn't resist singing.

Written by [user id=1160] on 14.06.2006 at 06:42

Written by [user id=7126] on 12.06.2006 at 23:20

That sonuds exactly like me I play in a band but we dont play that kind of music

Me and my friend both play keyboard and sort of formed an "all keyboard metal band" and made a few songs. We weren't exactly that style either (only because of our lack of members and instruments and equipment.) One of our songs became so popular throughout our school that we made a single and played live with real instruments accompanying us (guitarist, drummer, ect.) Well, it was live... but it was in a garage. My friend decided to make a MySpace page on us. We called ourselves "Tyrannica".
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=32832576
Tell me what you think of our song I know you will love my crappy singing.
It was just too catchy of a song, I couldn't resist singing.

Sounds like fun..... Yeah! Good keyboards Maybe you will be like warmen some day

Hi guys... it's nice to see there are other people playing the keyboards two also I have a piano at home, a midi keyboard, which is the perfect choice of recording and a very old, shitty and small CASIO keyboard... it sucks ass, has one broken key and right now is in my bands rehursal place, cause we are rehursing hard for a show on the 1st of July. At home I usually play the piano cause it's always one hand away and works perfectly well for writing music and the midi keyboards is a bit of a hassle to switch on. Despite this fact I defenetly preffer the light electronic keyboards than the heavy one of the piano and I have much more skills playing the ligher one... It really sux that there aren't enough "tabs for keyboards" but there is quite a huge load of midi files, which I belive is even more useful that sheet music and with the right software (that's very easy to find) it becomes sheet music.

Otherwise as an instrumentalist my confidence is pretty high and I don't usually get problems like this part is too difficult and my band has done some pretty complicated cover songs. I think that as an instrumentalist my soloing is one of my strong assests and I can do quite a lot.
Hope I'm not sounding too cocky...

Ugh, my set up is pretty weak. An outdated Casio and I just hook it up to a PA system when playing. My dream set up (which I am currently saving for) is a Roland AX-7 hooked up to a Korg Triton.

Right now I am a keyboardist in two bands; one progressive power metal and the other a symphonic black metal. I only started this year, however, I am trying to learn the more complicated sweeps and progressions. :\

And when it comes for tabs for keys, download the guitar pro! Useful software, indeed!

Yeah yeah yeah... Such a noob... That's why you can play Over the Hills and Far Away, The Kinslayer, San Sebastian, Wolf and Raven, and other songs. Yeah, I sure am glad to have met you. One day, you'll have your ideal setup. Oh and yes guitar pro owns. Makes things quick to teach everyone. I started writing keys to one of my songs I think I told you... Get this... Rey and I already have about half of our second CD down... We just need to focus on our demo and then our first album... Hahaha. But yeah, last night we figured out that we have 21 songs. 4 track demo, 6 song LP, then a 15 track album maybe. Depends on if we use all the songs and depends on how much more material we write. 16 of the songs are between Rey and I. Hmm. I need to force Rey into signing up on Metal Storm. We can then promote our band... They let you do that on MS in certain threads... We should all get on here and start doing that. But anyways. Yeah. You are an amazing keyboardist.

My setup is pretty shitty, cheap Casio or Yamaha, I don't even know... I'm not really a keyboardist, but every now and then I come up with good riffs for it... Other than that, I leave it to the master. lol.

EP*

I play keyboard.. It's been in my attic for some time and i decided to bring it to my room and learn how to play it. It's uh.. *goes to look at name* Casio.. That's basically all I know about it.. Exept for that it has lots of diffrent sounds. All i know how to play is like 2 Beethoven songs.. And like a tiny part of a song by Cradle of Filth.

I have a link to a place where they have non-metal songs.. I don't know if you people would want it..but..I'll post it anyways. http://www.pitt.edu/~deben/freebies.html

I've recently gotten into the art of piano/keyboard as a guitarist and bassist...who couldn't read music noless. I'm in a keyboarding class I now [roughly akin to beginners lessons] and I just learned how to read music. The way I learn metal songs now for the keyboard is this program called TabIt.

They arrange the piano tabs just like guitar [six lines, standard tuning, etc] but it has an indicator at the bottom as to what each individual note it is, and on what section on the keyboard it is found [where actual tabs come into play], it has really helped me a lot. Within 1 week I was learning Nightwish, Dark Tranquillity, the Exorcist Theme [lol].

As for what I own, I play my mom's Baldwin Upright Acrosonic, full-scale piano. It's great.

Im a complete n00b when it comes to instruments, i have a keybaord, but be fucked if i can play the fucking thing, i can play the intro to Stratovarius - Black Diamond and thats about it... whats the easiest way to learn chords, and using both hands, obviously practice, but how?

@ Dark Cornatus:
well, you have been guessing right, it's practice as for chords, I found that the best way to remember them and to switch them is if you can do whole scales because that helps you understand how chords come along and you can add touches yourself without going like "umm..I need that dark sounding chord..that has to be an..Am7..let's look it up.." because you'll end up looking for every chord. Maybe you could drop by a music store and see if they have keyboard books (they usually do) and there, they explain how to get to chords. There are also books just about chords where you have scales, chords and stuff...you can find the weirdest chords in those little booklets. a basic music theory book would help you as well (maybe you can even find one for instrumentalists) to get your scales together. I'm afraid that I can't tell you a website, but I learned it out of songbooks from elementary school.
you should also know how to read notes because it standarizes the whole music - so you see one thing and know which key to press - no matter whether you see a letter or a note. if you're learning scales and chords, it is essential to know which keys you're actually pressing because it could get a little hard to seperate C and D or some other notes if you don't know anything and don't have an absolute hearing.
the only way how to use both hands is to play with both hands. if you're learning a song, you can practice every hand by itself for one or two times, but after that (after you've found the notes on the keyboard), you should play it with both hands even if it's really slow (which it should be) because if you don't play it like that from the beginning, you'll have trouble.
hope to be at least some help...have fun practising and good luck

I started playing classical piano, which I continued doing for about 10 years. Then I quit the lessons but I continued playing on my own, and by doing and trying things myself I learned a lot about chords and scales and harmonies, because they don't teach you those things in the music academy. In august 2003 I bought me a Technics KN-1500, which I currently am still playing. But I find it a beginner's instrument and I hope to purchase something more advanced in the future: eg a Roland XP-series, or a phantom X, Korg Triton or Trinity, or a good Yamaha would suit me fine too. I think I'm pretty skilled already since I play the keys for nearly 13 years now, but my soloing still needs some work. When I play solos I mostly just run up and down the scales, major, minor, pentatonic, at an amazing speed, but there's nothing special about it, nor is there anything creative about it. Does someone know if there are courses to be found on the internet who can teach me how to improve my soloing? You guys can always PM me too, because I don't come here so often. ps: i use a 120 watt Behringer keyboard amp/pa-system.

Can anyone recommend some not to hard keyboard solo's. Already know some norther solo's already and the only CoB solo i can master is the Bed Of Razors solo. Need some experience of keyboard solo's. Can't think of any more suitable. So if know any cool keyboard solo. Please tell me

Try the solos that Henrik Klingenberg plays on the Reckoning Night album by Sonata Arctica. Those are pretty easy. Solos that Tuomas Halupainen of Nightwish or whatever his name is plays are always very easy too. But you know, it's not fun to play solos of songs exactly the same as played on the album. You should improvise a little yourself man! Metal greetz!

Ok, thanks! I'll try that

yeah I also want to get into soloing. I'm saving up for a Korg Triton TR right now...and practicing on my ancient Roland EM-25 in the meantime. I know basic stuff, can play Full Moon intro and Black Sheep, but when I saw Sonata Arctica live I was dumbfounded by the way Henrik moved on the AX-7. How do you get your fingers to move so fast without smashing randomly? I've tried books but they're very difficult for me to follow...

also, you say Reckoning Night solos are easy? Jesus man if I could play the keyboard solo on Don't Say a Word I'd consider myself a wizard. Teach me!

I've found that a good way for learning songs is from MIDI files, which you can convert into notes by using Cubasis or other music software...Children of Bodom and Nightwish are good for learning keyboard parts from http://childrenofbodommidis.site.voila.fr/index.html

yeah I import midi into Garageband and that makes it a lot easier to break songs down and learn them.