Learning to play metal keyboard?

[Mozart404]

I've played guitar for many years but have had to cut down on my playing quite a bit due to some problems with my wrists. Not related to poor technique I might add!

Seeing as I also play classical piano, (which doesn't really cause me any pain) I'm really keen to learn to play keyboards, keyboard players in metal are pretty rare too so it might make it easier to find a band.

The problem is because keyboards are rare in metal it's really hard to learn. I learned guitar mostly from instructional videos and books, but as far as I'm aware there isn't a single book or DVD on rock/metal keyboard playing. So all the issues on recreating sounds by ear, writing parts, soloing etc. I will have to figure out myself! I have a good grounding in technique and theory, but this kind of thing is a completely different kettle of fish.

I'm planning on getting a JV-2080 off eBay soon so I'll have some of Janne's classic sounds. Programming a good lead sound will probably not be easy though!

So for any of you who play keyboard, how did you get started?

 

[MaximHateCrew]

Just get some tabs and learn COB stuff. It will do the work!

 

[Murky]

It's definitely a tricky one, but the way I learned was by basically transferring my guitar skills onto the keyboard.

If you work out what tuning you feel most comfortable in first, or what most songs you wanna learn are in, you can starting working in it and really get to grips with it.

I started with D minor because that's what my band played in and we wanted to add keyboards to it. It's a pretty simple scale on keyboard, low enough to be a bit more metal than Em, which is a bit more annoying.

I basically just sat and played around and worked out how to play the various main chords in the scale - third, sixth etc. before starting to work on intricacies.

It's like every other instrument - a test of patience and a bit of dedication. Guitars have tabs, which are really useful, but keyboards don't really get the same treatment. Reading music is a thing but, honestly, it's totally not necessary. If you're gonna be making your own music - being free to experiment is useful and learning things by ear tends to take less time and is good for improving your ear for recognising patterns and stuff!

So yeah, just work out what key you're best working with and get to grips with the positions and transfer riffs you know on guitar to the keyboard, by working out where each note is and you'll slowly get it down

I can play a lot more lead on keys now, but I don't really have any evidence of it, as my band does more orchestral stuff, but you can hear it here:



It wasn't needing to be quantized or anything and there's quite a CoB-y harp section in it and it really wasn't after a long time of practice. Just so you can get a kinda timescale of where you can get in a few months of focussing on it

Hope my crappy rambling has helped somehow, haha!

 

[The Butt]

Tips on learning metal keyboards:

1 - Don't try to sound like Jeanne
2 - See 1

 

[NoLimit]

what rig are you gonna get?