20 Ways to Improve Your Electronic Keyboard Playing Skills
The electronic keyboard has come a long way since the synthpop '80s. Modern keyboards are sleek, affordable, lightweight, and great for beginners. Practice these 20 tips and you'll improve in no time!
How to Be a Better Keyboardist
The modern electronic keyboard, or music keyboard, is a technological marvel. It's a compact delight that enables anyone to instantly be a full orchestra, a jazz quartet, or a rock band.
That said, mastering the electronic keyboard is not a simple matter of pressing a few keys and a few buttons. If you’re struggling, here are 20 tips to help you along. Do a mixture of all faithfully and you will be a better keyboardist in no time.
20 Tips to Improve Your Technique
- Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
- Practice to Rectify Weaknesses
- Do Not Over-Practice
- Make it Conducive to Practice
- Do Drills Everyday
- Don’t Try Songs That Are Too Difficult
- Play the Same Song Differently
- Record Yourself
- Understand the Role of the Keyboard
- Identify Nuances of Different Instruments
- Improvise!
- Transcribe Your Favorite Songs
- Play Genres You Dislike
- Get Fit
- Experiment With Audio Effects
- Collaborate!
- Arrange Your Favorite Songs
- Don’t Obsess Over Gear
- Use Notation Software
- Upload Recordings to YouTube
Perfect practice makes perfect will always be true.
1. Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
“Perfect practice makes perfect” will always rank supreme for any form of learning. This will be the case for you, too. Nor would this fact ever change.
2. Practice to Rectify Weaknesses
Practice is not repeating the same song again and again till getting it right. Proper, beneficial practice is instead the identification of weaknesses followed by specific efforts to address those weaknesses, which itself will only happen when you are utterly unforgiving about your slip-ups.
As a guideline, remember that it is far more important to get a stanza or phrase right, rather than to finish an entire song. You should also never rush to finish learning any song or technique.
3. Do Not Over-Practice
This is not contradictory to tips 1 and 2. What it means is that you should never risk injury by over-practicing. However important music is to you, your physical well-being always takes precedence. It is sheer stupidity to strain your fingers or wrist for the sake of a song.
Over-practice can also result in the inexplicable, but quite possible scenario, of you suddenly hating the electronic keyboard, and music learning by extension.
Would YOU want to practice on this piano?
4. Make it Conducive to Practice
Many a time, we do not neglect practice because we are lazy. Instead, we push practice aside because some circumstance makes it unpleasant or inconvenient. For example, if your housemates complained every time you played your keyboard, it would totally discourage you from practicing.
Spend a day or two remedying these situations to the best of your abilities—like finding new roommates. While you might not be able to completely resolve the issues, it will help motivate you to practice.
5. Do Drills Everyday
Scales, arpeggios, and similar piano/keyboard exercises are often more effective than medicine when it comes to putting a keyboardist to sleep.
However, their benefits for better performance are indisputable. If you wish to improve your keyboard playing skills, you have to make such drills a heavy part of your practice routine.
One simple way is to always begin a practice session with some drills. Vary the drills on a day-to-day basis to reduce tedium too.
6. Don’t Try Songs That Are Too Difficult
Whether you are using graded scores, or not, do not attempt songs that are too difficult for your current skill level.
Some musicians feel doing so is an effective “shock-treatment” way to immediately strengthen one’s techniques. Chances are, however, you will quickly end up frustrated. Upset yourself this way often enough and you might even consider abandoning your once-beloved instrument.
Know too that many advanced scores often require a firm foundation in certain techniques and theories; prematurely trying them is actually detrimental to learning. Think of it like writing an English essay. You have to first learn how to write one sentence before you start writing whole paragraphs.
Playing songs in a bunch of different styles is not only taking advantage of an electronic keyboard's menu settings, it will make you a more versatile player.
7. Play the Same Song Differently
The greatest attraction of the electronic keyboard is its ability to instantly generate many types of sounds and rhythmic accompaniment. Use this to improve your keyboard playing by repeating the same song again and again, but in different styles.
Doing so is not only fun, it is a fast and effective way to develop versatility with different sounds; this being the foundation for superior keyboard performance skills. To inject additional difficulty, try the same song in different keys, too. That will provide for a most challenging drill.
8. Record Yourself
If you haven’t already done so, record yourself so you can critique your own performance. Please know that you will be stunned by how differently your performance sounds when you are listening to it as an audience.
Mistakes you never realized were there will suddenly be screaming at you from every verse, making this one of the most unforgiving ways to assess your skills. However, part of becoming a better artist is facing up to your own music. No pun intended.
Use a cellphone app to record your practices, then assess them honestly.
9. Understand the Role of the Keyboard
The many sounds and rhythmic accompaniments of an electronic keyboard, even cheap ones, enable anyone to instantly be a “one-man band.” That said, a keyboardist has quite a different role in an actual band, usually taking on responsibility for accompaniment or substituting for instruments that cannot be physically present.
Unless you are dead sure you will never play in a band, you will benefit tremendously from the process. Being part of a band will greatly improve your grasp and understanding of music, particularly concepts like harmony. Even if you're a little uncomfortable at first, you'll be a better musician from the experience.
10. Identify Nuances of Different Instruments
Listening to many different kinds of songs and performances will improve your overall musicianship. However, your actual keyboard playing skills are unlikely to change for the better unless you are listening from the perspective of an electronic keyboardist.
Instead of purely enjoying the soothing sounds of a guitar serenade, think about how you could incorporate the nylon guitar style into your keyboard performances. Ask yourself the question: what differentiates this style from other instruments?
Likewise, do the same for different genres of music, be it classical, folk, or jazz. Remember, too, that the mark of an accomplished keyboardist is the ability to accurately reproduce a myriad of styles, which requires understanding the nuances of individual instruments. It is never simply about producing/playing a sound.
11. Improvise!
Improvisation covers a broad spectrum of musical techniques, ranging from chords to counters to ad-libbing. Correspondingly, it is one of the hardest skills to master.
Sad to say, though, if you wish to infuse any performance with a special touch, a special magic, you have to master some degree of improvisation. To make the process easier, start slow. Start simple too; it is foolish to expect yourself to be Oscar Peterson overnight.
Take the time to familiarize yourself with basic music concepts such as triads and modulation. Once you get the hang of it, everything becomes intuitive. You might even find yourself loving opportunities to improvise.
When you make the effort to transcribe a song, be it by hand or by software, you are meticulously dissecting the composition.
12. Transcribe Your Favorite Songs
Transcribing your favorite songs doesn’t just hone your hearing. Nor is it a meaningless drill to refine your music notation skills. When you make the effort to transcribe a song, be it by hand or by software, you are meticulously dissecting the composition.
The process of transcription often inspires new ideas, on top of hinting at areas you could improve on or copy from. Once you have the basic structure, add in your own ideas. This, incidentally, is also a great way to strengthen your improvisation skills.
13. Play Genres You Dislike
Don't just play music genres that you enjoy. You have an electronic keyboard capable of dozens of sounds and rhythmic accompaniments, and you're not going to use it? When you play nothing but songs that you enjoy, you effectively stunt your growth as a musician. Beyond a point, you might even start to regress.
When you work on songs that you don't like, it forces you out your comfort zone. This is good for you. If you take it seriously, and don't just go through the motions, you will notice your overall musicianship improving. And this will be reflected in your performances.
14. Get Fit
You don't have to prepare for a triathlon. Even modest exercise will do your body good and there's a carryover effect on your music. Being fitter will lead to better stamina, increased coordination, and sharper thinking, all of which will allows you to practice longer, better, and with reduced risk of injury.
For keyboard players especially, posture is so important to your musicianship, not exercising your back and abdomen is really doing yourself a disservice.
As is the case with many other disciplines, thoroughly knowing your electronic keyboard inside and out is a major step toward true mastery.
15. Experiment With Effects
Nowadays, electronic keyboards are capable of producing an astonishing variety of effects, such as delay, chorus, compression, distortion, and so on. While none of these can completely mask a terrible performance, they can give a decent performance that magical extra touch.
The ability to work with effects requires specific techniques and some audio knowledge, which requires a bit of study. It may be a little uncomfortable at first, but stick with it. Once you get past that initial learning curve, your musicality will benefit.
Start by experimenting with presets. As you familiarize yourself with the nature and purpose of each effect, vary the parameters. Your ultimate aim is to layer (or combine) effects for a truly emphatic sound.
16. Collaborate!
Let’s be honest. Working with other people can be vexing and exasperating. More often than not, it’s constant give-and-take and occasionally under fiery circumstances.
Immersing yourself in group dynamics will be enlightening, even if the process or outcome is unpleasant at times. For instance, the experience could offer insight as to why others dislike your style or technique.
That said, when it works out well, you grow in more ways than one. There is nothing better than actual interaction with other budding musicians.
17. Arrange Your Favorite Songs
Some music educators would claim that this is time-consuming and unbeneficial to learning. While there is some truth in that, arranging songs for your keyboard forces you to learn your gear inside and out.
Some keyboardists use but a fraction of the capabilities open to them. Don't be like that. The process of discovering new functions is often inspirational and they'll help you develop new ideas on how to play and improving techniques.
It's easy to obsess over gear, specifically, gear that you don't have. But, if you're a beginner, you're better off putting on headphones and going to work on your keyboard.
18. Don’t Obsess Over Gear
Regarding (17), while investigating the capabilities of your gear, it is quite likely you’d start yearning for a better or newer model. Indulge yourself, but don’t get carried away. And never permit yourself to splurge.
Remember, a better model enhances performances, but only if you are skillful enough to activate those advantages. If you're a relative beginner, your primary focus should always be to upgrade your keyboard-playing skills.
19. Use Notation Software
Notation software such as Finale allows you to connect an electronic keyboard to your computer system using a MIDI cable. Whatever you subsequently play is then instantly transcribed into the software. Primarily designed for the convenience of composers and arrangers, this setup could alternatively be used to check playing accuracy. Specifically, your timing.
A warning here, you are going to be utterly appalled the first time you try this technique. Software is more than brutally unforgiving when it comes to interpreting human timing. You might think you’re playing a crochet. But to the program, your beat lasted an odd and distasteful 0.875 counts. In short, prepared to be horrified, then learn from it.
20. Upload Recordings to YouTube
Doing so is always beneficial to your growth as an electronic keyboardist. Simply put, if you’re good, youll receive affirmation. If you’re terrible, well, many will ensure that you become well aware of the fact.
If it's the latter situation, don’t be too affected by negative comments or a ton of dislikes. Part of the process is learning to differentiate between constructive criticism, unconstructive criticism, and malicious trolling.
That said, even trolls can provide insight. Typically, they jump on your weakest area and use that to attack you. Interpreted with the right mindset, the true musician will use the criticism to become a better keyboardist.
© 2019 Ced Yong
Comments
Ced Yong (author) from Asia on September 02, 2020:
Thanks for reading! :)
precious on September 01, 2020:
Thanks alot
Ced Yong (author) from Asia on April 04, 2019:
Oh dear! I know those keyboards. They were supposed to facilitate music interest. LOL.
Liz Westwood from UK on April 02, 2019:
When our children were younger, we had a keyboard with some preprogrammed music on it. The keys would light up so they knew which ones to play. Unsurprisingly, none of them pursued a musical career.
