I have a piano that sits there. I peaked in organ lessons with A Whiter Shade of Pale in about 1974. Is there an online series I could follow to rekindle keyboard playing? Bonus points for no Beatles and no classic rock content. 1000x bonus points for New Pornographers, The Cure, old ska, John K Samson tunes. I can plunk out the right hand of Pachelbel’s Canon. Time to improve.
I’m not averse to in-person instruction, but I want to coalesce my fragmented music training into a thing before I use up too much of other peoples time. Suggestions? Anyone else in a similar boat?
I’m in a similar boat trying to learn guitar after decades of being synth guy.
Good news as far as The Cure goes, since Robert Smith insisted that all the keyboard parts had to be played with one finger only!
Ska keyboard is just a fast reggae bubble. Once you get the hang of the timing it’s easy.
Lots of cool freebies on YouTube. I like 12tone, Rick Beato and Guy Michelmore’s stuff. I’m doing Justin’s guitar lessons, but I haven’t looked at any keyboard lessons.
It doesn’t compare to in-person lessons, but I actually found the app SimplyPiano to be pretty good, at least from someone who had last touched the piano when I was in third grade, to picking it up again during the pandemic.
I’m not certain whether you can test out of the beginning parts though, if you’re starting at above a third grade level, it might be annoying to have to go through all the beginning exercises. I think that there may be a placement test you can take though.
I went from barely being able to pick out a tune to be able to play medium level classical pieces with both hands, and chords for pop songs. The only odd thing is that you don’t deal with any other keys besides c major until the advanced levels.
(Edit: oh wait, I read your list of music. No, the music selection in SimplyPiano exercises will be entirely lame for you.)
That said, I’m not sure about the attitude that you need to get better before wasting someone’s time. Teachers don’t think of their time as wasted! And you may avoid cementing bad habits by starting with a teacher right away. They won’t mind helping you work out exactly where you are, which parts you’re already good at, and which parts you need to go back to square one.
Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll check out that app. I wouldn’t mind going through the beginner stuff, even if it is skimming. I am very rusty on reading notation. (Pre edit - Just saw your edit! Sad trombone sound! I have had enough of the old stuff.)
I want a sense of how committed I am to this endeavour. I have many diverse interests, which I jump into, then slowly abandon. That said, the discipline of a weekly in-person lesson might work nicely. Maybe I should look up my old organ teacher? Rekindle my tween crush on her! She was 20 then so must be 70 now.
From a vaguely recalled interview I read ages ago, he wanted the keyboard parts to be simple, singable one note melodies - as opposed to crazy jazz chords I guess. I’m not going to argue with one of the greatest song writers of all time!
