Hi, I make beats but i want to improve upon my keyboard skills, can anyone help me with a guide or a couple of tutorials to aid me? Thanks

 

So honestly the best thing to do is to learn theory first. ITs going to be super boring and annoying but once you get it down it will be easier for you to play the piano. Here is a video that goes over the basics

Then after that you might want to learn how to read sheet music like very basic stuff im talking about lvl 1 books like lvl 1 mozart or something like that. Practice with one hand at a time left then right, then when you are comfortable enough put them together and do it slowly.

Learn some basic chord progressions. Here is another good site for just basic music theory.

Musictheory.net

after you learn basic chord progressions just dabble with what sounds right to you. Improvise a little bit on those chord progressions. It will be very annoying and frustrating but once you learn like lets say the d major scale you can easily make good sounding music just improvising on that.

 

Hello @chefcoco, i can recommend this tool: ChordPulse Lite

ChordPulse Lite is a simple tool to practice, improvise and compose music in an efficient and fun way.
Create custom backing tracks easily, experiment with chord progressions and musical ideas, enjoy your practice.
Change chords, tempo, key and music style with a few clicks.
Tune your musical instrument to ChordPulse Lite and just start playing!

Download a free package of inspiration and motivation!
www.chordpulse.com/lite.html

 

Try a book on classical and/or jazz theory, ideally both
Also a text book on piano playing
And slowly build up a repertoire, that's pretty much all you have to do

I found the best online tutorials to be on specific things i.e. right and left hand independence exercises

 

work very hard study a lot and play your keyboard at least 8 hours a day.

 

Take a few lessons to get you started properly.

There are so many things that are so much easier when you get some personal attention and tuition.

One would think that with all the crying about musicians starving, the first one to recognize value in musicianship and throw a musician a bone would be an aspiring one, alas it is not so.

 

what skills? playing technique, or composing ideas?
with technique, playing scales, both hands, simultaneous or mirrored helps with finger confidence over keys, practice chords and their changes to build even strength of all fingers,
composing doesn't require music theory knowledge if you can hear, but knowing theory will help you achieve results faster - I highly recommend Scaler 2 to learn theory in an intuitive playing way

 

Buy a copy of Hanon and go to a teacher to tell you if you're doing it right.

 

(I suppose first we should establish whether the question is "How do I become a keyboardist like Keith Emerson" or "How do I become a keyboardist like that guy in Flock of Seagulls")

 

Hmm... sorta true?
The problem is that evenly practicing all fingers still leaves your weak fingers 4 and 5 at a disadvantage, that's what books like Hanon try to prevent with dedicated exercises for those fingers.

I remember being really irritated by all those Youtube tutorials when I started out since they never go in-depth (why is tertian harmony a thing in the first place? Why are inversions a thing, why do chords have root notes?) and my experience shows that theory books can teach you those things fairly quickly while if you would rely on apps and youtube you'd probably need an eternity to figure those basic things out.
It's really comparable to grasping the basics of EQ and Compression, at least it was for me.

Like sure, learning through immersion might be satisfying enough for a lot of musicians, apparently it wasn't for me

 

The focus on training fingers like Hanon studies is a passed stage in today's piano education. It can actually be very counterproductive and even damaging for advanced technical development. A fluent piano technique requires a combination of arm, wrist and fingers. Rotation of the wrists and correct position of the elbows is of ultimate importance to achieve speed, strength and accuracy and relaxation during playing.

Static exercises like Hanon studies actually force you to 'freeze' your wrists and elbows and let the fingers do all the work and that's a really bad idea. Position of the elbows and rotation of the wrist is very important for building a solid technique! A good example are Chopin etudes op.10 and op.25. Even with smaller hands you could learn to play these. But only if you follow the flow of rotation that most of these pieces require. With static Hanon trained fingers you won't stand a ghost of chance of ever coming close to be able to play something like this!

 

That's not wrong but Hanon was never supposed to be a wholistic approach but rather focuses on the most common problems pianists face.
A more exhaustive book on all fingers would be "Greifen und Begreifen" from Anna Hirzel-Langenhan who explained the role of all fingers in detail with respective exercises.
CPE Bachs Treatsie should cover everything known to mankind at that point whilst Czernys exercises were more for every aspect of playing piano iirc. Or Chopin and Debussys Etudes if you are better at instinctive understanding.

You gotta start somewhere though, a simple piano textbook is arguably way better for a beginner who doesn't know basic fingerings than any book mentioned above.

 

Of course.
There are a lot of simple pieces to start on, but as long you're able to read a staff, I always suggest to have a look to Hanon exercises and scales and Kunz 200 short canons, the last very useful to develop hand indipendence, step by step, very easy at the beginning, becoming more and more demanding as it progresses.

 

You gotta start right! If you don't you're gonna waste a lot off time on brainless mechanical exercises. Fingering of a piece of music is more important than everything.

So if you seriously want to become 'a keyboardist' my advise to people would be. Find a good teacher to at least teach you the basics!