I want to understand my synths from top to bottom and i have been spending a lot of time recently learning chords and playing techniques with both hands on my korg r3, progress is now slowing down due to awkward finger positions, should i battle on and learn this stuff or should i spend more time programming sounds and effects on my LP ? I feel i know this answer myself, but i would like to hear other peoples opinions, Is playing the keyboard and programming sounds two different things , should i specialise in one and not the other ?
It depends on your your intentions. Do you just get into sound design or are you a musician?
I’d say you should learn both at first. Also, listen to a really wide range of music, decide what style(s) you want to learn and/or perform, and then specialize in the skills that you need for those sorts of music. But it’s usually good to practice more skills than you specialize in. For example, I have no intention of ever playing jazz guitar live, or recording jazz guitar, but I put a certain amount of time into practicing it because it really helps my general skill level.
These are 2 different creatures, but they can compliment one another.
Learning to play the synth is great for shows, so people can watch you do things and it becomes more authentic and talent oriented to the people watching. When you really know an instrument and play it like noone else can, you become a legend.
Learning to program/sequence means really understanding your gear and the technical aspects of what it is capable of. It also means knowing your programs and being able to then use their capabilities. This way you can do things you could never do by hand, like precise timing, unlimited pattern/patch storage/, repeatability and it makes it easier to attain near perfect song arrangements. You can also program way more thing to occur at the same time than you could possible tweak or play at any given moment. You can be your own drummer, lead, backgrounds and vocalist while still changing patches on your synthesizers and controlling 50 other CC parameters!
Now imagine your studio is set up so you can jam and program at the same time. You could play each part and record/loop/edit/arrange it sometime after that. This way you could really enjoy part of the jam and put it into a trck and ditch the rest or use it in some other project. I have seen people do this on stage with a combination of pre-programmed beats and live improve and looping. It can still be pretty awesome.
Im my opinion, Synthesis is straight up engineering. It is not subjective at all, it is an objective skill. A does B and I think that synthesis is something that anyone can learn without posessing ANY musical skill. It doesn’t take rhythm or talen or ingenuity to learn how to program a synthesizer, just patience, practice and trial and error.
It is the creative application of your sounds that the ART factor begins to come in. Remember that in the early days, Bob moog and others started to NOT put a keyboard controller with the modules, but he eventually did.
Ive just been learning about the Eurorack modular synths, and this is a very popular trend these days, and the goals of a lot of these modules is to produce new and exciting bleeps and blops. The idea of “Noize” music is like abstract music. If Jackson Pollock was a musician, hed have a synth for this purpose.
So really, there is no correlation between playing a keyboard and programming a synth, BUT learning an instrument like a synth is a lifelong journey and just as soon as you think you have the hand of programming, you will realize the modules do extra things.
As far as learning the keyboard aspect of your synth, you can learn both together, but it would be advisable to KNOW how to get an accurate pitch in your programming with little effort in order to know that the intervals you are playing on the keyboard are accurate.
If you had a dedicated piano keyboard it might help because i know how tempting it can be to just sit there and tweak knobs all day. Id also reccomend some piano lessons to show you correct fingering and then apply those you your original programs.
Hope this wasn’t a jumbled confusing mess.
Eric
Actually there is a correlation between playing a keyboard and programming the synth, but as you get to be a better programmer and keyboardist, these two become inextricably linked (unless you doscnnect the keyboard controller hehe).
Eric
There are those who spend time and money making sounds, because it is facinating and challenging to them. Some sound engineers have made it a career and an art/craft, and others just enjoy tinkering with odd sounds.
There are musicians who use synths for particular sounds that complement their compositions. Stock presets satisfy some people’s needs. Other musicians delve deep into synthesis to explore and search for a new palette of sounds, and often their explorations inspire new compositions.
Mark,
I think that said it a little more eloquently than I did.
Eric
play
play
learn to play
be sure what music you want to do, which sound you want to get.
Don’t ask a synth for “inspiration” (the worst part of synth reviews is the “I heard some patches that immediately inspired me a song”. Yeah, right. Indeed I see your concerts and records advertised everywhere… all those beautiful songs “inspired” by “Cozìy Hammond 2009” or “Additive Strings”… sure).
While you play, take the time to jot down what you’d like to hear from your synth.
Punch? response to touch? Some vibrato while holding notes? Soon? later?
Do you need to FILL a sparse sounding technique, 20-minutes long envelopes for Vangelis sweeps, or do you need a little bit of click at the attack, so that your Wakeman-style-rapid-fire-arpeggios are well articulated?
then play some more
in the meantime: study some acoustics/synthesis. Take two weeks on some good book on synthesys.
The yamaha manual of sound engineering is a Bible.
Finally, and only finally:
spend money on a VERY good synth and start digging into it.
Not the other way round (shopping for the right synth, trading it in for the new one, back and forth to the shop) while waiting for the musicin in you to blossom.
IMHO
better: in the HO I accumulated over the past 37 years playing synths, and 43 years playing music.
eric: “there is a correlation between playing a keyboard and programming the synth”
you said in two lines what I said in 50. A synth is a musical instrument.
If you can’t play, the sounds you program will be useless.
If your mind generates music, you will want to get those sounds in reality. Not just the notes, but the harmonics, the timbre, the voice, just like you dreamed them.
That’s why the synthesizer was born.
Otherwise, why not playing an organ?
Or an MP3 player?
There is a resource that I return to for ALL of my synthesis programming…
THe Tom Rhea MicroMoog manual:
http://www.fantasyjackpalance.com/fjp/sound/synth/synthdata/07-moog-micromoog.html
find the link and download the manual. There might even be his version of the minimoog manual in there. I haven’t read that though Im sure it is fabulous.
I find this MUCH more informative than the current Moog manuals because he is an engineering physisict. Even though it is specifically for the MicroMoog, I learn more from his articles on synthesis than I have anywhere else.
Eric
I’d just like to add that if you’re serious about learning to play the keyboard, practice on one that does not have a light, wimpy action.
Use either a weighted action controller or a real piano.
The keyboard of a real piano or weighted action “fights back” and helps develop strength in your fingers and wrists.
Personally I prefer a true piano.
It removes all temptations to fiddle with knobs, has a long keyboard and can probably take as much force as you can deliver.
Because it’s very touch sensitive, it helps teach dynamics and rhythm.
I have seen many great synthesizer players learn on piano, but I never seen any great piano players learn on a synthesizer.
I can easily ignore a Moog 55 sitting in my room for a month.
But I can’t resist playing a good piano.
Perhaps that’s just me though and this is likely the wrong forum to make such a statement. 
I think that music expresses what can’t be said with words, and that your instrument, be it a piano, a guitar or a synthesizer is an extention of that expression. Thus I also believe that tweaking sounds or designing patches is indeed highly connected to the expressive part of music and not as dispassionate as some people believe it to be. I regard it no different than different playing teqniques in the classical realm (legato, allegro, forte, etc etc). It’s just different means of achieving the same result.
I say this also based on the fact that I am a patch/sound designer for Reason and I’ve had numerous (hundreds) of comments on how good my patches are, that they are expressive and made for “musicians”. This ultimately is proof that what I’m expressing when I’m building sounds can indeed be carried on to another person who will use this expression to create his own.
Just my 2p
Thanks to all who responded to my query, all the responses were brilliant, so i think i will stick it out and learn, learn, learn and play, play, play, although im not sure about getting piano lessons.
I have a good book and if i get through that that will be an acheivement.
the “piano lessons” part is the one I am less certain about.
A synth is not a piano-with-knobs.
It doesn’t sound like one: you gotta play it like a piano in some cases, a trumpet in others, a violin or a voice in others.
I got piano and organ lessons only as a complement to a classical guitar education, in my youth years,
and in the end I have been playing synths, not guitar, all my life.
Some keyboard fingering lessons would be good for your touch (and for your hands’ health)
but what’s really important is MUSICAL education. Understanding scales, chords, harmony, timing, orchestration.
Some basic organ fingering lessons,
some piano training,
plus some time spent understanding what an orchestra is, and how its main components work,
and some acoustics (why do I “like” that pad better than this? What’s that “tine” I hear? An higher note and frequency or just more spaced notes which let the frequencies to ring?)
is probably the best education.
IMHO.
Of course, if you plan to be a garage-studio Rudess or a Wakeman or Jarrett, well, you not only should get piano lessons, you should HAVE already got all of them before you reached your teens.
But if you’d rather be a garage-studio zawinul or vangelis or wonder [all of which can/could handle rachmaninoff with no effort, btw],
I wouldn’t recommend that you obsess yourself and start doing 3-hours daily Hanon at… what’s your age? 25? 30? 65?.
If you want to get good at keyboard training whats better than piano lessons. knowing proper fingereing of chords and scales won’t come from anything other than…piano lessons.
Its hard to know how to play the keyboard like a trumpet or articulate a keyboards like a sax and getting a series of notes relative to whatever scale or chord progression you are playing without piano lessons.
And it doesn’t take hours and hours and hours of Hanon training to do that either.
Interesting thread! It may have already been said, but I think you should play along with music that you like as well. It won’t replace theory, but it’s important to train your ears, plus it can help you discover the relationship between the notes that you hear and the keys on your synth.
indeed the “piano lesson” issue is a bit thorny. I stand partially corrected.
What erick says is obvious.
If your pinky can’t find a 9th, you probably should stick to software sequencers.
And when I underestimated formal piano training I maybe forgot that… well… I did a lot of scales on piano before looking at a keyboard like it wasn’t just a keyboard.
Probably I came to forgot something I just automatized.
Once this is said, I confirm that chord voicings are not the same on a piano and on a synthesizer, when the synth generates brass-like sounds, or pads, or when you close the cutoff, ramp up resonance, a rely on harmonics to be the main content of your sound.
Touch is not the same as on a piano when you play sax or violin patches.
Not to mention aftertouch or pitch bend or modulation controllers (I play plenty of breath control, eg).
For all these purposes, knowing pianop voigings and technique is a good start, but, especially starting at a mature age, can be limiting as well as far as
“synthesizer programming and playing” [which is the issue]
is concerned.
If the issue was “how to perform perfect piano solos on a synth”, Erick would be right 110%, not just 50%.
You know, after rereading m post, I think i came across as perhaps a little harsh. My apologies if you got that same impression.
However I posted my initial responce about piano lessons because the OP was asking how to improve keyboard technique. I would essentially respond with the piano lessons approach because I don’t know who I am talking to, or their level of talent, their ear or their commitment to their endeavor. One thing that probably should be said more often is that the possibillity exists that playing an instrument is impossible for them. Some people simply don’t have it within their grasp, the innate abillity of rhythm or the ear to reckognize pitches. While I don’t think that is the case with the original poster, piano lessons will surely be a make or break sort of approach.
This all comes back down to what I already said, you don’t have to have ANY music abillity to program a synth. Programming is objective. Performing A will result in B affect on the destination. It should be noted that you probably don’t have to have ANY musical abillity at all to arrange synthesizer sounds on a recording or to perform experimental music, as was the intention of the earliest synths.
The intent here is:
“I want to understand my synths from top to bottom, is playing the keyboard and programming synths two different things or should I specialize in one and not the other?”
Your BRAIN/EAR has to “find” the 9th, whether or not you pinky can reach it is a different story or a matter of technique. Keith Jarrett had STUBBY hands but is one of the greatest Jazz pianists.
Here is where his problem began:
“progress is now slowing down due to awkward finger positions.” This is very typical of the bad habits that develop with the absence of piano lessons. You need a teacher to tell you the most efficient ways to play scales and how to change chords without stressing your hands or burning up energy. Piano Books are only as good as the person who writes them. Teachers are needed to expound on ideas and can answer any questions that the book doesn’t cover. A Good teacher also knows the best books to use, which is something you can’t possibly know just by looking at them, especially if you lack theory training.
In my opinion, piano lessons would give you the fundamentals you would need to do more than “piano solos on a synth” by allowing you to translate the technical aspects of what you have learned and apply them to an instrument which can require a different approach. A properly regulated action and weighted keybed will provide dexterity in your hands though one will probably lose that dexterity with the fast action of the Voyager.
For example, an organ requires a different approach, and a Melotron requires an entirely different “spider-like” technique to allow the tapes to reset. The Voyager is also a monophonic instrument, but if the original poster really starts to get into synthesis and wants to get a polyphonic synth, then the transition from a monophonic keyboard can be virtually effortless. I guess I went way out of the way to say that Piano lessons will greatly help a synth player.
The only thing that I will differ with you is on the “Mature Age” statement. Im not the type to INSIST that my child should be shackled to the piano when he or she is a fetus, but the developing brain and the synapses present indicate that the optimal “mature” age is 2.5 to 3 years. Once you reach a certian age, you lose brain function and this is said to occur in the early 20’s. Its NEVER too late to learn something unless you just don’t have the cognitive abillity.
In the interests of full disclosure, I have had extremely MINIMAL theory training, and only a few MINIMALLY informal piano lessons. I can read bass clef, but not adequately enough to take sight reading jobs. I can do lead sheets okay but lack adequate practice reading rhythms.
Anything that I can do on the keyboard is a result of years and years of noodling around. In essence my advice on this thread would be to “do as I say not as I do” as my reccomendations have exceeded my own personal practice.
Respectfully,
Eric
Rhythmicons
“@&%(#*!”
Jeez,
Eric
(I probably wouldn’t leave the room for a month)