Download How To Play Keyboard [NEW]
Ecio Rassin
Use your computer keyboard or click the piano keys to play the piano. The keyboard's top row of letters corresponds to the white keys, and the row of numbers corresponds to the black keys. You can play multiple notes simultaneously.
Click "Hide note names" above the piano to hide the note names. Click "Mark" to mark notes on the piano. Play the marked notes by clicking the "Play" button (only visible after notes have been marked) or pressing the spacebar on your keyboard.
Try our free piano exercises and learn to play notes, intervals, chords, and scales on the piano. You'll also find a variety of other exercises that will expand your musical understanding and help you become better at playing the piano.
Inside of a DAW, these rules might get twisted a bit.
For example in Cakewalk (the DAW of my choice), I have to manually fire up its Virtual Keyboard to play using my PC keyboard. It has more functionality though - like, you can play from A through '; change octaves using Z & X, or ; change velocity using C & V, or Up & Down arrows; as well as control modwheel. You can also use Tab to toggle your virtual sustain pedal (cool! )
(The velocity and modwheel controls work only if you have set them up to modulate something in the synth)
Use your computer mouse or keyboard to play the virtual piano keyboard (or the device touch screen for mobile devices). You can view the corresponding computer keyboard letters by activating the Real Keys feature. For the entire keyboard spectrum, click it twice.
Metronome The Metronome feature enables you to play at a regular tempo. Use it to improve your timing.
You can adjust the Metronome based on BPM (beats per minute) or time signature.
A virtual piano keyboard is perfect when there isn't a real piano or a keyboard at home or when your piano or keyboard isn't next to a computer. The online piano keyboard simulates a real piano keyboard with 7 1/4 octaves of 88 keys (only five octaves for mobile devices), a sustain pedal, ABC or DoReMe letter notes representation, a Metronome, zoom-in, and a full-screen mode.
Use your computer mouse or keyboard to play the virtual piano keyboard (or the device touch screen for mobile devices). You can view the corresponding computer keyboard letters by activating the "Real Keys" feature. For the entire keyboard spectrum, click it twice.
well, there is no direct input monitoring. unless you are sampling the keyboard, i would use a mixer.
other than that, make sure you&ve selected ext. and have the ext. sound up from the sampling page.
If its audio: put a jack cable into the input and turn monitoring on in the sampling screen, I think that should do the trick if the keyboard is outputting sound. You could check if your DT is getting any sound in the sampling screen, if not: check the cable and the keyboard levels. You cant set the level on the DT though, so make sure the level on your keyboard is sensible.
I recently purchased an 88-key, semi-weighted keyboard without doing my research and only recently found out that the weight of the keys has a big impact. I was under the assumption that they are fairly similar and being able to play one means you can play on all.
The problem with learning on unweighted or semi-weighted keys is that the keys will necessarily behave differently from normal style keys. This means you will train your touch on a different behaviour than what regular pianos have. This means you will need to accommodate yourself to a different behaviour when you change. Thus you should not train for too long (exclusively) on a semi-weighted keyboard.
A semi-weighted keyboard is okay for a beginner, and one can still make progress as an intermediate player. The main disadvantage to semi-weighted is the level of control. To develop subtlety and range of expression, a fully weighted action is much superior.
I didn't find it particularly difficult to adjust. It depends to a very large degree on how 'semi' the semi-weighted keyboard is. But it's also true that acoustic pianos vary widely in the 'weightiness' of their keyboards. My teacher's baby grand had a very light touch, and my upright at home felt very heavy in comparison.
A semi-weighted keyboard usually has some kind of spring mechanism that you are pushing against when you press a key, and there will also be some kind of weight in each key to make it feel more 'solid'. You feel the spring mechanism more when you are playing softly, and the weight when you are playing loudly. If there is no weight then it requires no more force to play loudly than quietly, which is most unlike an acoustic piano.
It's the balance between these two that determines how 'weighty' the keyboard feels. On an acoustic piano there is no spring and the weight of the hammer action is always enough to return the key to its up position.
It's easier to get fine gradations of expression on a heavier keyboard, up to a point, but it can be tiring to play at higher volume. Playing on a light touch keyboard requires greater finesse of control.
There are further subtleties - better weighted keyboards include mechanisms of various complexity to simulate the feel of the actual hammer mechanism in an acoustic piano, more than just a simple weight.
The differences are more than subtle. But you'll get used to semi-weighted, and at some point will wonder why you didn't go straight in for weighted. Then, you'll have to learn to adapt all over again. Yes, of course you can play to a certain level, but using the nuances that a fully weighted 'board affords will help even from the beginning. Even moving from upright (studio) to grand piano takes some doing, so if at all possible, go or the best you can manage, and don't look back.
Yes, it's perfectly possible to play classical music on a semi-weighted keyboard. Assuming it is velocity-sensitive, then you can express the dynamics of the piece you are playing. If you plan to perform on the same keyboard as you are learning on, then I don't see any issue.
You will have a hard time controlling the dynamics if you are not used to the piano you are playing on. If you want to perform on a classical piano, ideally you would practice on the same piano or something with a similar keybed.
A big difference between keybeds with and without hammer action is that the ones without hammer action measure the velocity of the key before it is fully depressed; they don't measure the force with which you pressed the key. With a accoustic piano or one with proper hammer action, it is the force (or perhaps more accurate, the total energy accumulated in the hammer when it strikes) that matters. This means that you have to play quite differently to get the same resulting dynamics.
But even that is a simplification, because there is a huge variation in the design of keybeds. I've once had the pleasure to play on a accoustic grand piano that had lighter keys than some semi-weighted synthesizer keys I played. If you had practiced on a grand piano with much heavier keys, then performing on the one with the much lighter keys would also have gone wrong.
Not a big problem at all - unless you'd have to train on semi-weighted and play on full weight keys. And, you can also train to be a professional, but in this case, you should be prepared to move on to a full weighted keyboard (or an acoustic piano) as soon as possible.
Also, I think it can also be set up to play sequences, and do midi program chances, and CC changes too. I don't know if it can send multiple midi note messages at a time, but you really should download the whole user manual before you buy it anyway.
HOWEVER, if you need to play chords, you should try a different approach: try programming the chords on your synth. I'm not familiar with your particular keyboard, but one way to do it is with layers. Have each layer be the same program sound, and then transpose each one a minor or major 3rd or whatever.
The PK-5 should do it for you. You can transpose it accross the whole key range. There are two single note modes: one is note on/off like a regular keyboard, the other holds the note until you hit another one - nice for strings/pads/drones.
They aren't cheap, mind you. Before you invest in one, I'd suggest having a go at playing your guitar while seated at an organ with pedal controls. I found that playing bass notes while playing guitar to be a real motherbitch.
On mine, the first bank is set to play ACDEGA, and BC#D#F. The next bank plays the same thing, but an octave lower. Other banks are set up to play other notes, and it's still used as MIDI volume control, filter sweep, patch change, turn patches on/off, etc.
I've also taken it a step beyond; I use it to play chords of 3 notes. Because the FCB sends only one note, that functionality is in part dependent upon the synth you use. But you can easily get double stops; it is achieved via detuning osc2. So you set the note you want, then as part of that pedal's midi control functionality you send an osc2 detune value with it.
... and one try! action:Try or Catch [Keyboard Maestro Wiki]
Drag your "play" macro into the first field of that action, and option-drag a copy of it to the second field, and in that copy, rename "play" to "pause". Keep the key trigger the same.
There will be more elegant solutions too.
K.
For instance..! Send a simulated key press to Spotify. We can see from Spotify's "Playback" menu that the space key is set to play and pause. So we can just use the "Type keystroke" action to simulate the space key, and tell the action that this is aimed at Spotify. See the image at the bottom of this page of the wiki:
_a_Keystroke?s[]=background&s[]=key
Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong? Some of the instruments play via my midi keyboard, but not all. There is no difference between them, I can tell. I'm just changing instruments to try each one out and some will work and others won't. To hear the instrument, I have to use the small keyboard under the instrument in Kontakt. Using my midi keyboard for all of them would be much preferred. :-)
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