If I can type on a different QWERTY keyboard with each hand at
the same time (commands on one, email on the other), why can't I
split my hands like that when I try to play piano?
Mood:: awake
Music:: The Beatles, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", on the radio
Practice Practice Practice. How many hours a week do you type and for how long back vs. how much time do you spend at the Piano? Also, typing has a concrete end, a word. Whereas music is a lot more abstract. Of course, if you work with MIDI, there is the equivalent of spellcheck for musicians now.
Personally, I just play keyboards wrong. I play the chords with my right hand and then back then add extra bass with the left. But I'm a bass player and biased.
Well, you're right of course about my spending a lot more time typing than trying to play piano, and there's the matter of typing not requiring precise synchronization between the hands as long as each task happens "quickly enough", but at least on a piano the two hands are working on the same communication. (And I don't have any trouble using both hands on a guitar...)
Interesting comment about playing keyboards "wrong". I'm left handed -- well, mixed-dominance actually, with several tasks (including guitar/bass/mandolin) done right-handed, and somehow it's always seemed to make sense to try to finger piano chords on my right hand ... maybe I need a dual-manual instrument so I can play a higher-octave keyboard with my left hand and a lower-octave one with my right?
It takes a little bit of a reach but that an old family style organ would work with its seperate keyboards, or two small electronic. Like a stripped down Paul Schaeffer.
Personally, I like approaching music as ignorantly as possible and consequently do many things "wrong." I don't have the dexterity to be a great musician, I can pass on guitar or Bass but I'm no virtuoso. So, what I do, is bounce from style to style and from instrument to instrument. It really helps me in songwriting and arranging. A lot of the time blending seemingly disparate styles is beautiful. It's like the chocolate in Mole sauce. If I'm trying to record a keyboard part that sounds normal I usually have to do it on a couple or more tracks. I can do simple bass lines and chords simultaneously but my hackishness shines like gold.
You can get some really funny results doing things the wrong way. Especially, if you have little knowledge of theory but write fairly lush arrangements. I had one song in my old band that the guitarist couldn't play because he couldn't get his head around the changes but the keyboard player who has chops and knowledge enough for a few people explained that what I was doing actually made sense and could translate it for him so it was acceptable. It was way over my head. heh.
It takes a helluva lot longer to write my way but it keeps me off the streets and I usually come up with something i like so...
Why is it that I can talk and do almost ANYTHING at the same time... But I can't sing and play mandolin simultaneously?
Hell, I can do seven different things at once at home... Can't seem to get the sing and play thing down. My brain has only one musical track at a time, and singing melodic line and playing chords just doesn't seem to jibe... *sigh*
Then again, I can't talk and play at the same time either. Unless I sing what I'm saying with the same notes that I'm playing. Go fig. I hate that.
Hmm. I can sing and play guitar/mandolin chords at the same time depending on how the accompaniment relates rythmically. If the accompaniment is a countermelody or a bass line, my voice tends to follow it instead of the notes I'd intended to sing. Talking and playing is something I can sometimes pull off, depending on what I'm playing, but my speech tends to come out really choppy when I do so.
It doesn't usually feel like I'm concentrating so hard that I wouldn't have extra brain left over for speech, but I guess there's more going on under the hood than it feels like when I play.
But I know what you mean, and yah, that's interesting. I used to carry on simultaneous conversations in IRC (in-channel and private), a MUD, and quick-turnaround email while talking to someone else in the room and reading news, but it's difficult to coordinate anything other than walking/dancing or having sex while playing guitar, and one's partner tends to get kind of disturbed/annoyed when one plays guitar during sex unless one is having sex with another slightly warped musician at the time.
(I went back and fixed it 'cause that's the kind of error that'll bug me for years otherwise.)
Yeah, I knew that (I used to wonder whey they didn't call it an ASDF keyboard, after the home row). I was, in fact, typing with a hand on each keyboard at the time I wrote that, and I guess I must have been thinking phonically and must have been less alert than I thought I was, for my fingers to go all the way over to the incorrect 'U' instead of just slipping along the row.
So I guess that makes it an interesting error, in that it reveals a detail of my mental processing I was otherwise unaware of.
Now I'm wondering whether I've ever typed "QUERTY" before in my life. Argh!
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awake
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Personally, I just play keyboards wrong. I play the chords with my right hand and then back then add extra bass with the left. But I'm a bass player and biased.
Re: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Interesting comment about playing keyboards "wrong". I'm left handed -- well, mixed-dominance actually, with several tasks (including guitar/bass/mandolin) done right-handed, and somehow it's always seemed to make sense to try to finger piano chords on my right hand ... maybe I need a dual-manual instrument so I can play a higher-octave keyboard with my left hand and a lower-octave one with my right?
Re: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Personally, I like approaching music as ignorantly as possible and consequently do many things "wrong."
I don't have the dexterity to be a great musician, I can pass on guitar or Bass but I'm no virtuoso. So, what I do, is bounce from style to style and from instrument to instrument. It really helps me in songwriting and arranging. A lot of the time blending seemingly disparate styles is beautiful. It's like the chocolate in Mole sauce.
If I'm trying to record a keyboard part that sounds normal I usually have to do it on a couple or more tracks. I can do simple bass lines and chords simultaneously but my hackishness shines like gold.
You can get some really funny results doing things the wrong way. Especially, if you have little knowledge of theory but write fairly lush arrangements. I had one song in my old band that the guitarist couldn't play because he couldn't get his head around the changes but the keyboard player who has chops and knowledge enough for a few people explained that what I was doing actually made sense and could translate it for him so it was acceptable. It was way over my head. heh.
It takes a helluva lot longer to write my way but it keeps me off the streets and I usually come up with something i like so...
(no subject)
Hell, I can do seven different things at once at home... Can't seem to get the sing and play thing down. My brain has only one musical track at a time, and singing melodic line and playing chords just doesn't seem to jibe... *sigh*
Then again, I can't talk and play at the same time either. Unless I sing what I'm saying with the same notes that I'm playing. Go fig. I hate that.
(no subject)
It doesn't usually feel like I'm concentrating so hard that I wouldn't have extra brain left over for speech, but I guess there's more going on under the hood than it feels like when I play.
But I know what you mean, and yah, that's interesting. I used to carry on simultaneous conversations in IRC (in-channel and private), a MUD, and quick-turnaround email while talking to someone else in the room and reading news, but it's difficult to coordinate anything other than walking/dancing or having sex while playing guitar, and one's partner tends to get kind of disturbed/annoyed when one plays guitar during sex unless one is having sex with another slightly warped musician at the time.
(no subject)
(no subject)
Yeah, I knew that (I used to wonder whey they didn't call it an ASDF keyboard, after the home row). I was, in fact, typing with a hand on each keyboard at the time I wrote that, and I guess I must have been thinking phonically and must have been less alert than I thought I was, for my fingers to go all the way over to the incorrect 'U' instead of just slipping along the row.
So I guess that makes it an interesting error, in that it reveals a detail of my mental processing I was otherwise unaware of.
Now I'm wondering whether I've ever typed "QUERTY" before in my life. Argh!