Easy and piano don’t always belong in the same sentence. Regardless of the amount of passion you have for learning to play the piano, obviously, it’s not going to happen overnight. However there are a couple of easy piano lessons that you can keep in mind when you are first beginning to play. So let’s talk for just a little while about developing feel when playing the piano.

Having a feel for where your hands are on the keyboard means that you’re not looking at your hands all the time to know where to place them. If you can master feel you will be able to read pieces of music and play them without having any idea what the song is supposed to sound like when you play it. Playing piano by ear is a valuable asset to your piano skills, but it’s not a replacement for learning to read music. Which is valuable training for not looking at your hands when you play. Most piano teachers will have you begin your lessons by finding middle C. The majority of piano professors will insist that you locate, and start from middle C when you begin your instruction. They do this because middle C. is the easiest note to find on the keyboard and the C. major scale is the easiest to play. By learning the C. major scale you can learn a little bit about reading music, a little bit about fingering, and a touch of music theory when it comes to scales and octaves.

But since the C. major scale doesn’t contain any of the black keys it’s a terrible place to start .Because using the black keys on the piano it’s much easier to find major scales, such as C major in particular. They are the least valuable places to begin your instruction. The truth of the matter is, that it’s much easier to find the black keys. Every octave as five of them. One group of three and one group of two. Each of the black keys has two white keys on either side of it. If you begin with a scale that uses the black keys instead of C. major you develop a much better feel for where your hands are on the piano. It won’t take very long before you will be able to feel all of the notes by knowing where your fingers are in relation to the black keys.

You may have seen professional pianists who tend to play with their fingers closer to the black keys, playing the white notes in between the black keys. The reason for this is that it makes certain finger combinations and locating your hands on the keyboard much easier. Probably the best scale to begin with is B natural instead of C major. The best way to develop a feel for where your fingers are on the piano keyboard, is by learning a few major scales. You’ll find each day of practice becomes progressively easier than the one before, as your hands develop the memory of their place on the piano keyboard.

Bill is at it again with this Crystal-Shimmer effect. He used parallel effects to create a “symphonic sound” of multiple octaves at once based on one note on the guitar.

It’s a bit complex but there’s a full write up at EHX. You’re basically creating an organ out of a guitar, which is pretty amazing.

I love my keyboard. It is actually a synthesizer, an Alesis micron but I use it as a midi controller. The only problem is I have it in the rehearsal room(s) all the time. So what if I have to work on some music at home? I have to carry that big bunch of plastic from the rehearsal room to the flat and back three times a week. Why not buy a midi keyboard just for home use? No money, no space, no lust. Well the LPK 25 from AKAI might just have solved my problem.

The small package contains the warranty, USB cable, editing software CD and the LPK 25. The software comes on a mini CD because a normal sized one wouldn’t even fit in the box. I expected a manual for the editing software or for the device in the box but these can be downloaded from the Akai website. So you don’t need to try to put the mini CD into your laptop. The editing software comes for mac and PC as well.

This thing is small; it measures less than 13 inches. The keys are wide enough to be comfortable and sensitivity feels just right. I don’t have a big hand so I can play on the LPK 25 without pressing notes I don’t want to press. However I imagine that people with large hands or fat fingers would have a hard time pressing an A without pressing three other keys nearby. The whole device is made of plastic but the feel of it is not cheap at all. The six buttons on the left are for shifting octaves, arpeggiator, sustaining notes, tapping the tempo and calling programmed functions. Sustain works as it should. You can sustain notes or the arpeggiator.

The arpeggiator is a great thing to have is such a small device. You can set the clock to internal and set the tempo by tapping the Tap Tempo button. Or you can set it to external so you get the tempo of the DAW you are using. The ARP ON/OFF button is multifunctional. When the arp is turned on, you can hold the button down and set the mode (UP, DOWN, EXCL, INCL, RAND), the arp time division (from 1/4 to 1/32T) and the octaves 1 to 4 that you want to include in your arp. You can all play with these options while the arp is sustained. It seems that AKAI put some work in this function and it’s surprisingly usable and good to have.

Most importantly this thing is so small that I can put it across the macs keyboard allowing me to use most of the necessary shortcuts in Logic. The little rubber things on the bottom are just in place that the device is lifted above the keyboard of the mac.

The editor software is simple and fast. You can create presets of arp settings and save them to four preset slots.

Overall I think the LPK 25 is good for home music production and eventually it can be used live. You just plug it in and it works. Beware there is no midi out. You can only control your computer with it. This can be a drawback for those who would want to control instruments with the LPK25. For me it’s just perfect considering what I use it for and how much it costs ($73 in Europe).

This slightly complex Instructable shows you how to make a wee little potentiometer and circuit board to make something called a Tic Tac Tunes. When you move a stylus up and down the potentiometer you play one or more of the notes in a pre-defined set of musical tones. In this way you can play the song at different tempos. You then stuff the whole thing in a Tic Tac box and play away, ensuring you’ll be the life of the party.

I’ve no formal musical training and this is a compressed version of what knowledge I’ve picked up over the years. If anyone finds errors, or has further ideas, please leave a comment.

The PicAxe can produce musical tones across three octaves, which in a full chromatic scale (with the sharps and flats) is 36 notes. Because of the way the waveforms interact and the way the brain interprets this, some notes will sound ‘wrong’ when played next to each other.

Other scales have developed around the world which use a selection of these notes, and some of these don’t allow the disharmonies of the full scale. The pentatonic (5 note) scales are like this. I’ve chosen a minor pentatonic of A C D E G.

The chromatic scale is what you would use to play ‘proper’ tunes from written music, but the lack of definite note positions on TicTacTunes makes hitting the right note difficult. The positions could be marked, but it will take a better musician than me to play a recognisable tune. Improvisation with one of the harmonious scales is the way to go with this gadget.

He basically picks a scale and plays that rather than offering the standard chromatic scale.

Sorry for the clipping but this sucker was loud. This is Electro-Harmonix’s local tester running the brand new POG2 pedal through its paces. The pedal makes a standard guitar sound like a harpsichord and an organ or even an 18-string guitar.

The POG2 will take you even higher. Use the new attack control to fade in lush, smooth swells. Tune in the new second sub-octave to reach deeper than ever before. The 2-pole resonant low-pass filter now includes two additional Q modes. Slide in the newly enhanced detune to further refine your sound.

The POG2 delivers unrivaled tonal variations — and now you can save your favorite settings, and recall them with a click. The POG2 just plain sounds better, thanks to an enhanced algorithm that delivers a more focused and in-the-pocket harmonic performance. And all this is now packed into our rugged and pedalboard-friendly diecast chassis.

You can up the octave automatically and add extra octaves to each sound that comes out of the guitar. It is very lovely.