Make sure you have a keyboard available!

This is probably something that I’ll keep going back to often, because I think keyboards offer a wide range of uses to songwriters… especially those who are trying to stretch their musical creativity a bit.

My advice to you, if you don’t already have one, go buy a keyboard. I’m not talking about the high end Roland or Korg synths that cost hundreds of dollars. I’m talking about the kind of Keyboard you can pick up from your local Target or Best Buy for somewhere around $100 or so. Something that may look like this…

There are lots of reasons that I am very much a fan of having something like this around, but we’ll just go through one at a time.

Reason #1 – Easy Instrumentation

One of the biggest hurdles to songwriting creativity in my mind is not being able to express your ideas (which is why I’m such a big fan of Recording Everything) Having this style of keyboard around helps with that tremendously. Let’s say that you are writing a song, and you envision a horn section…. but you don’t play any horns. If you have a keyboard like this, you can dial up several horn sounds, and lay down a respectable part… it’s true that it won’t sound completely like a real horn section, but it’s better than trying to just imagine it’s there as you go on. With a keyboard like this, you can get down ideas for dozens of instruments… horns, pianos, organs, stringed instruments, percussion, synths, pads, etc, etc, etc.

The great thing about it is you don’t really need to know how to play the piano to make it work. In fact, you’re probably not going to play a horn section part anything like you’d play a piano anyway, since horns don’t really play chords… or even two notes at once.

And besides, didn’t we talk about how valuable instruments could be, even if you don’t know how to play them “correctly”?

Not only that, I’m sure many of you could say this same thing: There have been many occasions where I’ve been inspired for a new idea by a sound or tone that an instrument makes. Having access to dozens of sounds with one machine is going to spark some creativity in you at some point. Sometimes just sitting down in front of a keyboard like this and cycling through it’s sounds is going to inspire you to something new.

It’s definitely worth having it available to you.

Related posts:

1. Get A Keyboard – Reason #2
2. Get A Keyboard – Reason #3
3. 7 Ideas for improving Instrumentals
4. Record Record Record!
5. Write a song with an instrument that you don’t know how to play