Quite a while ago I wrote about the first reason you need to get a keyboard, even if you don’t play.
That’s a theme I want to get back to. I think owning a keyboard is a very essential part of stretching your musical creativity for a lot of reasons, and it doesn’t matter what level of musicianship you’re at.
So with that, let’s get on with it…
Reason #2 – Write a song without playing an instrument
Most entry-level keyboards (the kind you can get at a store like Target, Walmart, Best Buy, etc) have some kind of function that lets you “play” music with one or two fingers at a time to make it sound like there’s a whole band behind you. Some keyboards call these functions by different names, like “Casio Chords”, “Fingered Chords”, “Free Sessions”, “Jam Sessions”… whatever it is, figure out how yours works on your keyboard. It’s usually pretty simple.
Why do we want to know this, you ask? Well thanks for asking!
Using this function, along with either a slight understanding of musical theory, or a little trial and error, you can write songs instrumentally speaking without really playing an instrument. In some cases that means you can write a song without even KNOWING how to play an instrument.
You can figure out what chords you want to switch to, hit one key (two if you want a minor chord, usually), and the keyboard switches chords for you, and makes all of the instrumentation follow along.
This is handy for those of you who are just getting into music and want to write songs quickly without learning how to play all of the backing music…
But it’s also useful for those of you who can play music, but are just looking for some quick and easy instrumentation to help you figure out a new part to your song, or perhaps help you quickly record the song for later work.
Of course the music that comes from these keyboards isn’t spectacular by any means, but in my opinion it’s more than adequate for the songwriting purpose.
I’m going to give you a couple examples to listen to
Example #1 – 50s rock progression in the key of C
Example #2 – Blues song in the key of A
Example #3 – Pop song in C minor
In each of those cases I dialed up the beat I wanted on my keyboard, switched it into “Casio Chords” mode, and hit one key at a time to change to the chords I wanted (I hit a C note to switch to the C chord, an F note to switch to the F chord, etc)
With very very little practice, this function of a standard entry level keyboard can have beginning songwriters coming up with music, and advanced song writers laying down place-holding music in no time.
