We’ve looked a couple times already about why having a keyboard around your music space can be beneficial for anyone trying to be creative. Let’s look at that a little more today.

Reason #3 – Instant Drums/Percussion/Rhythm tracks to get you going

Most keyboards these days have some sort of rhythm track function in them, and this can be useful for creative songwriting in several ways.

First of all, sometimes you just need a beat to keep you on track. A lot of musicians that have been playing a long time can keep a beat in their heads, but it’s always easier to let someone (or something) else do it for you. Dialing up a tempo and starting a beat is a pretty simple process on most keyboards.

Along that same line, when laying down a new song idea, I’ve often recorded a drum track from my keyboard as a placeholder until I can get around to recording or programming a more solid fitting beat. Many times the drum track from your keyboard won’t fit the song perfectly, and the drum sounds might not be ideal for the sound you’re trying to accomplish, but it can make the early stages of writing and recording much easier.

Beyond that, sometimes I use the rhythms from the keyboard to try to get inspired to create new musical sounds that are outside of my norm. It’s easy to punch up some blues drums or some simple rock drums, but after a while I start feeling like every new riff I write sounds the same. My keyboard has 100 different rhythm patterns, though, and only around 10 of those fall into styles that I would consider my “norm”. There are some very odd beats that on first listen might seem useless, but sometimes trying to play over those “useless” beats will cause you to try new things, whether it’s new strumming patterns on your guitar, new scales and modes, or new chord progressions.

Also, believe it or not, you could use your keyboard as an alternate drum kit.

I’ve played around with doing this before, and when writing with my songwriting group BHP, sometimes we’ve even used keyboard drumming to put down a quick idea, but there are people out there that take it to a whole new level! Check out some of these videos:

This last one is pretty funny… but he’s actually very good at playing the drums on the keyboard!

“this is rock n roll”

Out of all of the reasons to own a keyboard in your creative music writing space, this one might be the most practical. But at the same time, with a little imagination you can use your keyboard rhythms to inspire new creative sounds.

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.

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.