Miro's first instrument.
During last holidays, I grew somewhat fed up with them banging their toy piano, so I taught my sons a couple of children's songs to play on it. Two days later I was astounded as my 6 year old, Miro was playing the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song on the darned thing. I knew, lest I want him not to progress or benefit from his gift, and I definitely knew it is a gift, something must be done, and quick.
There is this thing called an "absolute ear" , or Absolute Pitch, and I noticed it when Miro was playing the song and decided to chat with me at the same time without even taking a look at what he was playing. It appears that Miro doesn't have to look for what notes to play next, he already knows where they are by memory. That's all fine and dandy, but I figured if he's this good at finding the keys, this is the perfect time to introduce him to notes, scales and chords etc., so I decided to go on a lookout for a piano school.
Second thing I needed to do was buy him a proper set of keys.
This is how the old toy piano sounds like:
Pirate of the Caribbean:
We used to have a synthesizer not quite long a go, but I sold it off last year, because couple of the keys lost their weight sensitivity and played full volume every time.
I remembered that in my childhood home we once had a Roland D20 as a loaner from my dad's school. Sadly someone stole it from the school and we couldn't borrow it anymore so my father bought a Roland E5 for himself. I hated the thing, it wasn't nearly as good as the D20, but still took it with me when we moved away. That's the same set of keys I later sold off.
Roland E5 (demo mode):
Now I think this sounds a bit different, especially the organs feel very real. (I'm still very much in love with how the D20 sounds, and I'm thinking of saving the money to eventually get myself one of these.):
You could edit the existing patches:
...and expand the patch set with your own creations:
The D20 was a real synthesizer.
Anyway, as I went off to find good set of keys, I decided a used one would be a good bet. At least they'd be a lot cheaper than to buy a brand new set. And since I remembered the D20 to have pretty good sound, I decided to start googling prices for that particular synth. I was shocked. A used 80's keyboard couldn't be found under 300 € unless it was broken, or in totally another continent, from where the shipping would set its price way over 300 € anyways. Bugger indeed!
I needed to find a proper keyboard, so I decided to scout through some shops too. Only to find out, that either the keyboards were overpriced toys (9–200€ range) or just way overpriced for my wallet.
The best example of an overpriced toy was the Junfa keyboard that cost 49 €.
The picture above isn't very truthful, since the "instrument" I was displayed didn't have external power, nor did it have any MP3 connectivity or a radio (whatever for?), but it did come with a microphone.
So after the sales clerk had inserted some batteries into the device, and I turned the unit on, I noticed it let out a cracking sound while pressing the power button, and produced a clearly audible humming sound while on. Reading on the printed markings on the keyboard, it boasted to have 200 different sounds, that actually turned out to be the same 10 sounds rehashed over and over again until the sound bank number went around at 199. The first sound, Grand Piano actually sounded pretty good for a toy, but the second, whatever "Clear Piano" it should have been, probably had never even heard of the word "Piano". Alto sax sounded somewhat reminiscent of a saxophone, but only barely.
As I was checking out the "synthesizer", the sales clerk went away for a while, so I decided to test out the microphone. It was a plasticky mono mic with a normal mono mini-jack connector. I connected it in, and was greeted with a bang, and a slightly louder humm I had heard the unit produce earlier. I soon learned that there was no way to record the microphone input, and that it was only amplified.
This was the moment when the sales clerk came back. I laughed that I had not seen such a crap instrument before, and that the sounds seemed the same over and over again. He seemed to share my concerns. We wondered about the microphone thingy while it happened. I was playing a few chords, and suddenly the device started to emit loud NAK-NAK-NAK sounds whenever I pushed the keys. I finally burst out laughing and told him I thought it was way overpriced for that kind of an instrument. (Not worth 5€ if you asked me.) He was kind of agreeing with me there.
Okay that was that for me looking for a new keyboard. I decided to try my luck finding a used one again. And as I sat there sitting in a café, browsing second hand sales from a local Ebay-like service Tori.fi, I finally found a Technics KN650 for only 60 €. It was about to time to pick up Miro from kindergarten so I went and asked him if he wanted to come and see if we could buy ourselves a real synthesizer, or at least something that'd sound like a real synthesizer.
Technics KN650 in action (demo mode):
Sounds close to the E5, maybe a tad better. I wanted to hear someone play it, so I digged around Youtube and found this short video:
Quite nice.
Later that day I took the boys with me to the seller that thankfully lived in the same town as us. She had quite hesitantly told me on the phone when I asked her about the general health of the unit, that she has a beastly bunny-rabbit that had taken a certain culinary fondness over the rubbery control keys in the instrument. But otherwise it would be a working unit. So we were kind of worried of what we'd find when we'd get to see it.
Technics KN650
It actually wasn't that bad. The bunny had indeed leveled almost all the keys, slimming them down to the base, but hadn't really ripped them out yet. So while the instrument and rhythm panel lacked the numbers on the keys, it was still a working device and we would figure out quite fast how the numbering was supposed to go.
Eaten control keys
The instrument sounded GREAT. I mean, a lot better than the Roland E5 we used to have, we hadn't even expected that. I think that was kind of when I decided to make the purchase. Or it might have been the look on her face when she heard Miro play, and simultaneously hearing that he'd learned to play the songs (Pirates of the Caribbean, Jurassic Park, and a slew of Christmas songs) almost instantly after learning to play one or two nursery rhymes. Anyway, I dished out the money and after our boys had had enough of playing with her bunny named Raivo (Rage in English) and its friend, a really furry and really really fat black cat called Chevy we'd take our new belongings and headed back home.
More eaten control keys
Since I started of thinking of acquiring a new keyboard, I've also started becoming more and more interested if I could play it myself and maybe create some music with my fully midi-capable workstation that's mainly being used for retouching photos, but could do so much more. Me having a somewhat musical upbringing and having attended the school choir during my musical classes in gradschool and junior high, I might have a chance to learn to play this thing, eventually. (I have never really played keyboards, but I've always wanted to.) What do you think. Could I learn to play? I know that if I get Miro a teacher at 100 € per month, I will definitely not have money to take lessons myself, but I have decided to do this too (I kind of made a commitment already by buying the thing), and might just be able to self learn a thing or two.
I wonder if this old dog can learn new tricks. After all, I did successfully start playing the recorder a while ago and learned a few songs too. But is it really possible to become great musician at forty years of age? I might just have to keep you posted on that. Mind you, I'm currently going through learning two handed scales, and while it feels difficult enough, I think I'm already making progress. (If only I could get rid of stopping to think whenever I need to change finger positions on each hand. It'd be really great.)
Thanks, and as always, if you liked what you read here, please do upvote, resteem and subscribe if you already haven't! I'm hoping for feedback too so don't be shy! Please, let me know if you have ideas and tips to learning to play! :)
P.s. I had to redact the previous posting of the same since I messed up the title. No wonder it didn't get much impact. So after a bit of tweaking and spelling corrections etc. I'm now re-posting it. I'll use whatever it already managed to gain by promoting this one.
