Other Good Keyboard Sites
I really like this site. It has an old school look, but is easy to navigate. While it is primarily an eCommerce site with instructional material for sale, Many Midi Products is still a valuable resource and definitely worth checking out. It is run by professional keyboardist Elmo Peeler, who has toured with The Beach Boys, Rod Stewart, and others. He offers Skype lessons to all students on the web. He has transcribed accurate note-for-note transcriptions for 140+ famous keyboard breaks/solos at about $7.00 or $8.00 dollars per tune. For each available transcription, there is some really interesting background information like personnel and historical facts.
Elmo offers a “custom transcriptions-to-order service” wherein he’ll personally transcribe any solo or part of any song you want for a fee, with complete satisfaction guaranteed. There is a lot of other stuff on the site including downloadable synth patches, technique exercises, pictures and articles about a multitude of keyboard players through the years. These informative articles contain the kind of facts and trivia that all rock keyboard fanatics will enjoy. This guy loves music and keyboards and it shows.
This site is another valuable resource, but also a little bit of a mystery- The person who writes (wrote) this blog apparently wishes to remain anonymous, but here’s the concept; The blog is titled “Killer Solos”, and subtitled “a killer solo a week for a year…..or until I can play the keyboard solo from Utopia’s HIROSHIMA”.
Apparently, what this person did was to challenge himself to learning, and then playing along with, the keyboard track, and then mixing their part in Logic Pro x, splitting the tracks left/right so they mirrored the solo note-for-note. I really admire this person because the project was no small feat. The solos are spot on, and there is some tough material. Organ solo’s like “Highway Star”,piano solo’s like “Call me the breeze”. and synth solos like “Hiroshima”.
There are also note-for-note guitar solos, and original guitar solos to listen to, so this person is multi-talented. The other nice thing is that there are 10 completely free and accurate note-for note sheet music transcriptions created by the author, which are downloadable and printable.Lots of other interesting material as well.
Looks like this blogger made their last entry in June of 2014, so take a look at this material while you can. This blog was insightfully and intelligently written.
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/jweber14/top_50_keyboard_heavy_bands/
This guy has done a lot of great research on keyboardists past and present who were/are in 50 “keyboard heavy” bands:
A great magazine for keyboard players in every genre, especially rock, for the last 40 years:
http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/
There is a lot of information about piano and keyboards on this site, but personally, I don’t like the way it’s laid out. It has a 90’s look and feel, and the navigation can be confusing. It is a big website with a lot of pages, and, while it is mostly classically oriented, there are forum entries which mention rock, synths, digital pianos, etc. There are discussions and advice on just about anything to do with pianos. They say they have 82,000 members in their piano community and 5 million unique visitors per year. I just wish the webmaster would build a new Wordpress site, so the interesting and helpful information that is on Piano World would be easier to find. The forum layout is fine, however, and pretty straight forward, so I’ve linked to that for now
Interestingly, this rock piano instructional site turns out to be the brainchild of keyboard legend Chuck Leavell (Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Allman Bros, John Mayer)
It looks like there is some great instructional material in these courses, and I will probably enroll myself in time.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/
This forum advertises itself as “a forum for professional and amateur recording, mixing/mastering engineers to share techniques and advice”. It is that, and a whole lot more.
http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/Keyboards/acapella-18
Harmony Central is another great resource and has been around a long time. I Love it.
You can play in this sandbox for days, as there is a plethora of information on this site. Among lots of other resources, I love the historical timeline graphic which shows the release date of just about every synth ever manufactured year-by-year. Pretty amazing research…
http://www.hallofelectricpianos.co.uk/
Lots of excellent information on vintage keyboards. A lot of work went into this site, and Simon deserves congratulations on his in- depth research. There is a page called “who played what” which was inspiration for the page I eventually put up, but long preceded my work. Fab stuff. Great job!
Another site I really like site because it does a great job of looking at the vintage electronic, and electro mechanical “combo-organs’ used on so many records in the classic rock period of the 60’s and 70’s. If you are into keyboards from this era, this site has a lot of useful and fascinating information to peruse
this site is clearly a labor of love just based on the amount of work the guy has put into it, as the author quotes “This project was born with the intent of sharing my 20-year knowledge and passion for synthesizers with all music lovers”- From what I see, that is the absolute truth- check it out.