How to Replicate an Instrument With Keyboards

Your keyboard has the built-in ability to replicate other instruments at the touch of a button. Higher quality, more expensive keyboards have over 500 different sounds you can choose from. Many of these are samples of other instruments or tweaks of other instruments. You'll find the one that works for you through experimentation. Study how to play the actual instrument and how it sounds to make your keyboarding authentic.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Determine what genre of music you're going to be writing and producing. Certain genres have specific instruments tied to them. For example, a bluegrass piece would likely have a banjo while an orchestra piece would have flutes and brass.

2. Look through your owner's manual to find out whether the instruments you want to replicate are available on your particular keyboard. Another way to discover what's available is to simply push all the buttons, though that can be time consuming.

3. Narrow down your possible selections. Higher-end keyboards offer many forms of bass guitar, for example. Experiment with the sounds until you find the one that matches most closely the genre and emotion you're after.

4. Study what the actual instrument does when playing. The way that string instruments hold notes varies greatly from how French horns sound when played. To make this study as simple as possible, listen to recordings of only that instrument being played.

5. Write your instrumental accompaniment according to your findings.

Tips & Warnings

• Owner's manuals are generally available online at the keyboard manufacturer's website, if you've lost yours.