How to Use Hand-Held Synthesizers with Keyboards

Video Transcript

"BEN ANDERSON: Hi. I'm Ben Anderson with Expert Village, and I'm here today to talk to you about playing chords on a keyboard. A lot of people have a lot of the misconception that a lot of keyboardist will play style that was really popular in the '70s with the Hammond B-3 organ where a lot of players would do a lot of quick fingering on the keyboard and will play fast trills or fast moving notes; they would solo a lot, and not all keyboardists have to do that. In fact, when I play keyboard, most of the time, I sit and I play chords. With most people I think of when they hear about keyboards especially from back in the day, they hear more melodic, sounding stuff that would sound something like this. That's more of a lead sound, and you could use that if you we're going to be soloing, but a lot of times keyboardists really don't do that. And so, what I do is I will play a lot of chords, and that comes from years and years of practicing piano and keyboards, but there are many different chords that you can use. So, it's important to decide what needs to fit into your piece, what needs to fit into your song. What other instruments are going along in your song? How would that effect what I am playing? It is important using chords especially since the role of the keyboard in contemporary music is mostly help support...."