Keyboard stands...

Got a keyboard stand - then found out too late that they come in different heights!

The height of the keyboard's keys when placed in the new stand is so high, I'd need to add 4 or 5 inches worth of books on my chair just to get into the correct playing position. (the height of this stand, without the keyboard, is 26 inches; not adjustable)

Returned it the day after and I was charged a 5% restocking fee. Not knowing in advance about little details like keyboard-stand-height is definitely one of the downsides of not having a real teacher/mentor.

Tried going to other stores a few days after that, and I found one that looks and feels way more stable than the one I returned, has an adjustable height, and can be set to as low as 22 inches.

Best thing is, it has a second layer that serves as the perfect laptop stand. Here's what it looks like:



And here's a link to Amazon that contains the product's details: Gator Frameworks GFW-KEY-5100X - Heavy Duty 2-Tier

(the one I got was also $10 cheaper compared to Amazon's price, so yay!)

Discovering other online piano courses

Don't remember what I was looking for, but I ran into a site/app called Flowkey - an online piano leaning course that seems to have close ties with Yamaha.

Also discovered that I can use the serial number of the Yamaha digital piano I purchased to get a free 3-month premium membership. I'll probably give this a try after my 1-month PlaygroundSessions membership expires.

Link: http://europe.yamaha.com/en/news_events/musical-instruments/get-flowkey-premium-for-free-with-your-new-yamaha-digital-piano-or-keyboard/

---

Update, 20 days after this post:

Turns out this promo is only valid for Yamaha purchases made in countries of the European Union. :(

Resetting a Yamaha keyboard to factory settings

Noticed that the sensitivity setting on my keyboard is gone, or has been disabled. The softest, or hardest press just produces the same sound volume now. My kids have been messing with it, so maybe this is their doing?

Scanned the manual and I was able to turn sensitivity back on. However, if the kids accidentally changed this, then maybe they also changed some other thing that I still haven't noticed.

Didn't find anything from the manual how to reset the keyboard to default settings, so I tried searching for it. Luckily, Google led me to this post from a Deepak Morris.

The restore-to-factory-default steps are easy to remember, but I'll note it here:

- switch keyboard off
- while keeping rightmost white key (highest C) depressed,
- turn it back on, keeping C depressed about 10 more seconds

The red power LED on mine blinked for a second before going back to it's usual steady read light.

According to Deepak, this should work on most Yamaha keyboard. For those who have keyboards that can store recordings, this will probably wipe those out. But mine doesn't, so not one of my worries.

Thanks Deepak!

2 sessions later...

Finished the 12th lesson of PlaygroundSessions (which I'll call PS moving on) in two practice sessions. Each session was around 2 hours long.

Starting to get impatient as I felt I was just following instructions on what keys to press, using specified fingers, but I didn't really understand why I was doing it.

Tried browsing the PS Forums to see if other members also felt the same way. There are indeed some, and they mentioned the content of the site MusicTheory.net would have made for some great accompanying material to the PS lessons.

Read the the entire 'Music Basics' section of MusicTheory, and I agree with the PS Forums posters.

(Liked the information at MusicTheory.net too, so I purchased their app called Theory Lessons to show my support.)

Woot!... What am I doing here?

I taught myself how to play the guitar when I was in high school. This was from a time when the internet wasn't invented yet, so the only material wannabe-learners can get their hands on are those song books that you can buy at the music store.

That "phase" lasted a couple of years, and I never progressed beyond rookie level. Aside from that, I have zero knowledge or experience in music.

Fast forward two and a half decades - I decided that I want to learn the piano (together with my kids).

I'll try to document the journey here... (doubt anyone will find this obscure blog, so the only audience in mind is my future self, who, hopefully has gotten good at playing the piano)


Where I'm at...

I bought an 88-key keyboard around a week ago that had weighted keys.

My goal is to try and learn to play it using software to assist me, so I'll try out different piano-learning-applications and see what I like best.

First software I tried is the MacOS application GarageBand (pre-installed software).

Second are the free lessons on Skoove.com. Finished the free lessons already, but I still want to continue exploring.

Next thing I want to try are the lessons at PlaygroundSessions.com. There's no free demo, but the reviews and videos I've read/seen look promising. Let's see what I can achieve with a $17.99 1-month subscription...