Is a good keyboard or digital piano best for my son to compose music on?

[disorganisedmummy]

Hi,I'd like some impartial advice please.My son is 9 and has Aspergers.Music is his passion.He plays violin and is roughly grade 3 standard.He would really like to start composing.We have an acoustic piano in our hall which he uses a lot and a very basic keyboard in his room.What he would like is to be able to tinker around on the piano/keyboard,compose pieces and then record them.At the very least he needs a good keyboard with headphones that he could do this on.I'm told them that some top ones have music writing software built in so as you play,it transposes it onto a screen.I do understand that this sin;t necessarily the best way to learn composition but he finds writing very difficult as he's also Dyspraxic.We have downloaded museScore but i feel he needs to have a better grasp of composition to use this.
Does anyone have any advice for what would be better a keyboard or digital piano?

Hi disorganised my daughter also composes so I can tell you what sort of equipment she uses. It really depends what you want to do though, and what your budget is.

DD composes on guitar and keyboard (and she adds other instrumental parts). Usually the composing phase doesn't involve any recording, she will write down chords at most (not in musical notation just the chord name). After that for recording she uses a little box called an "iRig pro" to get the tracks into GarageBand on an iPad, for later editing. The iRig can be can used to connect a guitar, a midi keyboard (we have a very basic one that I bought secondhand) or a microphone which she uses to record voice and acoustic instruments.

Alternatively if you have the right software it should be possible to link a midi keyboard to a laptop. We will probably buy a Mac at some point because recording to iPad has a lot of limitations.

Anyway, I think you'll find that the keyboard is not the limiting factor, as any midi keyboard can be linked to a laptop for recording purposes. It does depend what he wants to do though. It sounds like he wants to write scores and that might require some specialist equipment - whereas my DD works entirely by ear and never writes down most of her stuff. (We reckon she has probably lost at least a couple of albums worth of compositions over the last couple of years due to not writing stuff down and she can't record it all because recording is incredible time consuming :-/)

I'd add that while we do have a digital piano that she sometimes uses for composing, she's never used it for recording as the keyboard is smaller and more convenient and has more effects, even though it's an extremely basic one.

Thanks for your message. I suspect ds composes by ear. He tinkers on the piano,I say tinker as he has no formal piano training-he is sort of teaching himself. He seems to be able to work out the treble clef on the piano and then add some chords on the left hand (is that the bass clef?). He wants to then be able to write it down but he hasn't enough theory knowledge to do it. On MuseScore he is kind of composing scores but if I'm brutally honest it sounds a bit hideous cos he keeps putting too many rests in!! With Sebelius for example I believe you can play the piece you have composed and it will automatically transpose it for you. One of the keyboards I've seen which is a Yamaha does this. Does this make it any clearer??

Also,what is a midi keyboard?

You are in luck that I have found you!

If you do an MN Search on my name, and keyboard, piano, music you will find my previous replies to similar queries.

MIDI is 'Musical Instrument Digital Interface', and has been around for thirty years or more, though as with all things 'digital' or 'techy' it evolves at a great rate, and I am certainly not au fait with current technologies.

'Sibelius' has also been around for almost thirty years; it was a British invention, but is now owned by the Avid organisation. Our DS had an early version of Sibelius 6, over 25 years ago.

Yamaha Keyboards are good value, and although there are several other makes, unless they have specialist features that you need (which doesn't apply to you at the moment), then Yamaha is probably the safest bet.

The 'transposing' may be a bit of a 'red herring' at this stage, but I will come back to you in a few days, when you have had time to assimilate all this, and also have a look at the Sibelius and Yamaha UK websites.

Do you mean transcribe (write the music down) or transpose (move a piece of music up or down one or more semi-tones thereby changing the key signature)?

I wish DD would do the first of those but I suspect she is a lost cause!

Children with a good ear who can accompany a melody line with chords, as your son is doing, will probably find transposing easy in practice even without much theory knowledge. You might think about some theory lessons for your son though, he sounds like he might have the sort of brain that instinctively understands the structure of music and would enjoy formalising that knowledge.

I mean transcribe! (Silly me). Re theory lessons- there is a theory club at school but for some reason he refuses to do it. It may be because of his Autism/Dysoraxia. Who knows. Amazingly,his headmaster at school has taken him under his wing as he himself is also a musician and is going to do some composition and theory on a 1:1 basis which is fantastic.
I'm a bit confused as to what is the best route to go down.

Ferguson thanks so much for your advice.I've found a couple of keyboards.Which do you (or anyone else) think would be the best option.

uk.yamaha.com/en/products/musical-instruments/keyboards/digitalkeyboards/dk_-_piaggero/np-v80/?mode=model#tab=product_lineup

www.allegromusic.co.uk/shop/psre/yamaha-psre443-portable-keyboard/

www.allegromusic.co.uk/shop/psr-1/yamaha-psr-s670-arranger-keyboard/

Incidently,DS does seem to be able to transpose too.Ive heard him play a piece either on violin or piano and then play it in a different key.He seems to do this without much difficulty.Does that seem possible?

Thanks everyone for your input .

DD has always found it easy to transpose - it actually is quite an easy thing to do on her first instrument (guitar), but she finds it simple on the piano too. I suspect children who are drawn to composing and who learn to play by ear at an early stage in their musical education are not put off by the idea that transposing is "difficult" or that keys with lots of black notes are hard.

Hi again -

Don't think I have forgotten you! I have started looking at the details of the three keyboards you mentioned, and although they are all similar, there are also big differences between them.

Choice between them will largely depend on what sort of music DS is interested in, and what exactly he (and possibly other family members) are hoping to achieve, both in the short term, as well as longer term, as you will be making a reasonable commitment in money and in time.

So if you can tell me what music he likes, what he listens to, and what sort of things he would LIKE to be able to play or compose, assuming any physical or technical limitations could be overcome.

Also, what is he like at numeracy, and other subjects?

(We can communicate as PMs if you wish, rather than the public 'thread'.)

Hi,ds is interested mainly in classical at the moment. That is his passion. He listens to Classic FM a lot and has quite a few classical CDs. He wants to compose classical music at the mo. His numeracy is average for his age. He struggles with writing due to his dyspraxia and he has issues with processing information. However his reading is excellent and his ability to read music is very good too.

OK - that's good. Makes it quite easy to suggest the Piaggero NP-V80 will be best. It is more like a digital piano than the other two, and has 'graded touch' a bit like a real piano, that the lower bass notes have a heavier 'feel' than the treble notes.

It is also 76 keys (against 61 keys for the other two, which is the standard portable keyboard size.) So having an extra octave means it can be played more a piano.

I don't know if you have studied the specification, but I'll outline the main features:

500 sounds

12 drum/FX kits

9 Reverbs

4 chorus

Dual voice/layer (so piano with strings orchestra, etc)

Keyboard split (so different sounds either end of keyboard)

165 accompaniment styles

Multi-finger (for left hand chords, so no 'single finger' mode)

User custom style (so you create one of your own)

305 song set up (I assume this means it sets the sounds etc for a song automatically)

Record 5 songs - 6 tracks = 5 melody + chords

Headphone socket

MIDI

USB to device (I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think you can 'save' to USB stick.

6 watts X 2

Speakers: (12cmx6cm) X 2; 5cm X 2

Dd uses Sibelius (dh is a music teacher so we have it) & she slso uses a programme on her iPad (notation?)

She's aspie too. She loves composing.

Ferguson thank you so much for your help. My only concern is that when I went to the music shop yesterday and discussed all this with them they recommended the PSR 670 over the one you recommended because it has the software built into it. So I'm really not sure.We do have an acoustic piano so the keyboard would be for playing/composing and recording.

Balletgirlmum Pardon my ignorance here but does your dd just use her iPad for composing rather than piano/keyboard?. I looked at Sebelius and it costs around $119. We would get this for ds if it would help.
I'm very confused as to what the best combination is!

I'll ask her.
Dh has a midi compatible digital piano but dd just has a mini midi keyboard for composing rather than full sized.

She does love Sibelius but she's oldervthan yiur Ds (almost 14) so maybe that's sonething he could build up towards.
He's classmates use GarageBand but she's beyond that.