How to Become A Famous Keyboard Player

You have a little studio set up. You might have a Yamaha Motif ES 6 and maybe a Roland XV 5080 and possibly an arranger keyboard such as the Yamaha Tyros or Korg PA1. All this maybe hooked to a computer sequencer such as Cakewalk Sonar 6 or Steinberg Cubase or maybe you prefer a hard sequencer such as the Yamaha AW1600. Anyway, you have all the above or similar and you are ready to create the best keyboard single or album that has ever been created. So how is it done? Well the first and probably the most important thing you need is luck and lots of it. That means making sure your musical masterpiece is heard by the right person. So you need to do some research and find out who you should be sending your demos to. If you can, send your demos to everybody on the planet and keep sending them. Create your own luck, talk to musicians, buy music mags, and create contacts. Make a policy of creating one contact per day. Whether you are a working musician or studio geek, you MUST, come up with a new sound, style, or something that is different enough to make people sit up and listen. It doesn't have to appeal to the masses; it just needs to appeal to enough people, so you get a slice of the market. A good example of this is Vangelis. He has a unique sound, he is different and he appeals to a small slice of the music market. How about Jeff Wayne, he has created his own slice of the market with just one album, "War of the Worlds". Not forgetting Mike Oldfield and "Tubular Bells". These are just a few examples, but they all have something in common, uniqueness. It's easy to write about and considerably harder to put in to practice. I have tried to come up with that different idea and I have demos on cassette tapes up in the attic gathering dust. Unfortunately I was not going to become the next famous keyboard player or composer. It did however, create other opportunities and as a consequence I have been a working musician for over thirty years and loved every minute of it. So if you have any different, wacky, weird, violent, or silly ideas floating about inside you head. Try and put it to music, you never know, you might be the next great keyboard player or composer, and lets face it we need one. I'm sick of all the remixes. Let's have something new. Oh and one last thing. Never give up.

About the Author

Michael Shaw is an organ and keyboard teacher and sells sheet music, tutor books and musical instruments at his websites http://www.mikesmusicroom.co.uk http://www.keyboardsheetmusic.co.uk/mikes_music_blog/ and http://musical-instruments-us.mikesmusicroom.co.uk/