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Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

Question: All of "learn synths" tutorials I've managed to dig up are really "sound creation" tutorials.

I have not found a good tutorial or paid online class on how to _play_ synths. Is taking a traditional piano course the best way to do so? Observationally, the play style seems quite different, even if some basics are the same. Most practically, I see synths typically played with right hand, left hand is on the modulator or knobs.

Basically, I'm finding it hard to find resources on how to play and make the most out of your synth (as opposed to piano), once you have dialed in the sound you want...

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Literally practice :) Each sound you choose on a workstation or synth tends to bring out a playing style that reflects your own musical listening habits and learnings.

When I play a string patch in my band it tends to have slight flourishes to what are otherwise stabby block chords. When I play piano, it's kept light, jazzy and loungy, when I play synths I heavily use the pitch bend wheel and use the sustain pedal heavily (very old example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZBdjJiMkko)

Ultimately you just have to listen to examples of what you like and try your best to replicate what they're doing in those songs. This will improve your technique and skills to the point you can use a blend of your learnings to create your own style and feel :) Good luck!

Good question. Definitely learn the rudiments of piano playing, up to playing block chords (triads) with either hand.

Beyond that, I think they diverge too much. A lot of piano technique is getting both hands working together to play rhythm and melody - but generally synths are doing one thing at a time, and cooperating with other instruments.

A lot of classic synth lines are monophonic, aka "one-finger" lines, although to play them fluidly with one finger would be pretty hard. So pianistic skills would be wasted in this context.

When polysynths got common in the mid 80s, pianistic fingering of chords (but not necessarily rhythms) was used. I mean, to play the melancholy chords of "Drive" by the Cars, you need some of the skills of a pianist, but not rhythmic ones. You do need two hands.

(Of course the DX7 was played very much as a piano at times)

I do think you need the music theory though, such as awareness of chords and functional harmony.

Consider learning some of the classic synth basslines - they tend to have tutorials on youtube - like Material Girl or Tarzan Boy.

Learning piano is fairly valuable in terms of understanding/writing music, but not critical.

If you're interested in making music with synths, you could probably get away with a pad controller. You lose some keys, but you usually get a lot of control buttons. A 16 button pad controller can do a lot when configured with 4 banks of sounds, with root/3/5/7 of each. Most controllers have octave up/down buttons, so 4 pitches of a given sound is actually very versatile.

Nothing beats a teacher but there are some problematic things with piano teachers IME. (I've had 2 over the past 20 years)

- Piano is super super super biased towards classical music

- Huge emphasis on reading music and playing it back even if you're not understanding it

- Weakness on developing a sense of rhythm and playing by ear

- Weakness on learning to play with others

- The weakness on understanding leads to a difficulty in memorization AFAICT

All this stuff gets ironed out in piano lessons I'm sure but it seems to happen at a pretty late stage that isn't great for an adult beginner. It takes away some of the fun.

I have never taken classical guitar but in contrast to piano your typical guitar lessons are near 100% the other way around. Way more emphasis on using your ears, developing rhythm, playing with others, etc..

The only reason I mention this is a lot of synth music is pop music that has a lot more in common with guitar centric music.

The ridiculous thing is I haven't taken a piano lesson since 2015, I've been taking guitar. My sense of rhythm if I sit down at a keyboard/piano is way better now than when I was playing piano every day and taking classical style lessons. If I went back to some piano now I expect I would improve dramatically from where I was in short order.

I agree with all of this, which I why I generally play more guitar than piano. I find it more expressive and I "feel" the music more.

That being said, I think a midi keyboard is the best interface for controlling software synths. Sadly, using guitar as a midi instrument doesn't really work that well and this is an area where the keyboard really shines. Would be curious to hear your thoughts though.

FWIW (OP here), I've been playing guitar for years (not great, but fun enough:), have no knowledge of piano, and can have tons of fun with it just mixing up the basic chord progressions and playing around. I mean, compared to the guitar - the notes are in order! One after another, in a neat sequence! What a concept! :-) :-) :-)

So I think we're in agreement - I feel (rightly or wrongly) that I could take two years of classical piano lessons, and get no closer to what I want to do with a synth than I am today :-/. Whereas I feel just from playing the guitar, I can already do, say, 10-15% of what I want to do with a synth, and want to explore further in _that_ direction...

Took a piano 1 class at a nearby college last fall, and I agree with all of your points. I did walk away with a firm grasp on major and minor chords, which is something that escaped me in the 20+ years I'd played music.

Two real ways to go about it, it works about the same as learning guitar for a specific genre. Either find someone competent in that play-style to tutor you, or take a beginner-intermediate class in piano. Up to that point it will conceptually be similar. Once you feel like your basic technique is sound (rolls, fingering, rhythm), start learning songs you like. You'll pick up the specific techniques you need as you go.

Taking a class early on is important though. You'll ingrain bad technique if you're entirely self taught, and reteaching yourself later when you realize your technique is holding you back is absolutely miserable. Taken from experience.

Thanks! I share that experience - I've been mostly self-taught electric guitar, only to realize many years later that my unconventional (but seemingly natural) way of holding the pick is completely messing me up :O

I was there as well after years of learning guitar. It's never too late to relearn the pick holding. It takes some time, but it's worth it.

One hand on the keys and one hand on the knobs is a very specific way of "playing" a synthesizer. A lot of people don't really play the instrument live in this way.

I, personally, don't use keyboards to drive synths at all (even when the entire piece is written for synthesizer). I tend to work entirely in the box with step sequencers, and record directly into my DAW, where I go about rearranging things and mixing. So there's really no "playing" involved, and I've found it a lot more profitable to study composition and orchestration.

If you do end up going the 'learn piano' route check out 'pianobooster', it is the most patient teacher you'll ever have.

Awesome Sauce! I'm looking for Udemy courses for guided learning, but another way to practice is great - thx!

You're welcome, enjoy! Finding practice material it is best to look for midi files that are already split into two channels and tracks for left and right hand. Otherwise you have to split them yourself which can be quite a bit of work.

I have not found a good tutorial or paid online class on how to _play_ synths

Synths take many forms. If you want to play a synth with a keyboard, then learning piano would give you the concepts and techniques. Not all synths have a keyboard though...

It depends. What sort of music are you into? If you like funk and want to play weedly weedly bass sounds, you buy a Moog monosynth and you're set. If you want to play trance or dance styles then you figure out arpeggiators and sequencers and get to know the synth architecture so well that you can program it on the fly, because many styles of music are about taking a simple repeating motif and redoing it in different tonal colors. If you want to play synths as backing instruments in a rock or pop combo buy a workstation keyboard from Korg or Yamaha.

Tell me what you like to listen to and I'll recommend you something.

Thanks!

My first love is guitar, and I've been playing it (badly;) for decades. But I've just discovered synthesizers, got increasingly hyper excited, and it seems I can really really nerd out about them. Historically on the electronic side I've enjoyed Depeche Mode, some Daft Punk, and a mix & variety of other stuff; but I've just found synthwave, such as Kavinsky, and am somewhat in love:). I've been geeking out for a few weeks, love the deep warbles and hard tones of the bass monophonic analogues, piercing leads of some others, and the rich pads of some of the digital polyphonics.

To start with I bought a Roland Gaia; I know it doesn't get a lot of love, BUT... compared to UltraNovas and such, it has no menu diving - I have all these wonderful sliders and knobs to learn with and really understand what's going on. I've developed intuitive understanding of ADSR and other basic concepts like modulating LFO with it way better and faster than I imagine I would with a book - so if I outgrow it one day, it'll still have been a wortwhile purchase:).

Also played a bit with an old old USB Midi keyboard I had and Caustic software, and have access to Casio CTK-6250 regular electronic keyboard as needed.

Basically, I've discovered a fertile new ground and am looking to deep dive :).

But as I said - there's tons of reviews and suggestions on equipment out there; a fair amount of courses (good or bad) on how to create sound; but far less on how to learn to play synth in any kind of accelerated, non-traditional/classical way. As per my other post to fellow commenter - I find I can "play" piano/synth just from my guitar experience enough to have fun and run some chord progressions etc; and fear that first "two years" worth of classical piano would not substantially advance me in the direction I want to move. Perhaps I'm wrong... we'll see! :)

Regarding Depeche, people on Youtube have broken down exactly what each band member was playing during the 80s shows; you might find it interesting. The parts are simple. I don't say that to knock them at all, on the contrary it shows that pianistic excellence has little to do with great synthpop. Alan Wilder is a trained pianist and found little scope for his talents in those shows.

Of course the fast, repetitive bits were either on tape or sampled into the Emulator keyboards.

Yeah don't bother learning piano, you can just play chords with your right hand and modulate/bend with your left. So much of that synthpop sound depends on simple arpeggiators.

If you like hardware (and why wouldn't you, it's so much more fun than software) you might find a looping device really useful, you're probably familiar with the guitar pedal version. And you should definitely look into step sequencers, check out the Arturia beatstep for a low-cost and versatile one or the Korg Volca synths which are dirt cheap and super awesome.

Use a simple mixer (probably something cheap like a mackie or Tascam) from about the vintage of the music you like. Consider not doing full mixes and just recording your jams in stereo. If you get fussy over computer recording use tape instead, which is delightfully forgiving in a way that digital is not and will save you from gain control headaches and ugly dropouts if you record too hot. An old portastudio can be a ton of fun.

Learn about dub even if you don't like reggae music, dub producers know a lot of old school production techniques.

For learning to actually "play" any instrument, I'd recommend starting out learning some songs you like. The theory/effects/gear stuff develops in parallel. Songwriting will help too, even if it's something simple.

Depend on your taste in music, learning songs from classic synth era can be very useful too, whether it be prog-rock or anything else. I'd recommend songs by Camel, Allan Parsons Project etc.

Once your ears gets used to learning and playing whatever you hear off records, jam along to some classic Vangelis or something like that. Improvising is key to learning to play without sounding "stiff" if you will.

You might want to check out the roli seaboard, I have one and it's great for playing synths. A bit pricey but I enjoy it a lot. I got it because I was tired of making music through a UI and wanted to 'feel' it more like I do on the guitar.

I would also say any MIDI compatible keyboard is a good fit too, try to get something that has a pitch wheel though. The wheel will let you "bend" your sound and add some expressivity that just hitting the keys won't. I still think a midi keyboard is the best first interface for people that want to step into synth music.

The Seaboard block is a little cheaper, but it’s mini key size. Nice to have in a backpack, though.

I just wish Roli made an iOS config utility.

When you say “play synth” ...

Do you mean compose music with a sequencer or DAW like ableton?

Or, read and play sheet music using a keyboard to control the synthesizer itself?

The synthesizer and it’s means of control being separate make it a little different from traditional acoustic instruments.

But, no musician ever went wrong by learning to play piano and/or taking lessons.

Also, no musician ever went wrong by listening to the music they loved and trying to imitate it on their own.

Lastly, it helps to be around other people playing or making music.

Start with taking piano lessons for the basics and then learn to play some of the classics. Genesis, Toto, Saga, Herbie Hancock, you name it. There are plenty of tutorials on youtube.

What got me when I first started learning is to understand the difference between sound synthesis (which this link is basically for) and music composition. Maybe you're asking for something in between the basics of sound synthesis and full music composition. There's also all the different aspects of composition like drum arrangement, chord progression, melody creation, general music theory, etc.

I've collected some notes on what I've found so far [1] but be warned that I'm not a musician nor have I made anything that I would consider even remotely passable as music.

Here are some links that I found helpful:

* David Clements. He recreates many songs on his Studio Logic Sledge but it's applicable to other synths as well. Here's one where he recreates the opening to Stranger Things: https://youtu.be/HGufVBDfPvs

* InThread. A forum for Sonic Pi users. They have many coded examples of scores that can be used as a reference: https://in-thread.sonic-pi.net/

* Lines Forum. A forum of synth enthusiasts: https://llllllll.co/

* How Music Works. Goes from sound synthesis to composition/music theory: https://www.lightnote.co/

* Dylan Lane on melody writing. Don't let the Youtube personality or religiousity turn you off, she's knowledgeable and had many useful tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlrLHhpp8-E&list=PL5PNXIkCYn...

* Signals Music Studio. More music theory oriented but I found it very helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPDVo-7Ua28&list=PLTR7Cy9Sv2...

* Open Music Theory http://openmusictheory.com/

* Some other algorithmic music generation links: http://maximecb.github.io/Turing-Tunes/ , http://maximecb.github.io/Melodique/ , http://www.playonlinedicegames.com/mozart

[1] https://github.com/abetusk/dev/blob/release/notes/MusicNotes...

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