Hi,
I found some piano trainer stickers and stuck them on my 49key maudio keyboard.
49 notes is a lot more than what I am used to… I play tenor sax and harmonica. I also got a 3.5 amp USB power supply for the my Zynthian. It makes a huge difference!
Now I am looking for cheat sheet for chords that I will attach to the keyboard.
Time to hit youtube to find chord progression techniques!
It’s been raining all day so it’s been a perfect time for this. PEACE! 
4 Likes
Have you considered using the recorders (midi and
audio) as a training aid?
Could you give me the reference of that 3.5A PS?
Thumbs down for those stickers on the keys…
One of the great things in playing music, is to feel in touch with the instrument…
The guitarist knows the weight of his strings, and how it feels and somehow hurts when he is pressing his fingers on them… and even more when he is bending them…
The saxophone player, or even the clarinet or trumpet player, feels the air commun inside his lumbs, growing to his trachea, filling his mouth, and waving inside the body of his instrument where it is turned into sound…
The drummer really hits the skin of his drums or the metal of his cymbal and really physically feels the impact of his brushes, sticks or hands and feet…
Not talking of the singer who is sound by himself, completely invaded by his note, a vibration from head to toe…
How I envy them…
Keyboard players, even when they play on a real piano, always have to use some intermediate tool which we call keys… that’s even worth, or let’s say, it’s more true, when they use electronical keyboards… (step sequencers is the paroxysm of this prothesis burden)…
So what ? Adding stickers on keys ? Adding a 1/10 mm of prothesis ??
Ok ok… keep them for a while… but as a piano player, you will soon want to get rid of them and recognize each key by sight just like you recognize an elephant and don’t mistake it for a mammouth…
And the keyboard is built in such a way that it makes things easier than on a saxophone or a guitar… keys are organized in a never-changing pattern, and this pattern, not only follows the place in the note inside the scale, but also is repeated identically throughout the while keyboard… no matter what the octave is, C is always on the left of the 2 black keys group, and E is always on the right of this pair of dark things… And the other group of black keys is a trio, always surrounded by F and E…
Easier, isn’t it, than on a saxophone, a guitar, where E5 is not at the same place on the G string, compared to the D string… or even a violin, where A4 is almost somewhere between circa here and approximately there, on the string…
Exercise #1 : paint all the C keys in red on those keyboards… The E keys in blue, the F keys in whatever color you want, and the B keys in a different color each time…
Exercise #2 : hatch the impossible, or wrong, keyboards :
Exercise 3 : on your keyboard, play F,E,G (Effigy) for 3minutes and 7 seconds…
Let’s see if you got it right…
Ah… you need some more practice, I guess… and so do I, btw…
Ok, so what I would suggest is that you remember the place of each note on the keyboard, but as a step 1, I suggest that you keep only the stickers for those 4 notes (C,E,F,B) and they will be used as guides… Other notes you will find easily, D being between C and E, G after F and A before B…
And within a while, you will tear off the other stickers and throw them to the bin… one by one of you want…
Now, as you were talking about chords… I understand that a guitarist will need models, a chart showing the position on each finger on each string… But that’s 1000 times easier on a keyboard, for the reasons mentionned above : the same note is always at the same place on the keyboard, whatever octave you are wanting to play it…
There’s only one way to play a C5, only one key, thought on a guitar, you can play it on different strings (and different positions)… Not to mention open tunings which goal is nothing but make things even more complicated…
I think I’m paranoid…
Once you understand that a chord is made of triads (usually the fundamental, the 3rd (minor or major) and the 5th (sometimes diminished, sometimes raised by one semitone)… plus the 7th…
Well… let’s stay in the scale of C major… all the white keys… A chord is easlily made by not-playing one key upon two…
The C chord will be : I play C, I don’t play D, I play E, I don’t play F, I play G… I want to add the 7th ? I don’t play A, I play B… I want to play the 9th ? etc etc…
The D chord is built identically : I play D, not E, F, not G, A…
The E chord : E, G, B…
All at the same time, I mean…
Exercise #4 : play a F chord… Play a G chord…
Then comes the minor/major difference…
A chord is called major when it reaches 50years old approx… Under 18 (21 in some countries) the chord is considered minor and cannot broadcast or visualize porn on the internet… I mean, he still can, but it’s not legal…
Now, about the seventh… A7th, F7th, E7… When it’s played by trumpets, it blows sweet rock and roll, according to who you know…
Exercise 5 : who is who you know ?
I hope this all helps…
Anyway, if you want the rainbow, you must have the rain…
( 
though it’s not her best song, anyway…)
Have a nice day…
Thierry
Although much of @opus.quatre 's post was rather jovial it is full of sound advice (if a little obfuscated) 
You have already put your stickers on so may not want to hear this but you would be better having your helper indications away from the prime playing position. It may take a while for you to get to the stage that @opus.quatre describes of feeling your instrument but you will certainly feel those stickers distracting you from learning and playing - sorry!
Each individual will learn best in their own way. Some may thrive in an orthodox, strict piano teacher session whilst others may benefit form visual indicators like you have used or light-up keyboards). In the end it is just a means to an end and the end will be different for each person.
Use whatever help you need to get you to your goal. Chords are just more than one note being played. You may wish to learn traditional (western) chord theory with major chords consisting of the base note (e.g. C), the third (note within this key’s major scale, e.g. E) and the fifth (e.g. G). This theory provides the concept of a scale (selection of notes) with each note within the scale having a number (first, second, third…). Alternatively you could be like Pete Townsend (guitarist from rock band The Who) and just play some notes together and maybe worry about what they mean later. This approach doesn’t let you play in many bands because you don’t know how to play other peoples’s music but it does allow for more inventiveness in your composing.
Sorry - I think I may have gone off on as big a tangent as the previous post!!!
Ah !!.. there was a time when noone, in a musical conversation, would have felt the need to explain who Pete Townsend was…
Maybe one day, it will also be necessary to introduce John Lennon or Mick Jagger… and to explain what a guitar was and looked like…
People then will turn on their connected cristal, and display a sonic hologram of the instrument…
1 Like
The stickers actually look useful to me, not so much for knowing where ‘c’ is, but as an aid for reading music. Coming from a guitar, bass or ukulele, sight reading music hasn’t ever really been necessary, but their doesn’t seem to be any simpler notation for piano, and so having some kind of reference is a life saver.
As long as there’s noise coming out at the end of the process!
2 Likes
Sure,
Here it is:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L88M8TE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Thanks !
I figured since I know how to read music from playing the tenor saxophone then stickers with the note on the staves. I’ve been looking for YouTube videos for proper finger placement and using sites like https://www.hanon-online.com/ to learn finger progression. Stickers for me just put the key placement in perspective. Hopefully I only need the stickers to remind me for a little while. The goal is to always know where middle C is and by knowing where the minor keys are I will know by steps where each note is.
A tenor sax is only capable of 3 octaves… sometimes if you have the right reed, you can bite down hard, hit the reed just right and get 4 octaves out of a tenor sax. But all the notes are on the G cleff. A piano… you got the G Cleff from middle C to the right and the Bass cleff to the left.
Plus there is a lot to learn about finger progression.
The big advantage of the stickers, is it stops you doing the mental FACE, EGBDF, counting to work out which note it is, and that’s before the Bass clef gets involved.
Sure… those different keys don’t help…
I had not considered this handicap…
But what has been said about Pete Townsend, world champion in high jump over guitar amp walls, is true. And there are many blues musicians who have been excellent musicians, or instrument players, without being able to read music…
Reading or writing music is important for communication, and so is the fact that you can name the notes or chords…
When you play in a band and the bass player says “let’s start from the Bminor chord”, it’s better if you don’t answer “Start alone, and I’ll join you”…
For playing ? Well, it can help… the mental image that you have, of the architecture of a scale, of the structure of the chord, and of the song you play, will help… sure…
But you can believe in praxis, also… You know, those moves that you know by heart, so very well that your brain would be unable to figure them out, but your body does them automatically…
I suppose that, as a saxophone player, you know them already : your fingers go right to the correct place, your tongue will bite just as it is needed, your lumbs will blow what is necessary…
A moment will come when, on the keyboard, your hand will find its way without asking the brain to tell her…
Being a self-taught keyboard explorer, what I never worked, and I regret, is the position of the hands… How they must sit or stand, over the keyboard, how the fingers must be straight or curved… How you can move along the total keyboard, when you only have 5 fingers to play all those neverending 88 notes… Which finger must pass under or above the others to continue the travel… And when…
Sure, I developed personal techniques, which are probably not the best, and have their limits…
If you have a friend pianist or keyboardist, you should ask him to show you a few hints…
All this depends of the level you would like to reach, and the time you want to spend on it…
Ahh lmao…when I built my Zynthian how do you think I played a few chords and lead ?
Like Pete Townsend, but not sounding as good l