SumOne

I'm starting to realise more why Piano is sometimes seen as being a bit posh as to formally learn isn't cheap (and compared with Bass it feels like an instrument that does need formal tuition). Or at least ABRSM certainly know how to extract ££ from students! I'm already upto about grade 2 or 3 level so have been looking at the course books to do some practise before I have my first lesson in 35 years. If I were to get all of the Grade 3 books: Exam Pieces (contains nine of them, can also pay for additional ones on the syllabus) Scales and Arpeggios Specimen Sight-reading Discovering Music Theory Workbook Discovering Music Theory Answer Book Music Theory in Practice (practice exam papers) ...these are short books (e.g. 'exam pieces' is 16 pages) but they cost about £12 each new. It'd be helpful if ABRSM just put them all into one book per Grade rather than extract maximum £ from students. Probably not all are really needed, but most are - and not only are there lots of them, they've made it so buying second-hand isn't ideal. I've bought a couple on eBay and then found that: second hand workbooks have all been written on (have returned twice for replacements and they are still marked-up) so you ideally need a new one. the syllabus changes often so at least with the exam pieces you need to get the newest version. the 'Music Theory in Practice' and 'Music Theory' workbooks don't give you the answers, so you either need to assume you are right or try to look stuff up online or buy the answer books. So per-grade that is upto about £70 of course books, but that is actually a relatively small part of the overall cost as can add + £50 Theory exam + £80 Practical exam = approx £200 total.....and that's before paying for the main cost which is lessons that are approx. £30 per lesson weekly = about £1,500 per year. If it takes roughly a year per grade then it's approx £1,700 per grade all-in, for me to pass grades 3, 4, 5 one per year is perhaps £5k total over 3 years (Grade 5 is probably where I'd stop, at least with theory). Anyone that casually mentions 'I did upto grade 8 piano when I was young' (as a friend recently mentioned - and he has barely played since) potentially had parents spend >£13k on it. On the other hand, it is less elitist now as the days of needing a big house with an expensive piano are gone (I have quite a decent home piano keyboard that cost less than £300), and there are loads of free online lessons and piano books from second hand shops so it doesn't necesserily need to cost a lot to learn. However, after 35 years of playing without lessons I haven't really progressed so it does seem that Piano is an instrument that really benefits from some formal tuition and learning structure (as opposed to Bass for instance: I bet if you ask good piano players how many had years of formal tuition and passed grade exams the % would be much higher than if you ask decent Bass players on this forum the same question).

The Yamaha CK-61 is what I went for in that sort of price range second hand (I sold mine recently for £470). I had it for about 18 months and was impressed: The main downsides to consider: They keys are slightly thinner than the standard piano ones (I think it is 15.9cm per octave vs 16.4cm), doesn't sound much but I did find that noticable. Keys are semi-weighted. I thought that was fine, but if you are into weighted piano keys then it could be an issue. 61 keys might be an issue if you are into playing 88 key piano stuff. But those downsides could also be seen as positives for it being relatively small and lightweight.

Hammond MIDI pedalboard (Christmas present to myself though!) Gives me the scope to become Geddy Lee, or a great Organ player. .....or the more likely outcome: Playing drone notes hands-free while I practice noodling bass guitar in that key over the top.

I bought a hefty weight bit of kit from Ash and it arrived all well, a bonus being the packaging that the kids appreciated near Christmas! (The cat was a bit unsure)

£1k for me is about cut off of a pub-gigging bass. Their marketing team has probably got to me, but I take the prices of a new Fender Precision or Jazz as the benchmark as most of other Bass brands probably take them as a benchmark too (if you were manufacturing a new 4 string passive Jazz type Bass in Indonesia you'd probably be paying close attenntion to the Fender equivilant prices). Squier: £300 Standard: £550 Player: £1,000 'Player' type signature models: £1,500 Professional: £1,800 American Ultra: £2,200 'American Ultra' type signature models: £2,400 Custom Shop: £4,000 As far as their marketing goes, anything under £1,000 is relatively mass produced and beginner/budget. £2k is where they aim at the sort of gigging musician/professional level - relatively expensive but a workhorse Bass for weekend warriors to play in pubs, >£2,400 is when you get to what they'd market as expensive and high-end quite exclusive and collectable sort of things that don't get played in grotty pubs. Personally, I'd buy second-hand and £1k is about the limit where I think you get the most bang for your buck (A decent condition 'Player' or Japanese or 'Professional' sort of Fender level), less than that and you often need to spend money doing upgrades or putting up with things like un-level frets (just a professional fret leveling setup can cost about £300 nowadays so it's a bit of a false economy getting cheaper basses sometimes). More than £1k second-hand gets diminishing returns in terms of technical and playability improvements and is where I'd start getting paranoid about taking it out to pubs.

Worst was a project to use a Laptop and virtual Bass effects along with a MIDI controller for live stuff...it never worked out, I spent ages faffing about with doing technical MIDI control software stuff and making presets for Laptop virtual Bass effects instead of actually playing music, it didn't work live as I still needed pedals for tuner and foot switch MIDI controller and also needed the Laptop and audio interface, it was overcomplicated and wasn't musically inspiring (in fact it took away time I could've been playing instruments). Also I can't sell the software second hand to recoup any of that cost. Best is a Viscount Legend One 73, it sounds great and has reinvigorated my passion for playing keys (and ignited a new interest in Funky Hammond type Organ stuff). Something that opens doors to whole new musical interests must be a good thing.

I think that is tricky to answer as no one has said 'show us your showreel to pay at out venue', but in theory we assume it'd help open new doors. We have no trouble getting local pub gigs but after a couple of years of that we're starting to feel more ambitious: proper music festivals (not just local free entry ones we do), mid sized music venues, supporting bigger bands etc.

This'll be our biggest challenge!

My band has local pub gigs every couple of weeks but we're now trying to up our game a bit and think a decent showreel would help - but we haven't really got a clue how to do it. What have you done? Just record it yourself/friends in the audience on phones and edit it together yourself, or pay someone to do it professionally? Was it worthwhile or a waste of time and money?

I'm glad to report that having sold my MPC Keys and logged out of it all the plugins and laptop software etc. still work on the laptop (now being controlled via a MIDI keyboard), and that inudes the ones that came with it as well as the purchased ones.

This was my problem there: