I just purchased a MIDI keyboard (since I’ve long thought of trying to learn myself to play the piano), hooked it up to my Mac (now, that was easy!) and started taking a few piano lessons with GarageBand, a very nice little program accompanying iLife ’09. The keyboard is a sweet little Roland Keyboard named Edirol PC-50, and has so far lived up to the expectations from the salesman at the 4Sound.no music store in downtown Bergen.

Will probably look into purchasing a professional sound card (Apogee Duet looks nice!) after a while, but since my silly little MacBook doesn’t have FireWire, I’m not 100% certain what I’ll go for. We’ll see when that time comes.

Now, this is what I managed to put together after playing (in several meanings of that word) with my keyboard and GarageBand this afternoon. It’s nothing to brag about, but I’m happy with it, nonetheless. Isn’t that how one should view one’s own creations – not compare them to what everybody else can, but what yourself think of it?

I both want to try to learn to play the piano, but I’m also eager to learn to mix some silly electronica as well. Will look at several programs, but I think Propellerheads’s genious of a program, Reason, will be a good match.

Well, let me tell you, it’s really fun to play! A bit difficult, and somewhat frustrating when the fingers deny to follow the brain. And then the pain after having played the same chords for too long, and the arms wondering what the fuck I’m doing . The learning curve feels steep right now, but in time I guess it’ll pay off.

Want to listen what I churned out? Of course, try out the soundbite below!

(direct download)

Straight out of GarageBand’s Piano Playing Lesson #5.