Ken Lewis Keyboard for Beatmakers

Let’s be honest, with Beat making becoming more and more available to the general public, a wave of new producers with no musical ability, but great ears are becoming prominent in the hip-hop scene. I myself will admit that even though I have been eating/breathing hip-hop for 15 + years, I found myself acting like a deer in the headlights when a keyboard was placed in front of me. With tons of new terminology involved in learning piano, it’s easy for a freshman beat maker to enter the cycle of being confused, overwhelmed, and ultimately giving up. But no need to fear fellow rookies, Ken Lewis has saved the day!

That’s right folks! Dnast here with my thoughts and feeling on a super helpful tutorial from our good friend super producer/engineer Ken Lewis. Keyboard for Beatmakers, is the newest in the line of tutorials available over at Ken’s site www.Audioschoolonline.com. For those who don’t know Ken is a superstar in the music scene. With over 12 Grammy’s, 71 platinum and gold records, and 56 number 1’s on Billboard, this man is near god status among producers/artists. While most people who reach his level of achievement posses a certain level of cockiness and unwillingness to help, Ken has continued to stay humble and bless fellow produces with tutorials and insight from his own methods of madness. But enough with the biography lets load this tutorial up and see what gem’s Mr. Lewis drops on us this time

Keyboard for Beatmakers mission is to educate the freshman level producers on the basics of playing a keyboard, locating the root note, adding melodies, transposing octaves/keys, arpeggiators and more. During the entire length of the tutorial Ken switches from 3 different camera angles providing the watcher with a view of Mr. Lewis himself, a screen share of his computer and , a top down view of his keyboard (see ex.1). In my opinion this is in addition with Ken’s straight forward humble demeanor gives the viewer the ultimate feeling of actually sitting in a personal Skype chat with him. The other feature of this tutorial I found helpful is Ken’s honesty. In the beginning of the tutorial he immediately addresses that he won’t be assembling a Grammy hit, as well as trashing his own sound selection throughout the tutorial. I find this to be extremely important because, instead of “wowing” the viewer with fancy patches on a VST, Ken focuses on the importance of the method and how it should be done.

Another great part of this tutorial is Mr. Lewis’s teaching approach. Ken teaches this lesson using logic (see ex.2) but instead of explaining how to do it in only logic, he explains the theory behind it making it applicable for almost any DAW available today. Ken also teaches the viewers how to achieve his lesson multiple ways including the DAW and though the MIDI keyboard itself (see ex.3). In my Opinion the most helpful section of Keyboard for Beatmakers was how to find the of root note within a chord, and how to build your bass line from that root note. As a freshman on the beat making scene I always had a lot of trouble building a bass line that sounded like it fit and was in key, but that is no longer a problem! After watching this tutorial I can honestly say I have learned a valuable lesson that has granted me the knowledge to bring my productions to the next level.

In conclusion Keyboard for Beatmakers is truly a blessing to the newbie Beatmakers. At almost an hour long, this lesson is not only super easy to comprehend, it is also packed full of knowledge while remaining personal due to Kens awesome Demeanor! For the Low price of 14.99 this video holds knowledge that not only will stay with you the rest of your life, but also get you on the path to become a better Beat maker. So do yourself a huge favor and head over to www.AudioSchoolOnline.com and pick up this tutorial today, it will have you feeling like Mozart in no time!