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I am thinking of buying a mini keyboard with 37 keys. It is small and portable so I can carry it around when I travel. One thing I'm not so sure is how to play with both hand with there not being enough keys. I usually play with my keyboard with 61 keys. When I watch people on YouTube that play 37 keys they play flawlessly but I wonder how they are adjusting to the missing keys. For example, if middle C is literally the middle C on keyboard then there are not enough keys for the bass clef.

Can someone please teach me how to effectively play with a mini keyboard?

KBancho
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  • I am also going through this process. I think you have to get very well versed in chord inversions. You can't just get away with moving your whole left hand up or down a fourth or a fifth. You probably also need to get a feel for when to drop the melody down an octave so that you don't run out of keys on ascending runs. – Andrew Wagner Dec 29 '22 at 10:13

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In my experience, it's really hard to play this way. Small(er) keyboards are good for carrying around, doing a bit of composition and mainly "saving" your ideas (recording something etc). But that's it as far as I have experienced.

I'm not an experienced keyboard player, but when I sit on either of my smaller keyboards (e.g. my Korg Minilogue, Yamaha Reface, AKAI MPK Mini) I have so many issues. I can't actually play with both hands, the action of the keys is bad, the size of the keys is annoying also.

The only way I can understand how people on YouTube play on such small (and imbalanced) keyboards is that they don't seek "expression" so much, but just want something to carry around and jot an idea quickly.

And to answer your question directly, I think people who play "effortlessly" on small keyboards are just not playing very low or high notes.

At least that's what I've gotten so far.

safts
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