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I was considering getting a rollout/folding type keyboard to lay on my desk and practice at work during my lunch hour. I've just started working on hand independence and need all the practice time between lessons that I can get. Does anybody have any experience or recommendations on this type of keyboard? Thanks.

Jakester,

Welcome to Piano World and ABF. I have used a roll-up keyboard for years and recommend it. They lack proper touch and the keyboard is not quite the proper size (mine anyway) but they are certainly better than nothing.

Thanks,
Woody

It's not a keyboard to your fingers. It might satisfy your eyes. I don't think it will help much at all. Personally, I would prefer nothing to something that doesn't respond the same way as a real keyboard.

Far better to concentrate on playing your hand independence exercises (Bach? he asks, hopefully) with a focussed mind and a slow count and let the brain do it's stuff through a good night's sleep.

If you really want to get better try playing a virtual keyboard in your head, lap or just on your desk with your eyes closed and your brain engaged.

nice

Welcome to the forums Jakester

I second what Zrtf90 said - don't buy that roll-out keyboard. Besides, they sound terrible and do break if not properly handled. Better to "practice" other stuff that's just as important, if not more: ear training, theory, sight reading, focused LISTENING. There are tons of good resources on the web if you have access to a computer at lunchtime. Just my 2cents.

John

If you want to practice hand independence without a keyboard, try this book, which has a quite a few two-heanded rhythm reading exercises:
Studying Rhythm
(I purposely linked to an older edition -- check out the price on the current edition )

When you're first staring out, you can also make the single-rhythm exercises into two-handed ones by tapping a steady beat with one hand while you're reading the rhythms from the page with the other hand (when you're first developing hand independence, this can be harder than it sounds).

When I"m back at the keyboard, I play a simple ostinato with the left hand while improvising notes to the right hand rhythm which I am reading from the book.

Improving your rhythm reading skills helps hugely with sight reading in general.

I came into this thread for a totally different reason but thank you so much for the book recommendation. It's exactly what I've been on the lookout for. How did you first introduced to it? I orginally clicked thru to add my prespective that - depending on what one's goals are - time away from the piano, gaining new experiences to pour into my playing, has been benifical and something I never worry about. Writting from my job right now, I sympathize the desire to be back infront of the piano at any cost.

I'm a theory geek and enjoy working from (outdated=affordable) editions of college theory texts, plus I always check out Amazon's suggestions for "people who bought this also bought that".

This one kept showing up and out of date editions were cheap, so I thought I'd give it a try. I was very happy to discover that it had a number of two-handed rhythm reading selections, as well as the standard one-handed ones.

I got into rhythm reading practice when I noticed that many of my sight reading issues were not caused by problems in note recognition (computer trainers had solved that!), but a lack of fluency in rhythm reading. And once I discovered some good rhythm reading books (many of them are not very musical), I discovered that it was something I enjoyed.

Thanks for all the feedback. It's very helpful and gives me a direction to take.