# Guy Rowland walkthrough videos



## atw (Sep 18, 2015)

Guy i always have good times when watching your videos.
In a walkthrough video you make me laugh several times. Thank you for that.

here are some (just listen for some seconds):





My favourite one:








PS: And thank you for the walkthrough videos.


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 18, 2015)

Thank you... I'm always staggered that anyone makes it through any of them to be honest. I started sort of reluctantly - it was Lumina and I'd been badgering for someone to a walkthrough for months, meaningful info was sparse. ProjectSAM eventually sighed and said "if we send you a copy, will you do one?" And it would have been rude to say no...


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## atw (Sep 18, 2015)

No false modesty. The walktroughs are good and funny.

Realtime playing/testing gives a lot of information;


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 18, 2015)

Believe me it's not false - my failure of grade 4/5 piano (I forget which) representing the brick wall of my keyboard skills haunts me daily and everyone who has to endure those walkthroughs. I just never get any better. Any jokes are a thinly disguised talent sticky-plaster. But as I've said before, if folks like them I genuinely think it's a case of "boy if even HE makes it sound going playing live, then think what I could do..."


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## tack (Sep 18, 2015)

"Ahhhh! Stay away from the knife!" That made me laugh.


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## Baron Greuner (Sep 19, 2015)

Guy Rowland said:


> my keyboard skills haunts me daily and everyone who has to endure those walkthroughs. I just never get any better. Any jokes are a thinly disguised talent sticky-plaster. But as I've said before, if folks like them I genuinely think it's a case of "boy if even HE makes it sound going playing live, then think what I could do..."



Hahaha. You honestly don't want to worry about that at all.

If you have 15 minutes a day, and I mean a rigid 15 minutes (not 10 or 6 or 8), what you can easily do is just scales to start with. The thing to remember is to get the fingering totally right and not skimp. It won't be boring for 15 minutes. Stop after 15 minutes. The brain processes the information and muscle memory subliminally. You can't help but to become better after just 3 or 4 weeks. Each hand separately is very important and then join them up later.

Baron Greuner


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## NYC Composer (Sep 19, 2015)

Baron Greuner said:


> Hahaha. You honestly don't want to worry about that at all.
> 
> If you have 15 minutes a day, and I mean a rigid 15 minutes (not 10 or 6 or 8), what you can easily do is just scales to start with. The thing to remember is to get the fingering totally right and not skimp. It won't be boring for 15 minutes. Stop after 15 minutes. The brain processes the information and muscle memory subliminally. You can't help but to become better after just 3 or 4 weeks. Each hand separately is very important and then join them up later.
> 
> Baron Greuner



So you're suppposed to use BOTH hands?? I KNEW I'd gotten something wrong.....


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## Baron Greuner (Sep 19, 2015)

NYC Composer said:


> So you're suppposed to use BOTH hands?? I KNEW I'd gotten something wrong.....



Haa! Yes.

I use this particular model because it works, goes up to an hour and is very cheap.

Now if someone would just teach me how to play the guitar.



Baron Greuner


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## chimuelo (Sep 19, 2015)

Well let's take a step further.
But thanks for the videos, I always prefer watching someone that knows what they're doing.
On YouTube they are so many cats trying to show you how a certain song was recorded or a synth patch created and wading through that crap is most unspiring.
Yours are to the point and share the tricks well. Hats Off.

As for chops.
Czerny and Hanon for 1 hour a day.
15 minutes is for patient people.

Pick the easiest ones, and simply turn up the metronome when you feel comfortable.
I still go back and use those to prepare for Grand Piano gigs where I found out a few years
ago I sucked.
I actually played fine but struggled after 30 minutes or so and took my breaks early.
Raced home and broke out the dusty books and dialed the excercises back in.

Even on a Physis K4 where the action is not heavy it's the burn you get from going non stop that's gets the coordination to ears and brain working better.

Can't believe how weak my chops got from not playing a Grand Piano for 10 years.


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## Guy Rowland (Sep 19, 2015)

I'd probably need a shrink to tease out my aversion to scales. I think I ended up hating piano playing and tuition so much by the time I failed Grade 4/5 as a teen, it was a blessed relief to quit.

Thing is - I'd never call myself a pianist and I have no interest in becoming one. The aim of the game here is to get what's in my head into my DAW. Daily it occurs to me that I'd be able to do that job quicker if I could play better - just stands to reason, doesn't it? But my playing - lamentable though it is - isn't so terrible that I can't get the ideas in to the piano roll to edit.

But it's not just the playing of course - my music theory is equally woeful. Should I not prioritise that? In the end, for better or worse, I've always found most success by simply listening, trying, experimenting, failing, getting somewhere and generally doing. It's the end result that counts, and my ability to deliver - and in my own little sphere, that's going ok.

Which brings me full circle to the videos. Why on earth would I expose my weakest areas when it's the end result that counts? Well that's session 2 with the shrink. But oddly, people do seem to like them. In the end, most people don't care if I'm not the greatest keyboard wizard in the world, they want to know what a library sounds like in some detail (but not interminably so) and how to use it. The flaws almost help, as I said before - clearly it's not brilliantly polished to mask any inadequacies in the library, it's honest in that way. And the odd joke helps I guess.


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## Baron Greuner (Sep 20, 2015)

As I say, it doesn't matter, especially if you have no interest in it.

Anyone reading this though, needs to understand that in order to become good at playing just about anything requires hours and hours of boredom, but just 15 minutes a day, slowly at first would make a big difference. Rachmaninoff used to practice a piece 20 or 30 times slower than it was mean to be. Slow motion playing. What should take only a minute to play, he would play over about 25 minutes.

What more and more instrument playing fluidity gives you, let's say the keyboard in this case, is the freedom to not think about where you go next when improvising for example.


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## kd.hebbes (Oct 18, 2015)

I got my start listening to Guy Rowland review of Symphobia. I messaged him and asked what I should get to start composing and he got right back to me. Good dude.


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