Music Thing: Qwerty Keytars
By Tom Whitwell 
posted June 23rd 2006 4:27PM
posted June 23rd 2006 4:27PM
Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment:
Nothing screams 'wrong' quite as loudly as a keytar. If you've ever seen Belinda Bedekovic, the Croatian keytar queen, you'll know what I mean. But while traditional keytars are undergoing a kitsch rennaisance (witness Justin Hawkins from the Darkness riding a giant tiger while playing a Roland AX-7), wiley Euro supergeeks tend to roll their own qwerty keytars for live gigs. The guy in the picture is Droon, a breakcore musician and video game designer from Antwerp, Belgium, playing at a party called 'Breakcore Gives Me Wood'. If you want to swap the MIG helmet for a pink feather boa, Swiss techno producer Aster Oh has an awesome pink zebra-fur covered keyboard, and Alexi Shulgin, who covers Nirvana songs on an old PC as 386DX, plays a vanilla PC keyboard with a guitar strap on stage at events like Dorkbot London.
Aside from laughing at arty Europeans, the interesting thing about gigging with a ASCII keyboard rather than black and white notes is that it makes a lot of sense. If you're using loop-based software like Ableton Live, then triggering loops from 100+ clearly labelled keys works just fine. Alternatively, you could keep it old school and use Back To Basics, a simple $40 program to trigger samples from a keyboard.
Aside from laughing at arty Europeans, the interesting thing about gigging with a ASCII keyboard rather than black and white notes is that it makes a lot of sense. If you're using loop-based software like Ableton Live, then triggering loops from 100+ clearly labelled keys works just fine. Alternatively, you could keep it old school and use Back To Basics, a simple $40 program to trigger samples from a keyboard.
where do people get helmets like that? i want one...
Shoot down a mig...
Seen that guy play in a small room above a local pub a few months back (with helmet, beard and his 'keytar'). Can't remember the slightest thing about his music, was rather wasted but i'm sure it was entertaining. I thought he was just standing there trying to look cool with it, not playing it. Got some (bad) photos of him somewhere...
The keytar is dead. Any attempts to reestablish the keytar is punishable by internet shaming, even if said keytar is geekier than the original 80's keytar.
I see nothing wrong with a keytar. Guitars can be played laying down (i.e. lap steels), why can't keyboards be played standing up?
I don't even want to begin to get into how wrong that Belinda Bedekovic lady is. Watch her dry hump a keytar, and you'll never have the same outlook on life again...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jpr3oe96JU
Geekiness at it's finest.
Yes this nice guy is Droon... www.myspace.com/droon
keytards...
Miron: You can get one of those helmets off eBay. Listings are perpeutal and in the dozens. They're crazy cheap, but the build is not that great and so don't believe statements of "authentic".
At least he appears to be playing live and not faking it.
I recently chatted with Tom Schuman, the guy who owned the very first Moog Liberation (the first commercially released keytar). Here's what he had to say:
I cannot take credit for being the first keytar player... However, I can take credit for the first one to set his keytar on fire. Moog Music made me a prototype to the Liberation which had a compartment on the back for smoke bombs. At a certain point in my keytar solo, I had the stage manager kneel behind me and light the wick of a smoke bomb which then gave the illusion that the keyboard was smoking. Well, one time it actually caught on fire when the whole back of the keyboard started flaming at which point I was forced to throw the thing off of me. Fortunately, I was not burned. I also got electrocuted in Japan when our lighting director decided to string the keytar with flashing Christmas lights. He would turn them on when I went running through the audience. The effect was great except when I took off the thing to set it back on the stage, I touched something that shot 110 volts through my body…once again, I was forced to throw it off of me!
Needless to say, I no longer desire to use a keytar.
TOM SCHUMAN
Don't forget the drumitar designed and played by Future Man from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. See www.flecktones.com .
This guy is just looking to get his ass kicked...just look at him.
You can definitely play a keytar with two hands. Do a Google search on Jeffrey Abbott.
I own a Roland AX-1, and with wireless MIDI transmitters and portable Yamaha QY100, you can go anywhere with this thing. I looked at the AX-7's, but I didn't get in early enough before they climbed to ridiculous prices that were above the original retail price.
I think the keytar has a ton of possibilities, but the optimum design was never created before it people gave up on it. If you could create a keytar with the right and left hand flip-flopped like a guitar, you could acheive a lot more playing with a lot more comfort.
Is it possible to play a keytar with two hands or is one hand always holding the neck?