I fancy having a go at learning to play the keyboard, just as an extra hobby to keep me occupied through the dark winter months. I guess I could do with some advice in 2 parts;

1, what keyboard to buy, would want something that I can plug headphones into, creates a “recognisable” piano sound, creates a beat to help me keep time, and other features that may help a beginner that I haven’t thought of. Oh and not too expensive, it may happen that I find it too frustrating and give up at some point.

2, What would be a good tutorial/course to follow?

anyone got any clue about this stuff?

as with any music instrument.

get a teacher.

That’s not possible at the moment.

I did this last winter, got a deal on a keyboard from some website called normans musical instruments, but the thing that kicked me off on it was an iPad app of all things.
It was called Play Piano in a Flash, by some guy called Scott Houston a self titled ‘The Piano Guy’ as I remember it was a free app and I initially had delusions of learning to play the piano or keyboard via my then new iPad.

None of which came to pass.

I ended up back doing the whole learning scales thing and after a couple of days could knock out a vaguely recognisable tune reading the music hesitantly. I didn’t get good enough quick enough then Xmas hols over it was back to work and the bread knife cleared me out of the lounge – game over, it’s still sitting there, maybe this will prompt me to go dig it out again for this winter, it’s something I would really like to be able to do.

What I need is a Groundhog day.

OK,

you need to be very disiplined. If you want to “play”. learn chords and scales first, and practice practice practice (it’s dull) then move on to tunes, simple ones to begin with, (auld lang sine, that sort of thing) and develop your technique.