The Hip Hop world has had some great hits and they all involve music of some sort like melodies, keyboards and of course hooks. As much as we don't want to go to school to learn about music theory it's everywhere even in hip hop music. It ain' t hard they all use basic music principles like chords and melodies. In this DVD series we teach you how it works. We used our keyboard player, Diggity Dave Patterson, to play the parts and DOC teaches what to do. First we show you a scale, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, then show scales and chords in that scale this is important in order to build chords. Then we show you how you can build chords from the main scale a C major scale. Next we play several songs you probably know using the same chords and scales we show you it's that easy. We even play a few hip hop songs and play the parts so you can see how they match the lessons we teach. With today technology you don't need to play fast you can set your sequencer to go slow, at first play just 1 part, listen back, then add the next part and if you want you can speed it back up and it will sound great. All you need to do is understand how to create music with your keyboard to add to a sample, or a little vocal part, the more you use these lessons the better you get at doing it, its all about what you hear in your head. It even helps when you just want to explain to a keyboard player just what you want.

In How To Play Hip Hop Keyboards part 2 we continue where we left off we got the beat that doc made on the MPC1000 now we get Dave to play the triad chord on top of the beat, next dave plays a bass part as DOC tells him the musical structure. We pick a new track set the MPC to record a guitar once we get that part record on the MPC sequencer we use the pitch bend controller to bend the note like a guitar player would. This lessons is like watching a session to create a track we keep adding track on top of track and we even stop to show you each note and chord so you can see what was played on the keyboard. Now we make a new beat to show you how we do the bass line and add keys but this time we use a 4 note chord with this faster tempo. It may sound a little jazzy but it gives you a cool free flowing feel. Next we add a guitar with a wah wah feel and we pitch bend again to give it that feel. Watching this DVD will take you to the next level of your keyboard musical development as we invert (re-arrange chord notes) chords into new sounds but the same notes just in different positions. Next we teach more about harmony and chords using the same simple scale the C scale. We add notes to change the harmony but we still hear the basic part. Harmony is good to know especially when doing vocals you may want a singer to make a chorus you just pick the chord and have her sing each notes harmony with the words, it's that easy. Next we layer sounds and track it to make it sound bigger than they are.