Yes! Any keyboard with regulation-size keys is fine. Technique is much more about knowing the spacing of the keys than about building strength. For facilities needed to play songs well it doesn't matter if you have a four octave keyboard, electronic piano, or acoustic grand, so long as the keys are of regulation width and depth.
But I'd like to learn to read music!
You don't have to be taught! With a few pages (provided in our materials) we easily teach you to read. People who know the keyboard through improvisation often become the best readers, if they decide to. They move through patterns found in all music, so when they see notes on the score their fingers are heading to the right places. Their grasp of the harmony increases ability to reach notes on the page. To learn to read music well there's no better way than to first learn to play some songs well and get a manual appreciation of the layout. The task for your eyes is then far easier.
What about all the fills and frills?
Once you learn basic song play you're ready to "jazz up" your sound. Because you're playing with rich clusters of tones, you already have the stuff from which improvisations are made. As you get comfortable playing songs you develop abilities to venture from the melody to play arpeggios and other figures to embellish a tune. On the supplemental CDs you'll find the foundation for "striding" the left hand, a common practice to create more rhythmic movement, especially on up-tempo tunes. And follow up materials address various topics about improvisation.
How can I play full arrangements from the start?
Using diagrams like guitar players use, to show chords on a keyboard, a temporary notation that lets you grab full-hands sounds without reading music. You're taught to take a "chord chart" with melody and chord symbols along the top, and add the color tones all good players use. Musicians usually aren't pleased by alternative notations, but our temporary one has received rave reviews among the many professionals who've seen the results it gets.
