I recently watched a fellow member of this forum play a few songs. I was surprised to see him place his right hand much further up the keyboard than me.He did this every time he played a song. It sounded really good. I have now decided to follow his example and start my songs where he plays. For the past 65 years, I have started my songs on middle C ; or on one of the two or three notes above or below middle C. I don't think that he would ever do that.

Again logic. If you are playing a song where one of the notes goes below the F2# then that note plays a “style” key. Example, play “He’ll have to go” then you need the F2 note for the song. So play in the upper octave as I do. Modify the keyboard with the Octave normal, up or down and use the transpose to get the song to sound nice. I may play a song using the notes of the C scale but the keyboard is set Octave -1 and the keyboard transposed 3 semitones up. The sound that comes out is in Eb,
Den.

I use a twin keyboard setup which enables me to play a melody with my right hand anywhere on the keyboard. So, I do not have any octave problems from having a conventional set split point.

Ron

Hello,

Which parts of the keyboard I use depends entirely on the song.

My Yamaha instruments could/can handle up to three keyboard splits: in extreme cases, on the far left for the automatic accompaniment, to the right for the "left part", then next to it for the parts "right1" and "right2" and then again a part of the keyboard only for the part "right3". Then things get tight.

But you can shift the voices of the individual parts by several octaves. And in addition, you can change all of these settings with each individual registration and adapt them to your own performance and needs.

This is why I use up to 50 registrations for some songs. I then often switch them using the MIDI baseboard.

I'm currently working on a track called "Dixie" in the Disney marching band style. I'm already at 40 registrations and still far from finished.