Where to start (keyboard)?

Also, do you have any advice for what gear I should buy? Something not too expensive (I'm short on money), something with which I could play with headphones (I have neighbors and I want to play at 3AM), something I can easily carry.

Sorry for sounding like a complete noob (because I am). Hope I didn't ask anything stupid.

Get a reasonable midi keyboard ... they are getting cheaper these days and the 48 key ones are not spendy ... from there you plug it into the computer then you go looking for VST's for piano ... and many of them are free, and voila ... you have a piano available to you.

They say that practice makes perfect, and then you find many a musician, that is an individualist and disdains any kind of teaching ... and it goes as far as folks like Keith Jarrett trashing education for not teaching you anything except what is dead and wasted after so many years of repetitions!

To me, and I am a writer, the "muscle memory" is only necessary when you are mechanical in your playing. If you are a person that plays off colors and visionary material, it only has to do with your familiarity with what each note sounds like, and you would never worry about any teaching or chords and a teacher that is not an artist ... he/she is a musician ... massive difference.

If you have a good FEEL for the notes on the keys, musical theory won't enter the equation ... because you are following your own feel for what the notes speak to you personally, which has nothing to do with theory at all ... and you better realize that before you take it up ... because that is the first brick in your head ... you want to play something you can't find ... ditch it ... instead visualize a scene and put your fingers around the keys for it ... 

For a weird/bizarre idea, if you read well check out the folks that are really special in their creativity, and notice how they are not into the chords and notes ... they are into the quality of their feeling via this note and then that note .. has nothing to do with theory whatsoever. And the best joke of all is the one that musicians hate the most ... in the Robert Wyatt book there is a story about Syd Barrett in one of the sessions for his album ... and a guitarist asks Robert what key Syd is in. Robert's reply? "He don't know the chords or the notes. He just plays!" ... a perfect example of the memory of "knowing" what it sounds like when you do this, or that ... and that's what you need to create "music" ... the rest is all notes!

Hi,

I would like to add a wee touch here ... for fun and something different, that will help in the end.

If you spend an hour on the Alfred books, and they are very good, do yourself a favor ... put away the book for an hour and just explore each key on the piano, and FEEL it, and even ADD a color to it (as Hiromi will tell you!) ... and study that "sound" a bit ... eventually, it teaches you to blend various sounds and keys on their own without a book, and you learn some intuitive bits ... for example, you like this particular touch and sound, and like to follow it up with this and that ... without worrying about the notes ... only to find that tomorrow, you can duplicate that almost the same, which tells you that you remembered the sound that you felt.

I think it is fine to put a "name" on it ... note this or that or chord this or that ... although I find it more beneficial to me, as a writer though, not to have any idea what it is, or what it was "supposed to be" (the worst thing about music!!!) ... thus making more freedom as to where you take it next as opposed to being tied to a chord this or that.

The history of music is about the "freedom" that folks found off what was next to them, and the 20th century broke the mold on that idea to pieces ... and the only thing that bothers me is that we're still stuck on "learning" something that is too old, and is what is being "retired" from the annals of music as everything ends up digital.

The value of this "freedom" is something that is hard to explain, and is something that most musicians are afraid to try ... because it takes them out of their comfy knowledge of three chords and 2 more notes on their guitar or on the counting by the drummer, who has no feel for the music at all since the drumming never changes!

Good luck ... I've done really well in theater with actors, working with "nothing" as well as I have with writing ... but musicians, for the most part, are afraid ... to consider anything but what they know. 

I started playing guitar in 1972, initially practicing at least 4 hours/day. 52 years later I'm still unable to perform Al Di Meola's Mediterranean Sundance, despite many attempts. Nowadays I enjoy keyboard, piano, bass and flute, but none of them well enough to let me say that I'm a musician. 

My suggestion: Even if it doesn't take you where you want, it can be an amazing journey. I'll never be able to play Emerson on piano, but I still enjoy pressing black and white keys to get some chords. 

If you enjoy it, don't care about anything else. Just enjoy it.