Ernie Rideout, Editor in Chief, Keyboard

Ernie Rideout-Editor in Chief, Keyboard magazine

Ernie started his first band when he was 10 and started lugging a Rhodes when he was 14. In the few years that have elapsed since then, Ernie has performed in a wide variety of styles in a wide range of venues around the globe. Open to the world of music as well as the history of music, Ernie was once an ethnomusicologist, and studied music in Mexico, Thailand, Japan, and Hungary. He spent many years performing west African highlife, zydeco, Cajun, klezmer, and the music of other music cultures. He has been a member of America’s leading period instrument orchestra, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, for many years. His interest in playing early music on original instruments extends to playing blues on a B-3, rock ’n’ roll on a Wurly through a Fender Bassman, and dance music on a TB-303, among many other classic combinations. He’s as obsessed with virtual studios as anyone, though, and his laptop is packed with soft synths. No matter what the music and instrument are, Ernie is all about playing.

In addition to helming the re-invention of Keyboard, Ernie is the founding editor of How to Jam and the Music Technology Buyer’s Guide. As a music educator, he has taught at the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California, as well as in public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and community schools in New York City,