Dorothy Motto promoted "Play Like a Band"® via published tapes & books in 1980's

After the heyday of the home organ with automatic rhythms and wood cabinets in the 1950's and 1960's, the portable keyboard and synths came out inthe 1970's and then the KEYBOARD ENSEMBLES in the 1980's. Dorothy was with Schroeder's Organ and Piano in Pheonix AZ, by this time, and worked at the flagship store on Indian School Road where the owner Haig Lordigyan encouraged her to teach and sell using the mini-concert hall there. And that she did by creating her own piano/organ/keyboard course called "Play Like a Band"®. By the standards for the 1980's it was spot on with books and cassette tapes.

She never lost her enthusiasm for the keyboard ensembles and here she is playing a Latin medley including Tico Tico, Cumana, and Brazil on our Yamaha E422 in 2016 at age 81. Here is an instant play MP3 file hosted on Archive.org and here is the MP4 video and other formats so you can see her in action in a live situation.

I had never worked with anyone who understood the value of an easy set-up like a keyboard on the left hand with a piano on the right but she had been doing it for awhile when I had met her. It's the next best thing to two players . Above, you can see a CASIO PX 555 digital piano, with the full 88 keys that she frequently used as her main instrument behind her. She swung herself around, moving onto the end of the bench (yikes, I didn't know she was going to do that!), to use the keyboard exclusively (I didn't know she was going to do that either, not rehearsed. My self-assigned job was to watch out for safety as well and she kept me busy for sure on that front.)

You'll note that her left hand isn't moving much. That's because it's moving between chords every 4 beats. It controls the base, rhythm instruments and percussion, all at once. The right hand still moves a lot because it's the dancing fingers running the melody. Often when we played as a team--"team piano"? instead of "duelling piano"-- one of handled the ensemble while the other handled the 88 key straight piano. We "Played Like a Band" or one of us, as she does here, "Played Like a Band"! Below is a cover from her course, published in silver covers. After we started working together in 1995, she created a new updated course that I typeset and which sold very well in the late 1990's in store-lessons At Schroeders. Later still, after Schroeders closed for good, I helped her expand her course to 20 books. She was teaching via that course until 2020 at age 85. Most the students she had accumulated at Schroeders started coming to our house for in-home lessons. It was quite an operation. We were quite a team.

Here is another example of Dorothy's PLAY LIKE A BAND method using a keyboard on the left hand and a piano on the right as she performs "Hello Dolly" the hit song from the broadway play about a woman in 1900 New York City. [INSTANT MP3 AUDIO][Archive.org page with MP4 and other video & possible instant play sample]