KEYS
THE KEYS POWER TRIO | David Pfaltzgraff
Have you ever seen a stool with only two legs? Me neither. My kitchen stools have four legs, perhaps yours do too, but it’ s also possible, of course, to build a chair or stool with only three legs.
I’ ve been thinking a lot about what the least amount of notes I can play in a given worship context is, as a general exercise to push me to be intentional with what I contribute to a given band. If you know anything about me, you know that I love to layer different sounds together. When I play at church it’ s not uncommon for me to have four, five, even eight different sounds all triggered by a note I play on the piano.
I know that this is something I love to do, and I also know that those rich layers are inspired by the most common approaches to modern worship music production. All you need to do is pull up the tracks for any popular worship song and you’ ll most likely find dense, layered stacks of synths, pads, pianos, and more.
Uncle Ben’ s fateful words are fully relevant here: with great power comes great responsibility. That’ s a Spider-Man reference, by the way. If
you don’ t get the reference, the quote stands on its own.
I digress. What I want to focus in on is this: if you’ re going to layer sounds together, potentially lots of sounds, then every note counts. The more sounds, the more careful you should be about the notes you play.
Lately, I’ ve been aiming for three notes as a good target. Allow me to share some of the common approaches this is forcing me to develop as I learn.
FOUNDATION
I’ ve heard a lot of worship leaders share a semijoking example, where they’ ll invite their keys player to place their left hand behind their back as their first exercise towards better keyboard voicings. The takeaway is supposed to be that keys players in modern worship shouldn’ t play bass notes( that’ s what bass players are supposed to do!).
I always push back on this statement. It only takes listening to thirty seconds of worship music to realize that that’ s not what’ s happening on most worship tunes. There’ s almost always a piano, a pad, a synth sound, or sometimes all of the above contributing to the low end.
Instead of tying your hand behind your back, then, I’ d encourage you to focus on intentional note choices. This is the first leg of the stool. I try to limit myself to a single bass note at a time under the majority of cases and if I need to build from there, I’ ll just introduce an octave above that bass note. This will leave enough room for your bassist to do their thing most of the time, even to play some riffs or movement between chords, while still filling out the low end in a way that’ s familiar to the genre.
GLUE
‘ Just play a pad’ is a disheartening statement for a worship keys player, but if you’ re not at least playing a pad, along with whatever else you’ re bringing, you’ re most often missing an opportunity to help glue together the sound of your band.
Here’ s where those note choices get very
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